Hollow Norms and the Responsibility to Protect

Aidan Hehir

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783319905365
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book explains why there is a pronounced disjuncture between R2P's habitual invocation and its actual influence, and why it will not make the transformative progress its proponents claim.Rather than disputing that R2P is a norm, or declaring that norms are insignificant, Hehir engages with post-positivist constructivist accounts on the role of norms to demonstrate first, that the efficacy of a norm is not directly related to the extent to which it is proliferated or invoked, and second, that in the post-institutionalization phase, norms undergo both contestation and (potentially regressive) reinterpretation. This volume analyses the evolution of R2P, and demonstrates that it has been steadily circumscribed and co-opted, so that today it has no power to meaningfully influence the behaviour of states. It is essential reading for academic audiences in the disciplines of International Relations and International Law.

© The Author(s) 2019

Aidan HehirHollow Norms and the Responsibility to Protecthttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90536-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: ‘R2P Has Begun to Change the World’

Aidan Hehir¹

(1)

Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Westminster, London, UK

Aidan Hehir

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

In his first report on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) since becoming UN Secretary-General, António Guterres noted, ‘There is a gap between our stated commitment to the responsibility to protect and the daily reality confronted by populations exposed to the risk of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity’ (2017, p. 1). Guterres thus succinctly identified the paradox that is the focus of this book; R2P is more popular amongst states than ever, yet state-sponsored oppression, and indeed atrocity crimes, are on the rise.

The extent to which R2P has become routinely avowed by states is regularly highlighted by its more vocal proponents, and its ascendency is celebrated as surprisingly swift. As noted by Gareth Evans, ‘R2P has achieved a global take-up unimaginable for the earlier concept of “humanitarian intervention” which R2P has now rightly, and almost completely, displaced’ (2016a, p. 260). Evidence advanced to support this “global take-up” includes the cordial nature of the annual General Assembly “Informal Interactive Dialogues” on R2P, the sharp rise in Security Council Resolutions mentioning R2P, the number of states that have appointed an R2P Focal Point, and the growing support amongst states for campaigns like the “Group of Friends for R2P” and “Restrain the Veto”. These claims are all undeniably true; R2P is now firmly embedded at the centre of international political debate and enjoys widespread state support. Yet, as Guterres notes, this hasn’t translated into practical action; in fact, the problem R2P was designed to address has worsened. This book explains why.

The Responsibility to Protect Turns Ten

2015 marked the ten-year anniversary of the recognition of R2P at the 2005 World Summit. Throughout the year, a number of positive reflections on R2P’s achievements were advanced by a wide range of academics, politicians, NGOs and journalists. These analyses presented R2P as universal, dynamic and of increasing importance; indicatively, Simon Adams, Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, heralded R2P’s ‘tremendous progress’ (Adams 2015b) and declared, ‘we have won the battle of ideas’ (Adams 2015a).

These reflections were united in the conviction that, while challenges remained, R2P had made a positive impact, and its influence was growing. R2P’s progress to date, Evans claimed, evidenced ‘many grounds for optimism about the future of R2P over the next decade and beyond’ (2015a). Central to the evidence underpinning these claims was the widespread, and growing, support routinely afforded to R2P by states and international institutions. This claims are true; R2P does command global consensus. Since it was affirmed at the 2005 World Summit, states have rarely unequivocally disavowed R2P (Welsh 2015; Global Public Policy Institute 2015; Evans 2016b). During the September 2015 General Assembly “Informal Interactive Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect” no state renounced R2P, and even those states that did criticise aspects of the concept, such as Syria, Iran and Russia, declared their general support for the idea that states have a responsibility to protect their own people; Sudan indicatively described R2P as a ‘noble concept’ (Sudan 2015). The same occurred at the 2016 and 2017 “Informal Interactive Dialogues”. Likewise the Security Council has continued to regularly invoke R2P in its Resolutions; more Resolutions mentioning R2P have been passed in the 2015–2018 period then all other years combined (Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect 2018). The number of R2P Focal Points has grown, as has state support for the various other R2P-related campaigns.

Thus, on the basis of its successive affirmations by the General Assembly, the Security Council and the UN Secretary-General, R2P does, as many of its supporters noted in 2015, constitute an idea that has, with unprecedented speed, come to be widely accepted and routinely invoked (Adams 2015a; Ki-Moon 2015; Gifkins 2016; Evans 2015a; Cinq-Mars 2015). These facts, supporters claims, evidence R2P’s efficacy; indicatively, Alex Bellamy, Director of the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, asserted, ‘R2P’s greatest asset is the global consensus it commands’ (2015a, p. 83). As a result, he declared, ‘R2P has begun to change the world’ (ibid., p. 111).

As is detailed in this chapter, however, these various exhortations about R2P’s transformative impact simply did not square with the myriad reports published throughout 2015 outlining the steady degeneration in global respect for human rights and the increase in atrocity crimes. The contrast between the claims that R2P had “begun to change the world” and the dire prognoses advanced by many human rights organisations and UN bodies was jarring. It was precisely this contrast—so evident in 2015—that was the catalyst for this book.

Unfortunately, 2015 was not an aberration; in the period since the downward spiral has continued. Human rights organisations, UN bodies, journalists, think tanks and academics have published thousands of reports detailing this degeneration and lamenting the failure of the “international community” to react. Though certainly not limited to these cases, the marked deterioration of the situations in Syria and Myanmar since 2015 have served as a terrible illustration that state support for R2P—and the “never again!” commitments routinely made by states for decades—have proved largely worthless. By 2017 the UN described the situation in Syria as ‘the worst man-made disaster since World War II’ (Collins 2017), while with respect to Myanmar, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, asked plaintively, ‘How much do people have to endure before their suffering is acknowledged and their identity and rights are recognised, by their government and by the world?’ (United Nations Human Rights 2017). The ongoing rise of aggressive nationalism and authoritarianism across the world—including within the “West”—has been accompanied by an overt hostility to the protection and promotion of human rights both domestically and abroad, manifest most obviously in Europe’s response to the refugee crisis. The emergence of this nationalistic authoritarianism naturally bodes ill for the future (Hehir 2017).

It is not the case, therefore, that the degeneration in global respect for human rights and the increase in mass atrocity crimes have occurred at a time when support for R2P has dwindled or stalled. In fact the opposite is true. The “R2P is making progress” argument, does have an evidential basis; the actual behaviour of states, however, does not support this narrative. What explains the disjuncture between the growing “global consensus” on R2P and what the UN High Commissioner for Refugees described as a new degenerative ‘paradigm change’? (2015, pp. 3–5). How can it be that R2P has become so widely affirmed, so embedded in international political discourse, and the subject of myriad effusive statements extolling its radical influence, whilst also appearing in so many cases to be impotent? As Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Chair of the UN High Level Panel on Peace Operations, José Ramos-Horta asked with respect to R2P, ‘why is it that, in the face of such a sophisticated normative framework to protect civilians, we keep failing?’ (Ramos-Horta 2015). This book seeks to explain the “failing” highlighted by Ramos-Horta—and others—by examining the nature of the “R2P” routinely affirmed and invoked, and more broadly, the limi...