R2P, the Vatican & Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Last week, Archbishop Celestino Migliore delivered the Vatican’s address to the United Nations General Assembly and focused those remarks on a, ”Culture of peace rooted in truth of human dignity”. The archbishop even went on to highlight the ‘responsibility to protect’:

With the 2005 Summit Outcome document, this organization adopted the principle of the responsibility to protect as a practical translation of the exercise of sovereignty and of governance. The responsibility to protect presupposes the capacity and the will to remove threats, to establish relations and mechanisms apt to continue to dissuade humanity from resolving their disputes through the use of force and, to the extent possible, to substitute force with law. The responsibility to protect is intimately linked and directly proportional to the respect for the truth of peace, whether it is a question of deciding to use force in extreme cases, the conduct during and after conflict, military expenditure, the arms trade, disarmament and nuclear proliferation, demographics or the approach to development. To realize peace at the social and political level, the correct relation between truth and peace at the cultural level needs to be reestablished.

Contrast those remarks, with those delivered to the same audience by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in September. After spending a full 10 minutes at the UN justifying Canada’s role in Afghanistan (to Canadians), he quickly, and meekly noted:

Darfur too is a significant challenge – as multinational security efforts are transferred from the African Union to the United Nations. It is also a test of the principle that this body endorsed last year – the Responsibility to Protect. The United Nations has authorized a mission there with a robust mandate. But will the government of Sudan accept it?

So, the best the nation who initiated, supported and gained unanimous approval of the ‘responsibility to protect’ could muster was a query?

I have a query. Why exactly are we so afraid to continue to lead on R2P?