Extended responsibility for the UN Security Council
Dakar 2003
The Liberal International Congress
Notes that the war in Iraq started with wrong and misleading arguments, without a mandate from UN Security Council and definitely not in compliance with the present international order;
Recognising that events since the end of the Cold War in Bosnia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote D’Ivoire, East Timor, Kosova, Liberia, Macedonia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia as well as Iraq have provoked international debate on the concept of the right of armed intervention by external forces to protect personal security and gross and mass violation basic human rights from internal repression as well as inter-state aggression;
Underlines the obligations of UN-member states to ensure the peoples of the world to live in peace and security and without systematic or random violence of human rights from internal and external governments or other forces;
Urges in particular the UN Security Council to work for a common and wider understanding of a concept of peace and security which includes “human security”, and to be prepared to take action in accordance with UN Charter Chapter 7, where human rights are right are violated by crimes against humanity as defined in the Statute of The International Criminal Court, § 5-8. Recognising the obligations imposed on the signatories of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to take action to prevent it;
Urges all UN-members without conditions to back the authority of the International Criminal Court and to co-operate in bringing to justice those guilty of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes;
Calls on the Member Parties of the Liberal International to study the question of armed intervention by external powers to prevent or stop mass and gross violations of basic human rights while acting within a framework of International Law, so that the next Congress of the Liberal International, or at an earlier occasion if decided by the Bureau, there can and should be an informed debate on this question.
