A Regional Responsibility to Protect? Towards ‘Enhancing Regional Action’ in Africa

Ifediora, Obinna

doi:10.1163/1875984x-00803010

Cited by 3 publications

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“…The overall strong African preference for inter-African dialogue and mediation -i.e. peaceful and consent-based means -to prevent and react to conflicts and mass atrocities (Ifediora, 2016) has not precluded African states from engaging at times in more intrusive and coercive forms of intervention. In those instances, the motivation and credentials of intervening countries have been questioned (Aning and Edu-Afful, 2016: notably 121), showing that inter-African dynamics are not devoid of the ambiguities and accusations of double standards that have plagued interventions elsewhere.…”

Section: The Presence Of the 'Rest' In R2p's Early Daysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonizing the Responsibility to Protect: On pervasive Eurocentrism, Southern agency and struggles over universals

Hindawi

2021

Security Dialogue

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Many postcolonial or critical scholars are rather sceptical of the Responsibility to Protect principle. In most of the critical literature, Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is presented as a product from the West, whose liberal ideal relies on a perception of Southern states being potentially dysfunctional, which in turn justifies an interventionist discourse with neocolonial overtones. The problem with this interpretation of R2P is that it essentially ignores non-Western, particularly Southern, inputs on the concept, falling precisely into the trap that, many authors claim, vitiates Responsibility to Protect: its West-centrism. Building upon a mix of critical, decolonial, postcolonial and Third World Approaches to International Law scholarship, this article proposes a number of additional steps to decolonize R2P in an effort to avoid what Pinar Bilgin describes as ‘conflating the critiques of the particularity of universals with critiques of the idea of having universals’. What successive decolonizing layers expose is a negotiation process in which the agency of states from the global South in shaping the – still controversial – principle has proved particularly obvious. Decolonizing Responsibility to Protect, this article argues, requires critical scholars to engage in a contrapuntal analysis in order to acknowledge the concept’s mutual constitution by the West and the ‘rest’ and the deeper struggles over universals hiding underneath.

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Section: The Presence Of the 'Rest' In R2p's Early Daysmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decolonizing the Responsibility to Protect: On pervasive Eurocentrism, Southern agency and struggles over universals

Hindawi

2021

Security Dialogue

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Bibliography

2017

Leiden Journal of International Law

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The Responsibility to Protect and the African Governance Architecture: Explaining the Nexus

Ifediora¹

2016

African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review

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A Regional Responsibility to Protect? Towards ‘Enhancing Regional Action’ in Africa

Abstract: Ten years after its endorsement by the un General Assembly, the operationalisation of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) concept faces challenges of consistency and capacity.

Cited by 3 publications

References 1 publication

Decolonizing the Responsibility to Protect: On pervasive Eurocentrism, Southern agency and struggles over universals

Decolonizing the Responsibility to Protect: On pervasive Eurocentrism, Southern agency and struggles over universals

Bibliography

The Responsibility to Protect and the African Governance Architecture: Explaining the Nexus

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