Disaster relief and crimes against humanity

Whether or not the practicalities of speedily delivering aid where it is most needed in Burma now speak in favour of overriding Burmese sovereignty is not something I feel able to judge. I don't know enough about conditions on the ground to know if an attempt by the UN, other agencies or outside powers, to act independently of the Burmese junta, and against opposition from it, would be effective.

Whether or not it would be, however, last week's statement about this by Britain's UN envoy John Sawers - to the effect that the UN's responsibility-to-protect commitment doesn't apply in present circumstances - raises an important question. Sawers is reported to have said that the 2005 resolution establishing that commitment 'relates to acts of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and so forth, rather than government responses to natural disasters'. But, in saying that, he would seem to take it for granted that a government's response to natural disaster could not itself amount to a crime against humanity. Is that in fact so?

There's an article by Sigrun Skogly in the International Journal of Human Rights for 2001, arguing for an extension of the concept of crimes against humanity so that it might cover severe violations of certain social and economic rights: as when a government denies people access to food or blocks humanitarian food aid. Part of Skogly's case is that the various legal instruments defining crimes against humanity are somewhat open-ended in any case; as well as the specific offences they list, they also include reference to 'other inhumane acts'. This is to be found in both Article 6 (c) of the Nuremberg Charter and Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. As Gareth Evans points out in a post on Comment is Free today, the latter of these has:

Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

It is hard to see why deliberately withholding, obstructing or delaying food and other aid to the victims of natural disaster in such a way that thousands of extra lives are lost in consequence should not qualify, under this wording, as a crime against humanity.