Van der Stoel’s testimony reaffirmed the intentional story about Iraq’s internal behavior whereby the government was engaged in a systematic attempt to repress and kill large portions of the southern Shi’a and northern Kurdish populations.72 Van der Stoel argued that the Iraqi regime’s economic blockade of the north was threatening a new humanitarian catastrophe as hunger became widespread. He also testified that humanitarian relief to the southern marshes was restricted by the Iraqi government in violation of the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Iraq is a party, and paragraph 3 of Resolution 688, which demanded immediate access to all Iraqis in need of humanitarian assistance.73 The Iraqi regime was engaged in a major military offensive against civilians in the southern marshes using artillery bombardment and fixed-wing aircraft. Van der Stoel reminded the council that international passivity in the late 1980s had allowed Iraq to exterminate part of the Iraqi Kurd population and urged the council to avoid repeating that tragedy.74 In short, his testimony encouraged the UNSC to expand its engagement with the Iraqi civilian population deep inside the borders of Iraq and not just in the border areas where neighbor states might be threatened.
As in the meeting preceding the passage of Resolution 688 the year before, the debate following Van der Stoel’s briefing in August 1992 was not about the cause or character of the violence in Iraq or its resultant human rights violations. Rather, it was about whether the Security Council had a responsibility or a right to respond to them, and whether human rights violations were linked to the maintenance of international peace and security. Detractors of the linkage between human rights and international security were noticeably quiet in the subsequent debate and declined to speak on the public record in response to Van der Stoel’s briefing. Only nine Security Council members—all of whom articulated a direct link between the protection of human rights and the maintenance of international peace and security—made formal statements in response to the briefing. States like Hungary, Japan, and Austria argued that gross and systematic human rights violations alone warranted Security Council attention. Hungary underscored this point: “[There is a] link that exists between the way a Government treats its own citizens and the way that it acts in the international arena as well as [a] link between enforcing respect for human rights and maintaining international peace and security.”75 Similarly, Austria argued,
The protection of human rights and, in particular, of the rights of ethnic minorities too, has had an important impact on the development of peaceful relations between states. There is a direct connection between democratic processes within countries and the evolution of a political culture which is conducive to the peaceful settlement of disputes. From our own history, we know that peace was most threatened when human rights were abolished and minorities persecuted and when democratic processes gave way to totalitarian practices. Human rights, minority rights and democracy, are, therefore, important cornerstones of our common endeavour.76
The political implication for the Security Council was that respect for human rights was more than a legal or humanitarian question; rather, respect for human rights was also “an integral part of international collective security.” Thus, the Security Council should take an “unambiguous and clear cut stand for the protection of those rights whenever and wherever they are flagrantly violated.”77 In short, protecting human rights and international humanitarian law was central to the primary functions of the UNSC.
The majority of Security Council members took the more instrumental approach by emphasizing that human rights were a concern of the Security Council only in such instances when human rights violations directly threatened international peace and security. According to this view, human rights violations were duly addressed by other UN organs unless their consequences had a direct bearing on international or regional peace and security. For example, France reasoned that the Security Council had an obligation to prevent massive human rights violations in the southern marshes as a means of preventing a mass exodus of refugees, which would further threaten security in the region.78 Belgium, Russia, the UK, and the U.S. each argued that the Iraqi government’s flagrant defiance of Security Council directives and especially those of Resolution 688 made the human rights behavior of Iraq relevant to council consideration. Russia emphasized the necessity of states to follow Security Council directives:
The Russian Federation attaches great importance to the full and consistent implementation of the resolutions of the Security Council which are intended to eliminate the consequences of the Iraqi aggression against Kuwait and to establish a lasting peace and security in that region. Accordingly, we, like other Council members, are very seriously alarmed by reports of a continuing policy of repression against the civilian population in various parts of Iraq, which constitutes a direct violation of the demand, contained in resolution 688 (1991), that Iraq, as a contribution to the removing of the threat to international peace and security in the region, should end the repression against its own civilian population.79
Iraqi defiance of Security Council resolutions, and in particular the directive to stop repressing its population as detailed in Resolution 688, made its human rights practices an appropriate subject of Security Council discussion. In passing Resolution 688 the Security Council had determined that the consequences of Iraqi repression threatened international security. Because Resolution 688 demanded that Iraq cease the repression of its civilian population, evidence of the Iraqi regime’s compliance, or lack thereof, was integral to Security Council deliberation. At minimum, both groups agreed that when human rights violations affect the security of other sovereign states they become relevant to Security Council deliberations. Fifteen days after this discussion, on 26 August 1992, France, the UK, and the U.S. imposed a “no-fly” zone in southern Iraq (Operation Southern Watch) below the thirty-second parallel to protect the Shi’as from further aerial attacks as those nations had done previously with the Kurds in the north in April 1991.
The Interplay of Interests and Norms During Security Council Deliberations
Human rights norms were incorporated into Security Council meetings in 1991 specifically because the Iraqi refugee crisis posed a direct threat to both the international security interests and normative values of a majority of the council members. France, the UK, and the U.S. were particularly susceptible to increasing domestic and international pressure to address the tragedy, which was directly linked to Operation Desert Storm and was vividly captured by Western media and broadcast worldwide. Because Turkey was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, any security risk to it was a threat to the entire alliance, which was obligated to defend it. Despite these interests, however, Security Council members from Europe and the Americas also viewed the crisis as a threat to their core values—the promotion of freedom, human rights, and the rule of law. Ambassador Diego Arria of Venezuela, for example, described his country’s motivations this way: “The concern of my country in this debate is founded on its unswerving solidarity and concern in respect of a subject of primary importance for humankind, namely, the defence of human rights wherever they are violated or trampled underfoot, and on its aspiration to see peace and harmony restored in a region whose people are traditionally friends of Venezuela.”80 Failure to address the crisis threatened the shared vision of the new world order that was so anxiously anticipated by UN members at the end of the Cold War, and particularly by France, the UK, and the U.S.
Security Council members from democratic states also were susceptible to the humanitarian impulse of their populations. Growing domestic and international pressure to respond to the unfolding tragedy came from three sources: the international media; independent experts, including officials of human rights organizations; and compelling eyewitness testimony, which had a significant impact. First, the international media presence in the region was substantial because of previous coverage of Operation Desert Storm. Live television images and photographs of the utter devastation of the Kurdish community were broadcast internationally, causing the domestic populations of Coalition states to pressure their governments to respond to the crisis, in part because they believed the war was a cause of the rebellion.81 The extensive media attention to the plight of the Kurds elicited public outrage in the U.S. and threatened to overshadow the military success of Desert Storm. The U.S. government was motivated to respond, in part, because the crisis directly threatened the political aims of the war.82 In short, the humanitarian