Pakistan has told the UN General Assembly that the most egregious aspect of the concept of responsibility to protect, or R2P, was its “selectivity and double standards”, saying its sponsors had ignored the need for “collective action” to protect the suffering people of occupied Palestine or of Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Munir Akram, during a thematic debate in the UNGA on the doctrine of responsibility to protect said, “While high-sounding pronunciations are made about the situations in some targeted countries, mostly developing and Islamic states, there is complete silence with regard to other situations which clearly fall within the purview of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 Summit Declaration.”
Pertinently, the concept of R2P rests upon three pillars: the responsibility of each state to protect its populations; the responsibility of the international community to assist states in protecting their populations; and the responsibility of the international community to protect when a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations. Ambassador Akram said, one specific circumstance where those provisions would apply is in situations of foreign occupation or alien domination. He said that such situations were often rife with pressing human rights emergencies and could easily spiral to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. “Yet, we have not heard from the concept’s sponsors about the need for ‘collective action’ to protect the people of occupied Palestine or of Indian occupied Jammu & Kashmir,” he added.-APP
