Academic literature on the topic 'Responsibility to Protect (R2P)'

AbstractThe 2009 challenge in the United Nations General Assembly to the Responsibility to Protect was a warning call. This landmark piece of human rights legislation makes a lot of governments nervous; some of them would want to wipe R2P off the books. It might be worthwhile therefore to review how it came about and ask what its importance is to you. R2P had many “fathers”, but one important one was UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Seared by the UN experience in Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda and the persecution of the Kosovars by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, Annan asked the International Peace Academy to look into the basis in international law for humanitarian intervention. They couldn't find one. Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy then stepped in and set up a commission that did in a report called e Responsibility to Protect. Annan carefully laid the groundwork for international acceptance of the principle. He created a high-level panel to study security threats in the 21 st century and named former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans to it. Evans co-chaired the Canadian panel. Annan's panel endorsed R2P. With that crucial backing, he put R2P to the General Assembly, which, against all odds, voted in favor of it in 2005, making R2P international law. Humanitarian intervention is in fact a threat to national sovereignty. But so are most international treaties. Governments trade on their sovereignty when it is in their interest to do so. On R2P they did so again. Why should it matter to you? Just remember the Holocaust.

AbstractThe objective of this paper is to spell out the legal consequences of the concept "responsibility to protect" (R2P), postulated as a binding legal principle of international law, for the Security Council and its members. The paper is a thought experiment, because the binding legal force of R2P is not settled. My argument is that, once R2P is accepted as a full-fledged legal principle, the Security Council (and its members) would be under a legal obligation to authorize or to take sufficiently robust action in R2P situations. The paper then discusses the problems engendered by the acceptance of such a material obligation and suggests a procedural obligation to justify inaction instead.

The concept of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) took shape to refine the contested concept of ‘humanitarian intervention’. In the initial phase, the concept of R2P did not receive enthusiastic endorsement. Developing countries including India perceived it as a new body with the old spirit and likened it with the concept of humanitarian intervention, and this was reinforced by the US-led war against Iraq in 2003. However, the 2005 World Summit proved to be a watershed in the evolution of R2P, just as it is a landmark to understand an important phase of India’s approach to the idea. It would not be accurate to characterize India as a determined nay-sayer on R2P endorsement, particularly in view of the widely known priority India attached at the World Summit to the question of United Nations (UN) Security Council enlargement. Eventually, by 2009 (with the introduction of ‘three- pillar principles’ of R2P), India became a major proponent for the cautious and legitimate implementation of R2P. However, the experiences gained from Libya made India become a voice of caution in invoking forcible options under the R2P principle in Syria. In this article, the attempt has been made to articulate various permutations and combinations regarding India’s evolving approach to R2P on a case-by-case basis.

AbstractThere is recent scholarship suggesting that theResponsibility to Protect(R2P) has now emerged as a master concept in relation to responding to mass atrocity crimes and that the R2P can further be seen as representative of an emerging global constitutional norm. In critical response, this article provides the first attempt to systematically investigate R2P’s relationship with global constitutionalisation as well as to explore its wider implication with regard to global constitutionalism. In doing so, the article examines existing discussions of R2P and global constitutionalism, tracks the normative evolution of R2P in order to determine its current ‘stage’ ofnorm diffusion, and further attempts to locate the extent to which the R2P can be perceived as also part of a process of global constitutionalisation. From this analysis the article concludes that although the R2P could be labelled as, at best, a weak emerging norm, it fails to meet the more demanding signifier of an emerging constitutional norm and that there is further evidence to suggest that the R2P might be better understood as a stalled or degenerating norm.