"An Imperfect Response to My Critics," Global Responsibility to Protect 14, no. 1 (2022): 115-21 (original) (raw)
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The responsibility to protect (R2P) is often referred to as a new concept on the basis that it provides both states and the international community responsibilities, rather than merely rights, to protect populations from mass atrocities. As this article argues, this claim of novelty is overstated. And yet, R2P has comprised an important development in human protection over the past two decades: it has helped to generate a degree of consensus on how to prevent and address atrocity situations. If R2P is not as novel as is often suggested, why has it had such an impact on international discourse? After demonstrating R2P’s overstated novelty, this article advances four key factors that help explain its meaningful international impact: the importance of previous and contiguous normative developments, the role played by norm entrepreneurs, the emphasis placed on prevention over intervention, and the concept’s constructive mix of clarity and ambiguity. By doing so, it provides a stronger understanding of the norm.
Revisiting the Responsibility to Protect as an International Norm
Journal of International Studies
The purpose of the paper is to revisit the origin of the principle of responsibility to protect (R2P) focusing on few cases and reflecting on the troubled journey that it has made maneuvering its structural constraints posed by hegemonic powers and geopolitical manipulations, by employing historical methods in tracking its evolution. The inter-state aggression during the Cold War, largely gave way to war and violence within, after the end of it, rather than between, states. There were two opposing views at the United Nations (UN): those who supported right of humanitarian intervention and those who viewed such a doctrine as an infringement upon national sovereignty. In this regard, R2P remains a developing principle and, the absence of definitive state practice in this area means that states wanting to intervene to protect foreign populations from atrocities are left without clear legal justification for such action. In the absence of UN Security Council authorisation, use of force ...
The responsibility to protect: six years after
2011
At the 2005 World Summit at United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York, the assembled leaders of most of the nations of the world gave their unanimous approval to an “outcome document” that, among its many provisions, contained three paragraphs affirming a “responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.”1 The summary provided by the UN Department of Public Information declared that this signified “clear and unambiguous acceptance by all governments of the collective international responsibility to protect.”2 UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed this as a “most precious” accomplishment.3 A year after the World Summit, Gareth Evans (former Australian foreign minister and one of the most vocal proponents of a “responsibility to protect” [R2P]) remarked that “on any view, the evolution in just five years of the responsibility to protect concept . . . to what now has the pedigree to be described as a broadly accepted int...
In whose name? A critical view on the Responsibility to Protect
2014
""In whose name? A critical view on the Responsibility to Protect" provides an overview of the history and content of R2P, its positive contributions and its flaws. It concludes that R2P does not give a satisfying answer to the key question it is supposed to address: how best to prevent and, if prevention fails, respond to large-scale human rights violations and killings? The concept is particularly dangerous as it amalgamates arguments and proposals, mixing uncontroversial and widely accepted notions (that states have a responsibility towards their citizens) with more dubious claims (that military intervention is an appropriate tool to protect civilians). Rather than building a last resort option – military intervention – for when all else fails, there is a dire need to devote attention and energy to prevention and to ensuring that the international system does not fail to begin with. Existing legal instruments and institutions for crisis prevention and management fulfill many of the functions of R2P without undermining the principles of peaceful dispute settlement or the equal sovereignty of states. The report ends with an overview of alternatives that deserve more reflection and action."
