Symposium Announcement: Imperfect Duties? Humanitarian Intervention in Africa and the Responsibility to Protect in the Post-Iraq Era

In collaboration with the West Africa Bureau of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University will host a symposium March 5-7, 2009 to explore questions related to the ethics, law and politics of humanitarian intervention. We will bring together a distinguished list of representatives from domains too seldom in direct conversation with each other: I) the academy, II) governmental and intergovernmental agencies and III) global civil society.

We invite you to register to attend what will be an exciting and significant event located in the idyllic and contemplative surroundings of the Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics. The symposium will commence on Thursday evening, with the opening address by the Honorable Gareth Evans, President and CEO, International Crisis Group, former Australian Foreign Minister and co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Registration is $20, which will cover continental breakfast Saturday and Sunday mornings as well as coffee and refreshment breaks throughout the weekend. Lunch on Friday will also be provided with a plenary address by Karen Koning AbuZayd, Commissioner-General, United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. You are also invited, as well, to register for the Saturday closed luncheon, which will feature a plenary address (TBA) for an additional $10.

Participants will engage with the most intractable debates surrounding humanitarianism and interventionism (e.g., sovereignty, human rights, the use of military force for humanitarian purposes, fears of neo-imperialism, which have been made more palpable by the Iraq war. etc.). We seek in particular to assess the status of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine and its implications for Africa. Thus the broad themes of the weekend will include: 1) Analysis of critical African conflict systems and the efficacy of interventionist efforts, 2) The meaning of R2P and the "New Interventionism" for Africa, 3) The implications of the abuse of humanitarian principles for international law and the politics of intervention, 4) The importance of confronting root causes in the prevention of and rebuilding from violent conflict, 5) Sovereignty, sovereign equality and the competing norms of justice and peaceful co-existence.

Respectfully,


Brett O'Bannon
Symposium Organizer
Associate Professor of Political Science, DePauw University