The Responsibility to Protect in a world of already existing intervention

Abstract

In the face of humanitarian crises, members of the international community are often presented with a choice: engage in forms of action, including military intervention, or stand by and watch. This framing ignores practices of intervention that are already taking place and contributing to the emergence and perpetuation of humanitarian crises. Despite calling for more attention to be paid to already existing intervention, literature on the Responsibility to Protect has not adequately understood its implications for the legitimacy and likely effectiveness of military intervention. To redress this gap, we argue, first, that a focus on already existing intervention complicates the moral calculus on which defences of military intervention as part of the Responsibility to Protect are based. Second, we claim that actors already engaged in damaging practices of intervention are bad international citizens who are not fit for the purpose of humanitarian military intervention. Third, we argue that in both ignoring already existing intervention and calling for additional military intervention under its third pillar, the Responsibility to Protect legitimises a moralistic form of militarism. These three arguments show that it is a mistake to follow recent literature in responding to already existing intervention by simply adding to the Responsibility to Protect, for instance, duties to engage in structural prevention and to support refugees. Rather, what is needed is a more fundamental rethink that departs from the Responsibility to Protect.

An R2P Commission: A Proposal for Holding States Accountable to Their Responsibility to Protect

“…This ignores a vital question in how to hold the international community accountable for the duty of assistance under Pillar Two and its relevance to atrocity prevention. This also overlooks the interlinked concept of cosmopolitan negative duties to avoid the imposition of harm ( Linklater 2001 ;Shapcott 2008 ) and the actions of international actors-such as arms sales, regime ties, and damaging trade policies-that have been argued to weaken state resilience and contribute to outbreaks of mass atrocity ( Shaw 2012 ;Dunford and Neu 2019 ;Bohm and Brown 2021 ). Given that the three pillars are meant to be taken as equal under the R2P concept ( Bellamy and Drummond 2011 , 181), it is important that attention is paid not just to holding states accountable to their duty to respond under Pillar Three but also that states are held accountable for their responsibility to assist others, and not undermine this duty of assistance, under Pillar Two.…”

“…Regarding Pillar Two duties of assistance, the R2P Commission could provide a means for holding states to account for damaging practices linked to the commission of atrocities-such as arms sales and support for oppressive regimes-which scholars have argued undermine the Pillar Two duty of assistance within R2P ( Dunford and Neu 2019 ;Bohm and Brown 2021 ). For instance, there is scope for complementarity between an R2P Commission and scrutiny of the international arms trade.…”

Poder y estrategia: elementos para la supervivencia del Estado

“…Parecía evidente que, a menos que las reglas sobre el uso de la fuerza se relajaran un poco, la intervención humanitaria nunca ocurriría cuando y donde se necesitaba con más urgencia. Esta fue la lección de Ruanda, donde el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas estaba paralizado y ningún Estado poderoso tenía un interés de seguridad urgente qué intervenir y dónde; en última instancia, casi un millón de personas fueron masacradas (Dunford & Neu, 2019).…”

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

“…Such exposure of some of the R2P concept's erroneous assumptions and implicit biases lead many critical or postcolonial scholars to consider R2P a dangerous doctrine (Dunford and Neu, 2019), one that 'needs to be withdrawn' (Prashad, 2019).…”