The Responsibility to Protect and the Notion of Irresponsibility in International Law
The responsibility to protect concept (R2P), as specified in the report of the International Commission of Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001, is a re-articulation of the overworked right of humanitarian intervention. Since then, the concept has been used by the international community, as a form of moral argumentation that justifies the use of force for human protection purposes. One of the connecting threads of this thesis has been to reflect on the meaning, effects and limits of 'responsibility' within R2P. This thesis explores the concept's institutionalization, its juridico-moral framework and structure of address. The resulting insight points to a 'notion of irresponsibility' that is internal to responsibility practices, as these originate from modern forms of social organization and their 'mentalities'. This thesis attempts to argue that the global ethical responsibility we find within R2P emanates from a foreclosing structure of address. Such a foreclosing structure fails the promise of protection at an inter-subjective/intra-subjective level and transforms global ethical responsibility into a project of governance, management and control. This vantage point is one in which the 'international community' of liberal international law and legal cosmopolitanism projects a self-assured self and fails to account for the limits of its own self-understanding, irresponsibility and violence. The juridico-moral framework of R2P both constitutes and is constitutive of forms of political subjectivity. Therefore, it materially circumscribes the politico-ethical limits of the structure of address of social and political violence globally. Drawing on Jacques Derrida and Judith Butler, the 'notion of irresponsibility' expounded in this thesis exposes the internal conditions, paradoxes and 'aporias' of responsibility and therefore, it also embodies them. It works as a conceptual resource, a kind of 'talking-back' to its discourse and presents a re-appropriation or representation of the global scene of address of social and political violence. This vantage point yields a radically different approach from that taken by liberal internationalists and legal cosmopolitans. This research contributes a critique of the juridico-moral framework of the concept and of our resourcefulness for global ethical judgment.
2014
The dissertation involves a study of the emerging international norm of 'The Responsibility to Protect' which states that citizens must be protected in cases of human atrocities, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and genocide where states have failed or are unable to do so. According to the work of the International Commission on the Responsibility to Protect (ICISS), this response can and should span a continuum involving prevention, a response to the violence, when and if necessary, and ultimately rebuilding shattered societies. The most controversial aspect, however, is that of forceful intervention and much of the thesis focuses on this aspect. The history and context of the Responsibility to Protect are examined as an evolving norm in international law. The study thus serves as an analysis of how a fundamental and controversial international principle has been established: its promotion, creation, formulation, acceptance, and ultimately its implementation. The dissertation identifies five critical sociopolitical issues of significance affecting the evolution of the Responsibility to Protect in international law and its implementation and considers remedies where appropriate. Analysis of an application of the principle through force is undertaken in the context of the UN sanctioned intervention into Libya in 2011. This case study provides a clearer picture of what the Responsibility to Protect means as a legal basis for international intervention in genocidal situations. The study finds that international law is but one factor in the substantiation of the Responsibility to Protect-legitimacy counts as well as legality and for it to be implemented the self-interest of states must acknowledge 'universal' legal and ethical principles of a humanitarian nature. Also contributing to the success of a Responsibility to Protect intervention are nongovernmental actors as part of transnational governance who in a particular situation cry out for action in the face of evolving humanitarian atrocities in spite of rules of sovereignty and state hegemony. The more general significance of this research is in its understanding of existing and new forms of hard and soft governance and how they adapt in the international and transnational arena. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am pleased to have the opportunity to formally express my sincere appreciation to my Supervisor, Dr. Annie Bunting, for her steady, consistent and unyielding support during the work leading up to and in the process of writing the thesis. Her careful reading, insights, energy, enthusiasm and academic approach have continuously inspired me to follow this work through to its very conclusion. I also wish to thank my other Committee members, Dr. Trevor Farrow and Dr. David Leyton-Brown for their tremendous insights and enduring support as I solidified my ideas. They provided critical guidance into the production of something that I can now look on with satisfaction. I also extend a note of sincere thanks to the external examiner, Dr. John Currie, and the other reviewers, Drs. Ruth Buchanan and David Szablowski, who were willing to commit their time to the consideration of the thesis in its entirety and their invaluable comments and professionalism. I would also like to express my gratitude to those faculty at Osgoode who helped guide me and stimulated my thinking in new and innovative ways; particularly, Professors Liora Salter, Paul Emond and Fred Zemans. I especially want to thank my Osgoode "thesis buddy" who offered her collegial support and positive spirit as we both ventured along the doctrinal path. I also have been fortunate along the way to have had funding support from the prestigious Harry Arthurs scholarship,