The Lack of Response by the International Community to Massive Human Rights Abuses during the Syrian Civil War Indicate a Failure of the Responsibility to Protect and the Necessity for Fundamental Reform of the UN Framework for Humanitarian Intervention (original) (raw)

This study investigates the failure of the international community, and the R2P framework in particular, to protect at-risk populations in Syria. The study will be based on three case studies, comparing R2P “in action” in Darfur, Libya and Syria. The base hypothesis is that R2P represents progress in providing protection to at-risk populations. What then accounts for its inability to prevent the deaths of 100,000 people in Syria? It aims to clarify the inadequacies of the present UN system for dealing with intra-state conflict. In three parts, the thesis seeks to highlight how R2P is powerless to act to live up to its promises. Part one will introduce the theories around which R2P is conceptualised, bringing the reader up to speed on what R2P is, where it came from, and what it is meant to achieve. Part two, a description and brief analysis of the three most important cases of R2P “in action” since its formal adoption at the 2005 UN World Summit, the cases of Darfur, Libya and Syria, provide the best test of the principle's ability to provide the basis for progress in ending mass atrocity crimes. Part three is an analysis, where I argue that Darfur and Libya provides evidence that R2P does indeed make a positive contribution to the protection of at-risk populations. These two cases evidence that R2P provides an avenue for securitizing issues through speech acts, frames responses and enables action which provides timely protection against the four crimes referred to in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document. The Syrian case, on the other hand, provides conclusive evidence that the ability of R2P to catalyse action to protect at-risk populations is minimal or non-existent in cases where civil strife occurs in a location of high geopolitical value to great power states. The study further evidences that due to the capacity for the situation in Syria to worsen, as highlighted most recently by the US reaction to the 21st August chemical attacks on East Ghoutta, drawing regional and global powers into conflict, R2P's failure in Syria indicates that reform of the principle, which should focus on addressing its problems, is urgently needed in the interests of global peace and security.