FVR bats for approval of UN report on mass killings intervention

Former President Fidel Ramos has asked President Arroyo that the Philippines vote for the approval of a report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) when it is presented for adoption to the United Nations General Assembly this year.

Entilted "The Responsibility to Protect," Ramos presented the report to the diplomatic corps and representatives of international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross and the UN Development Programme, foreign affairs specialists, and top government officials at the Kalayaan Hall of EIB Plaza in Makati last Friday.

Ramos said the ICISS report was launched on Dec. 18 last year at the UN headquarters in New York and other key cities around the world.

It is a landmark document which provides the core guiding principles for effective intervention by a coalition of states in cases of mass killings, and other atrocities due to political upheavals, ethnic cleansing, or government collapse like what happened in many "least developed countries such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, Somalia, Sierra Leonne, and East Timor," he added.

Ramos said the ICISS is an independent commission established in September 2000 as a response to the challenge of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to the international community to build a new international consensus on how to respond to massive violations of human rights and international humanitarian law in cases where governments are unable or unwilling to protect its people or are themselves the perpetrator.