The promise of pillar II: analysing international assistance under the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

In the lead up to the 10th anniversary of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) agreement, pillar II (which refers to international assistance with state consent) was heralded by the United Nations Special Advisor on R2P as the most promising aspect of the Responsibility to Protect. With so little written on pillar II, however, it is difficult to evaluate this judgement. Addressing this lacuna, this article scrutinizes the promise of pillar II to highlight two key strengths. First, the consensual support for pillar II among UN member states reveals that even those that were critical of the R2P in the aftermath of Libya in 2011 still favour the idea of international assistance. At the same time, there remain concerns over the use of force within pillar II as illustrated by events in Côte d'Ivoire in 2011. Second, the utility of pillar II lies in its potential for addressing the threat posed by non‐state armed groups. This is particularly important when one considers that in thirteen of the fourteen years since 2000, rebel groups (rather than governments) have been the primary perpetrators of one‐sided mass killing against civilians. Accordingly, pillar II can be seen to hold considerable promise for tackling the threat of mass violence by non‐state armed groups in the twenty‐first century. However, the article also raises concerns over unintentionally legitimizing illegitimate governments through assistance. To illustrate these points it draws on the assistance provided in Mali (2013–15) and Iraq (2014–15).

Russian Strategic Narratives on R2P in the ‘Near Abroad’

“…Similarly, Seymour (2013) criticizes world leaders for their failure to act during the Darfur crisis, despite their rhetoric denouncing the atrocities, and Hehir (2016) shows that the R2P norm has done little to affect the behavior of P5 states. At the same time, while the West frequently tends to think about R2P through the lenses of pillar 3 (intervention), most of the other countries prefer to focus on pillar 2 (prevention and assistance), for which there exists widespread support (Gallagher 2015).…”

Post-Intervention Reconstruction and the Responsibility to Rebuild

“…In 2005, when the responsibility to protect (RtoP) was unanimously adopted by the UN Member States at the World Summit, this responsibility was specified to apply to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Ever since, the literature on the responsibility to protect has proliferated, focusing on the evolution (Evans 2015) and adoption (Bellamy 2008) of the norm, its link with other norms (Rhoads and Welsh 2019), and its preventive potential (Gallagher 2015), among a plethora of works.…”