Sovereignty and Responsibility in Global Refugee Protection and Humanitarian Intervention in the 21 Century

This paper is concerned on the interlinking politics in refugee protection and humanitarian intervention as well as the trends of developments in refugee protection that has been undermined especially in a number of developed countries. In international protections, sovereignty always appear as a major debate since protections involve interference by external forces (in humanitarian intervention) or arrivals of external populations (in refugee protection). The sense of responsibility, referring to the political willingness to provide protection or assistance have been influenced by the understanding on sovereignty. The aim of this paper is to explain how the concepts have been contested through practices of refugee protection and responsibility to protect. In order to demonstrate the issue of sovereignty and responsibility at hand, this paper departs from the discussion of the two concepts as found in the historical accounts of the protection regimes which are refugee protection and the humanitarian intervention. The following part discusses the recent development of the two regimes of international protection. Within each part, the notion of sovereignty and responsibility are assessed from the practices of the two regimes. From the discussion, it can be understood that the ways these concepts were produced and contested reflect the presence of a bigger framework namely politics of human rights which tend to be dominated by the interests of big political power.

Due to the politics driving the two regimes, many have argued that the development of refugee protection regime and humanitarian intervention are not entirely clear cut. Loescher, et. al., (2008), for example, highlight that the end of world war has changed the way Western countries approach the refugee issue by placing restrictions on entry of the people who flee to their country, or also commonly written as asylum seekers. 2 While during Cold War these big countries have been the prominent advocates for refugee protection, the end of Cold War marked by the emerging globalization which pushed more mass movement towards the West has witnessed a seachange. Refugees influx increased significantly but they were not as welcomed as they were in the past because they began to be understood as the burden for the host state, and the Western countries began to impose restrictive entry measures to immigrants and consequently, to the asylum seekers (Haddad, 2008: 166).
The connection between refugee protection and humanitarian intervention was found in the way that intervention is required to -reduce the likelihood of massive refugees flow across borders‖ (Loescher, et. al., 2008: 54). It was understood that humanitarian intervention was needed to help bring the Nurul Azizah Zayzda 2 Refugees and asylum seekers are basically the same people. The 1951 Convention Related to the Status of Refugees basically only use the terminology ‗refugee'. Asylum seekers is not mentioned in the agreement document. The distinction between the two of them is the further consequence of the use of UNHCR guidelines on protection. UNHCR rules that not every single person fleeing a country and ask for asylum can be granted protection. Only the people who are ‗well-founded' to be threatened by persecutions are granted protection. Only when they pass the assessments are they called refugees. The others who have not yet passed the process are addressed as -asylum seekers. conflict to an end or to keep a region stabile, so that people will not leave to find asylum. The terminologies like internally displaced persons, peacekeeping operations or peacemaking operations which emerged after the Cold War were central in this to keep the affected or potentially affected people stay at their homes (Loescher, et. al., 2008;Ferris, 2011).  (Isaac, 1996: 67

Earlier Development of International Protection
This part argues that the politics of human rights during Cold War, comprises of attempts to establish a -moral legitimacy‖ of particular groups (Evans, 2001: 14). By moral legitimacy, it means that the legitimacy of the Western Bloc and its liberal democracy ideas during Cold War period in world politics. By presenting themselves with humanitarian ideas with concern on human life and rights, they are advantaged in the war against communism.  (Loescher, et. al., 2008: 14-15). 4 Haddad (2008) and Loescher, et. al. (2008) elaborates further the outcome of this sort of politics of refugee during the period.
Firstly, refugee protection was highly Humanitarian intervention began to be a foremost tool to make sure that mass movement of people towards the developed countries is limited (Loescher, et. al., 2008: 54). Humanitarian intervention itself originated from the liberalist's thought on democracy and the need to uphold it everywhere in the world (Farer, 2003: 56). Nevertheless, it was a basic that the foundation of UN is the principle of non-intervention. This was particularly the concern of the newly independent countries Sierra Leone (1997Leone ( -2000, Kosovo (1998-9), and East Timor (1999) (Roberts, 2004: 81).
In addition to the objection of most developing countries on the principle of nonintervention is the bias from the proponents of the humanitarian intervention themselves.
Roberts notes that double standard is found in the practice of humanitarian intervention, resulting in the 'selective' nature of humanitarian intervention. Many argues that this is rooted in the dominance of the US in UN decision making (Roberts, 2004: 88 (Farer, 2003: 59). By intervening in ending conflict and providing humanitarian aids, it will make possible lesser refugee inflow.
The initial development of refugee protection and humanitarian intervention expresses the politics of human rights and the attached debate on sovereignty. There has been a strong argumentation on the concept of 5 Visa regime refers to the use of visa as requirement of legal entry to a country. See also Gibney (2006

Refugee Crisis and Response in Developed Countries
After Cold-War ended, refugee outflow did not end. UNHCR (2012)  To conclude, the politics of refugee protection in the 21 st century is marked by the common tendency to limit the mobility of asylum seekers attempting to enter a country. Herein the visa regime lays the foundation as the foremost law in migration, overruling the international refugee law itself. Understanding that in most countries refugee issue is automatically linked to immigration issue, it has always been complicated to create a refugee protection regime that actually speaks about refugee's rights and not the state's rights, or in the words of Nyers (2003), asylum policy -is not just a humanitarian determination but a moment when sovereign state (re)found its claim to monopolize the political‖ (Nyers, 2003(Nyers, : 1071.
Together with humanitarian intervention, the refugee protection marks a stronger grasp on the notion of sovereignty as autonomy from the external. In this sense, the developed states tend to see that the same sense of sovereignty is not applicable in the conflicting countries or where persecutions take place, as seen in the development of humanitarian intervention.

Responsibility to Protect as Sovereignty
Responsibility to Protect is the face of interventionism in the 21 st century. According to Evans and Sahnoun (2002), the concept of Responsibility to Protect was created in early 2000s due to the concern that the state should be the first and foremost actor of protection.
It has been illustrated that the development of refugee protection and responsibility to protect have not been solely a human rights issue; it is also about whose