Arguably, in the last fourteen years, we have witnessed the ‘rise’ and ‘fall’ of an international norm called the Responsibility to Protect (R2P, also abbreviated as RtoP). When the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS ) introduced the ‘responsibility to protect’ to the international community in 2001, it followed the motto ‘never again’.1 In this vein, R2P prescribed states and the international community with three responsibilities—to prevent, to react, and to rebuild—enabling them to prevent or halt mass atrocities against populations.
Instigated by an independent commission, during the then Secretary-General Kofi Annan ’s term of service , R2P was carried to the political discourse of the United Nations (UN) within a period of three years. In the course of its institutionalisation, R2P was transformed and its scope was redefined. Finally, in October 2005, under paragraphs 138 and 139 of the World Summit Outcome Document, state members of the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted R2P. This was a milestone in R2P’s short history that called for a celebration by the advocates of the principle because while Paragraph 138 established states’ individual responsibility, via Paragraph 139 the international community acknowledged its responsibility to protect populations from four grave crimes in cases of states’ evident failure to uphold their own responsibility.
Nevertheless, the period between 2005 and 2011 proved that it is a rocky road ahead for the effective implementation of R2P, both in terms of prevention and reaction. Though there were seldom stories of success as in the examples of Guinea and Kenya, most of the time faced with the failure to prevent situations at their early stages, the international community reluctantly implemented R2P. Often challenged by grave situations and failure to prevent atrocities at their earlier stages, as in the case of Darfur , the international community did not put the option of humanitarian military intervention on the discussion table. In the face of increasing number of cases and absence of meaningful progress, in 2009, Annan ’s successor Ban Ki-moon released his first comprehensive report on R2P (A/63/677). In the report, the Secretary-General addressed the issue of effective and timely implementation of the responsibility to protect by the international community, which brought the debates on humanitarian military intervention back in the follow-up meetings of the General Assembly.
In the meanwhile, R2P proponents waited for ‘the case’ that would set the example for timely and decisive R2P action. In 2011, in response to the escalating violence in Libya, the international community left its reluctance behind and opted for the controversial measure of military intervention to bring an immediate end to human suffering. This swift intervention in Libya has been cited as an example of a successful (pillar three level) R2P action. In Thakur’s (2013, p. 69) words: ‘The outcome was thus a triumph for R2P. It showed it is possible for the international community—working through the authenticated, UN-centred structures and procedures of organized multilateralism—to deploy international force to neutralize the military might of a thug and intervene between him and his victims’. Nevertheless, the excitement that arose from the intervention in Libya quickly faded as the leading interveners exceeded their mandate and the driving motive for the intervention turned into the toppling of Muammar Qaddafi. The way the military operation was carried out in Libya raised the question of ‘protecting responsibly’, but soon after, internal violence broke out in Syria . Adding on to the negative implications of the Libyan case, inaction in the case of the quickly deteriorating situation in Syria allowed some critics to pronounce R2P dead (see Rieff 2011; Nuruzzaman 2013; Murray 2013, in Hehir and Murray).
In sum, with a few exceptions, the international community has generally been reluctant in upholding its responsibilities to prevent and to react. One can ask, what has changed since 2001? How has R2P contributed to the efforts to change the international system and/or status quo in responding to mass atrocities in different parts of the world after its unanimous recognition by the international community? If the Security Council’s decision on Libya was a defining moment for R2P’s future implementation, then what comes after the persisting failure of R2P in Syria ? Building on these questions, this book examines the relevance of R2P in responding to humanitarian challenges taking place in different parts of the world and engages in the task of proposing a way forward with R2P through different revision alternatives. Part 1 of this book explicates what R2P entails and Part 2 advances the argument that R2P has evolved into an international moral norm. Though R2P may have shifted the debate from a right to intervene towards a responsibility to protect, the conceptual and systemic limitations imposed on it have hampered both its ability to lead to a change and to bring about an effective implementation. In light of this, Part 3 engages in developing proposals for the revision of R2P with a special emphasis on the role of the international community in the protection of populations.
