The Responsibility To Protect And Counter Terrorism

The powerful concepts of Responsibility to Protect and Counter-Terrorism are often considered contradictory. However, these norms have begun to interact in new and unexpected ways, finding areas of conflict and congruence that challenge the way we approach humanitarian protection.

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

"Never again!" the world has vowed time and again since the Holocaust. Yet genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other mass atrocity crimes continue to shock our consciences—from the killing fields of Cambodia to the machetes of Rwanda to the agony of Darfur. Gareth Evans has grappled with these issues firsthand. As Australian foreign minister, he was a key broker of the United Nations peace plan for Cambodia. As president of the International Crisis Group, he now works on the prevention and resolution of scores of conflicts and crises worldwide. The primary architect of and leading authority on the Responsibility to Protect ("R2P"), he shows here how this new international norm can once and for all prevent a return to the killing fields. The Responsibility to Protect captures a simple and powerful idea. The primary responsibility for protecting its own people from mass atrocity crimes lies with the state itself. State sovereignty implies responsibility, not a license to kill. But when a state is unwilling or unable to halt or avert such crimes, the wider international community then has a collective responsibility to take whatever action is necessary. R2P emphasizes preventive action above all. That includes assistance for states struggling to contain potential crises and for effective rebuilding after a crisis or conflict to tackle its underlying causes. R2P's primary tools are persuasion and support, not military or other coercion. But sometimes it is right to fight: faced with another Rwanda, the world cannot just stand by. R2P was unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit. But many misunderstandings persist about its scope and limits. And much remains to be done to solidify political support and to build institutional capacity. Evans shows, compellingly, how big a break R2P represents from the past, and how, with its acceptance in principle and effective application in practice, the promise of "Never

'The Responsibility to Protect' provides a comprehensive view on how this contemporary principle has developed and analyzes how to best apply it to current humanitarian crises.

Activists and academics look back over ten years of 'politics from below', and ask whether it is merely the critical gaze upon the concept that has changed – or whether there is something genuinely new about the way in which civil society is now operating.

Set against the debates over the transformation of sovereignty, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of the concept of sovereignty as responsibility and features case studies on Kosovo, Darfur and Afghanistan.

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is intended to provide an effective framework for responding to crimes of genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It is a response to the many conscious-shocking cases where atrocities - on the worst scale - have occurred even during the post 1945 period when the United Nations was built to save us all from the scourge of genocide. The R2P concept accords to sovereign states and international institutions a responsibility to assist peoples who are at risk - or experiencing - the worst atrocities. R2P maintains that collective action should be taken by members of the United Nations to prevent or halt such gross violations of basic human rights. This Handbook, containing contributions from leading theorists, and practitioners (including former foreign ministers and special advisors), examines the progress that has been made in the last 10 years; it also looks forward to likely developments in the next decade.

This volume examines the ongoing construction of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, elaborating on areas of both consolidation and contestation. The book focuses on how the R2P doctrine has been both consolidated and contested along three dimensions, regarding its meaning, status and application. The first focuses on how the R2P should be understood in a theoretical sense, exploring it through the lens of the International Relations constructivist approach and through different toolkits available to conventional and critical constructivists. The second focuses on how the R2P interacts with other normative frameworks, and how this interaction can lead to a range of effects from mutual reinforcement and co-evolution through to unanticipated feedback that can undermine consensus and flexibility. The third focuses on how key state actors - including the United States, China, and Russia - understand, use, and contest the R2P. Together, the book's chapters demonstrate that broad aspects of the R2P are consolidated in the sense that they are accepted by states even while other, specific aspects, remain subject to contestation in practice and in policy. This book will be of much interest to students of the R2P, human rights, peace studies and international relations.