Rethinking The Responsibility To Protect

This edited volume critically examines the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a guiding norm in international politics. After NATO’s intervention in Libya, against the backdrop of civil wars in Syria and Yemen, and because of the cynical support for R2P by states such as Saudi Arabia, this norm is the subject of heavy criticism. It seems that the R2P is just political rhetoric, an instrument exploited by the powerful states. Hence, the R2P is being challenged. At the same time, however, institutional settings, normative discourses and contestation practices are making it more robust. New understandings of responsibility and the politics of protection are creating new normative spaces, patterns of legitimacy, and norm entrepreneurs, thereby reinforcing the R2P. This book’s goals are to discuss the R2P’s roots, institutional framework, and evolution; to reveal its shortcomings and pitfalls; and to explore how it is exploited by certain states. Further, it elaborates on the R2P’s strength as a norm. Accordingly, the contributions presented here discuss various ways in which the R2P is being challenged or confirmed, or both at once. As the authors demonstrate, these developments concern not only diplomatic communication and political practices within international institutions, but also to normative discourses. Furthermore, the book includes chapters that reevaluate the R2P from a normative standpoint, e.g. by proposing cosmopolitan standards as a guide for states’ external behavior. Other contributors reassess the historical evidence from U.N. negotiations on the R2P principle, and the productive or restrictive role of institutions. Discussing new issues relating to the R2P such as global and regional power shifts or foreign policy, as well as the phenomenon of authoritarian interventionism under the R2P umbrella, this book will appeal to all IR scholars and students interested in humanitarianism, norms, and power. By analyzing the status quo of the R2P, it enriches and broadens the debate on what the R2P currently is, and what it ought to be.

Since the end of the Cold War, humanitarian interventions have continued to evolve and respond to a wide range of political crises. These insightful essays focus on the challenges associated with interventions when facing conflict and human rights violations, unmitigated systematic violence, state re-building, human mobility and dislocation. Each chapter is linked to the rest through three defining themes that permeate the book: the evolution of humanitarian interventions in a global era; the limits of sovereignty and the ethics of interventions; and the politics of post-intervention: (re)-building and humanitarian engagement. The authors incorporate a variety of case studies including Kosovo, Timor-Leste, Syria, Libya and Iraq, and examine the complexity of interventions across their different dimensions, including relevant doctrines such as R2P, 'Use of Force' and Human Security.

De tragische gebeurtenissen in Rwanda, Srebrenica en Kosovo hebben geleid0tot een herbezinning over de rol en verantwoordelijkheid van de internationale gemeenschap. In het beginsel Responsibility to Protect (R2P), dat in 2005 door de wereldleiders werd omarmd, hebben individuele staten nog steeds de primaire verantwoordelijkheid voor de bescherming van hun inwoners. Maar als ze die verantwoordelijkheid niet kunnen of willen nemen, komt de verantwoordelijkheid bij de internationale gemeenschap te liggen. R2P heeft de ambitie om herhaling van Rwanda, Srebrenica en Kosovo te voorkomen, maar er bestaat nog grote onduidelijkheid over inhoud en potentieel van dit beginsel. Deze bundel verkent R2P als moreel, politiek en juridisch beginsel en onderzoekt hoe de Verenigde Naties, de Europese Unie, individuele staten en NGO's R2P kunnen gebruiken om ernstige mensenrechtenschendingen te voorkomen.

"In light of the recent inclusion of the notion of the 'responsibility to protect' in the Outcome Document of the UN World Summit in September 2005, the Programme for Strategic and International Security Studies (PSIS) proposed to reassess the term within the context of the on-going dialogue of the Human Security Network (HSN). With the generous sponsorship of Political Affairs Division IV of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, the issue was debated in a one-day workshop ..."--Preface

Responsibility to Protect: Research, bibliography, background. Supplementary volume to the Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty

Faith in the power and righteousness of retribution has taken over the American criminal justice system. Approaching punishment and responsibility from a philosophical perspective, Erin Kelly challenges the moralism behind harsh treatment of criminal offenders and calls into question our society’s commitment to mass incarceration.

Two leading experts in the field re-examine the traditional understanding of humanitarian intervention in this major new text. The recent high-profile interventions in Iraq, Libya and Syria show the various international responses to impending or ongoing humanitarian crises, tracking the development from ad hoc military interventions to a more formalised international human rights regime. This evolution has fundamentally changed the way that states and international society think about, and respond to, atrocities. This textbook charts and explains the transformation, examines the challenges that confront it, and asks whether this new politics can withstand the growing crises in international politics. The human protection system is not perfect, but attempts to reduce both the incidence and lethality of atrocity crimes. The authors argue that armed intervention alone is rarely sufficient to halt humanitarian atrocities, but must be understood within the wider context of peacemaking, including non-violent action. The requirement for states to intervene is codified in international law, and this raises important practical, political and moral questions for consistent humanitarian action. Based on the authors' two decades of research, this text is the ideal companion for students of International Relations, taking modules on Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

This book explores the extent to which Responsibility to Protect shifts our understanding of both the potential and practice of international law.