The Hague Institute for Global Justice
8 | Interview
Interview
Dr. Lloyd Axworthy
Dr. Lloyd Axworthy is one of Canada’s most noted statesmen, having done much,
during his tenure as Foreign Minister from 1996 to 2000, to lead global efforts to
prevent conflicts and protect civilians. He was instrumental in the passage of the
Ottawa Treaty which banned land mines, as well as in the development of the
‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine, which formed part of an ‘alternative framework’
for security in the post-Cold War era, one focused on people, not just on states.
Here, he discusses his tenure and efforts, as well as his involvement as Commissioner in the Global Commission on Security, Justice & Governance, a Commission
supported by The Hague Institute and The Stimson Center in Washington, D.C.
In your time as Foreign Minister, Canada’s
foreign policy was known for its internationalism, with ‘human security’ at its heart.
How relevant is that approach today?
For Canada, the 1990s made clear the acute need for an
alternative security framework that went beyond Realpolitik and
put the focus on ‘human security’. To do so, we drew on a pathbreaking UNDP report from 1994, which addressed the threats of
violence and conflict, as well as other, social and economic, risks
to people’s security. This was the time of Srebrenica and Rwanda,
where rules of sovereignty restricted protection or intervention.
It was also an era when the emergence of civil society drew
attention to risks such as land mines, internal conflicts in
countries which either didn’t have the will or resources to
respond or were governed by predator leaders, and suffered from
large scale human rights abuses. And it was clear that risks were
becoming global in nature, beyond the capacity of many states
to respond, and exacerbated by weaknesses in international
institutions unable to cope with the confluence of global issues.
This gave rise to a diplomacy based on partnerships with a core
group of other governments and like-minded NGOs (whose
shared vision was encapsulated in the 1998 Lysøen Declaration)
and the structuring of joint action on initiatives based on people
protection such as the land mine treaty, the establishment of
the International Criminal Court, and the adoption of a child
soldiers’ protocol.
“ isks were becoming global
R
in nature, beyond the capacity
of many states to respond.”
Kosovo marked the real turning point. It saw an international
coalition of countries use military means to stop a human
security transgression, showing that the tenets of sovereignty
could be altered to respond to international crimes. However, our
Ministry saw the need to go beyond ad hoc responses, and it was
for that reason that we established the International Commission
on Intervention and State Sovereignty (with the support of UN
Secretary-General, Kofi Annan), which eventually led to the
development of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm, a new
framework for dealing with security issues adopted by world
leaders in 2005.