Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on April 11th, 2017

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

South Sudan lives in a very bad neighbourhood, and so far your comments have not “gone around the Horn”, shall we say, in terms of contributions of the various countries to this conflict, whether it is Sudan itself or Ethiopia or Kenya or Uganda or whatever. I wonder whether you could offer a commentary on the contributions that all of those countries make to this conflict, both good and bad.

The second thing is that at one point Canada was being invited to go into South Sudan with a very robust military mission. For a variety of reasons, that seems to be off the table these days, but I'd be interested in your views as to what would be required, were nations such as Canada to actually step up to the plate.

I guess my third question is, where does ISIS play? As ISIS is squeezed out, is South Sudan or Sudan generally a location for their particular versions of terrorism?

[Kenneth Scott]

Thank you, sir. Those are three big questions.

You're absolutely right. The regional governments and states play a very significant role in what's happening in South Sudan. That factor cannot be underestimated. It's not surprising, perhaps. All the regional countries—Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, the DRC, and Sudan itself—have their own political regional interests.

Historically—I'm painting now with a broad brush—Uganda has typically supported the current president, Salva Kiir. At various times, Sudan has supported the principal opposition leader, Riek Machar, who has been or was the principal opposition leader. There's a bit of a proxy war going on between Uganda and Sudan that is being fought out in South Sudan to some extent. That is a huge factor.

The principal regional body that has played a principal role in the peace processes and is implementing the peace agreement is the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, IGAD. It's made up exactly of the regional states. Many feel that it's not been particularly effective, because, again, regional politics play such a large role. At the same time, the African Union is reluctant to play a firmer hand out of deference to the regional organization, to IGAD, so that's also a complicating political factor.

You're absolutely right. The regional government and the regional states play a major role and have a major influence on what's happening in South Sudan.

As to Canada and more robust peacekeeping in general, again, that question is not unique to South Sudan. I know that the UN itself, with its department of peacekeeping operations, has done a number of studies and self-assessments over the past several years. How do you make peacekeeping more robust? How do you get troop-contributing countries to be more robust in their own attitudes, as opposed to sending people in various elements and units that very clearly are not anxious to engage in anything such as real fighting?

That's an ongoing problem and not unique to South Sudan. I don't know how that ultimately gets resolved, but in my personal opinion, I think that in many of these situations we're going to have to find a way to be more robust. If you're sitting in a UN camp in the middle of South Sudan, there's a government roadblock 500 metres outside the camp, and you can't get further than 500 metres from the camp, I think we can all agree that you can't be very effective.

In terms of ISIS, it's an interesting question. I don't think anyone has seen that as a factor so far. One of the historical differences—not the only one, by any means—between the northern part of Sudan and in what became South Sudan is that the northern part of the country tends to be Muslim. What became South Sudan is at least nominally Christian. So far, I have not seen anyone suggest that ISIS is playing a role in that particular area, although it's certainly wise to keep an eye on that situation.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Thank you.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Mr. Scott, thank you very much. I'm going to ask you one more question, but I'm going to thank you on behalf of the committee because we may dwindle in numbers now. We're going to question period, which is always a delightful time where everybody likes to participate.

[Kenneth Scott]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

What I wanted to ask you about is in the same vein as what the honourable member, Mr. McKay, just asked you about.

We've had the concept of the responsibility to protect in international law for quite some time. It has three pillars. I'm certain that as a prosecutor you're very aware of all three pillars. It seems to me that generally the international community is prepared to go to the second pillar, but for timely and decisive action, coercive action to wake up, let's say, a country's government to their responsibilities to make sure their population is not exposed to the four major international crimes—crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, and ethnic cleansing—what do we need to do?

I've been on this committee for 12 years now. In this last couple of years, I've decided to make this my hobby horse, because too many times when hostilities begin, we've watched. We know where these things are going to go, but we sit by and watch as hundreds of thousands of people—in Syria's case—are killed and millions of people are displaced. It will take billions of dollars from the international community to rebuild, but of course we cannot possibly ever replace all the lives that are lost. Would you like to make a comment in that regard?

[Kenneth Scott]

I commend you on your thinking on the topic, and on your concern, which I'm sure is genuine. As you say, it's something that you've been looking at for some time now.

I'm afraid that responsibility to protect, like a number of principles and doctrines—and like a number of things—is a bit like fashion. It seems to go a bit in and out of vogue. I think that maybe in the early 2000s, in 2002 and that time period, it seemed to be on the uptake. It seemed to be that the responsibility to protect was something that we had to fully endorse and develop.

I haven't studied this in any sort of disciplined way, but in my experience, it seems to me that it has fallen out of vogue and currently is not so much...we've drifted away from it a bit. I fully agree with you that we're pretty good on the first and second pillars and not very good on the third pillar.

Again, one reason for this is that we're at the fundamental loggerheads of international intervention and national sovereignty, as I'm sure you know. That's one of the real challenges of international law in general and human rights law. How do you deal with those things? How do you deal with the need to intervene? Some would point to what just happened in Syria with the Tomahawk missiles in dealing with issues of national sovereignty as well.

My personal opinion—and I'm not speaking as a commissioner now—is that I think we have to go further with that. We live in a world of globalization. Human rights cannot stop at the border. We're going to have to find ways to be more robust about this. On the third pilllar, the government is not meeting its responsibilities. On the second pillar, we have tried to assess them. We've offered manpower, treasure, whatever...and it's not getting done. The third pillar is that we have to go in and do it ourselves, but that is really at the very crossroads of international law at this point.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you very much, Mr. Scott. Hopefully some day we'll see an effort to draw that line between national sovereignty and the responsibility to protect. Maybe we'll come up with a protocol that everyone can agree with, such that once you've reached a tipping point, international intervention is going to, should, and will take place.

Thank you very much for all the good work you've done, all the way back to Bosnia and Herzegovina. We greatly appreciate that. You know that our Canadian Forces served there proudly and in a distinguished way and took some losses as well—

[Kenneth Scott]

Absolutely.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

—so we appreciate your efforts there too.

Thank you very much for your testimony to this committee.

We're adjourned.