Considering the Way Forward
There already exists a wealth of literature on R2P to which proponents and critics have contributed. While some consider R2P a groundbreaking norm that can lead to a change in states’ and international community’s behaviour (Evans 2008), some others consider it ‘sound and fury signifying nothing’ (Hehir 2010). This book neither attempts at a sheer defence of R2P nor aims to prove that it is time to pronounce R2P dead. Ever since the UN adopted R2P, there has been an increase in the number of debates on whether R2P has evolved from a policy into an international norm. So far, those who discuss R2P as a norm and cynics of R2P who question the value of the ‘responsibility to protect’ have contributed to the mounting literature. As for the former, some consider R2P as a norm without specifying its sort, while some discuss its potential as a developing legal norm. Unlike the existing pro-R2P arguments in the literature, in this book, I posit that R2P has evolved into an international moral norm (see also Gözen Ercan 2014). This proposition constitutes the first part of my twofold argument. Albeit the argument that R2P is an international norm is not new, its classification specifically as a moral norm is, and this has significant implications regarding the norm’s implementation as well as expectations from it in terms of impacting state behaviour. Thus, diverging from works presenting arguments in favour of R2P, I critically evaluate the norm and discuss its limitations in terms of making a change in world politics and state behaviour. In other words, contrary to the understanding of most pro-R2P scholars, I suggest that R2P is not ‘the remedy’ to man-made disasters and can never be in its current form.
This leads to the second part of my argument. While I adopt a critical approach towards R2P, unlike the cynics, I reject the propositions that R2P is dead or it has never been of significance. As I suggest in the first part of my argument, R2P sets a moral standard for appropriate behaviour; therefore I believe that it carries a potential to make a positive contribution in terms of changing state behaviour. Nonetheless, in order to be able to talk about a short or mid-term positive influence, there is a need for a serious revision of the limits of the norm as established under Paragraphs 138 and 139 of the World Summit Outcome Document, aka ‘R2P-lite’, as Weiss (2006–2007) aptly labels it. As a part of the second fold, I will discuss the ways to re-equip ‘R2P-lite’ by considering various scenarios of UN reform—implying any sort of structural or procedural change of a major or minor scale in the Organisation and/or its specific organs.
In a debate on Libya, regarding a 2006 Security Council resolution, which reaffirmed states’ and international community’s responsibility to protect, Slaughter (2011) comments that ‘[t]his was an enormous normative step forward, akin to an international Magna Carta, even if it will take decades to elaborate and implement’. It has already been a decade, yet we are to see the change R2P is going to make. My contention is that while waiting for the long-term goal of R2P’s internalisation by societies (so that the responsibility to prevent can be realised at the state level), there is a need to develop immediate mechanisms to make the international community willing and capable in terms of upholding its collective responsibility to protect. Arguably, R2P’s genuine utility, in conceptual and normative terms, lies in the responsibility that it defines for the international community per se, not for the states, which already have certain obligations prescribed by international law. Hence, placing this utility under focus, the main objective of this book is to assess the measures for enhancing the capacity and capability of the international community in order to protect populations through either prevention or reaction.
Conceptualising the International Community
‘Invoking the international community is a lot easier than defining it’ (Weiss 2013, p. 10), and as a term that is widely used in different contexts, it is important to identify what is meant by the international community within the context of this study. Bull (1977, p. 13) suggests that the international society comes into existence ‘when a group of states, conscious of certain common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules in their relations with one another, and share in the working of common institutions’. Though I agree with this basic structure depicted by Bull, I conceive of the international community as an imperfect community with various agents, which has potential for progress and further unification. So, in this book, when I refer to the international community, without any disregard for the role of regional organisations or international financial institutions, I primarily refer to the totality of the Member States of the UN. Accordingly, I focus on this totality—which is open to the influence of moral agents such as the Secretary-General—and its practices as an international body within the UN framework, acting specifically through the Security Council, and above all the General Assembly. Furthermore, I consider that it is within such a context that new norms are developed and the international system is transformed, leading to changes in perceptions as well as implementation.
Human Security
In their 2006 report on ‘UN System-wide Coherence’, members of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel remarked:
As outlined by the panel, in the ongoing process of global change, the previous decades also witnessed an increasing awareness of instances of grave violation of human rights on a massive scale. This has brought to attention the issue of whether or not states and the international community have a duty to react to such cases, and if necessary even to undertake humanitarian military interventions.2 In the immediate post-Cold War environment, not independent from the conceptual and theoretical transformation of war, there has been a transformation of security, where the state-centric national security approach has been challenged by alternative security approaches shifting the referent object from the state to others such as the human being. The ideation of the responsibility to protect takes root from a human security approach, where the security of the state does not warrant the security of its individuals or population. As Jackson (1992, p. 93) suggests, this in practice means that ‘instead of states or alliances defending their populations against external threats, international society is underwriting the national security of states, whether or not they convert it into domestic security for their citizens’.Just as they [world leaders] did sixty years ago, we face a changing world today. Ours is the era of globalization, of global change unprecedented in its speed, scope and scale. As the world becomes ever more interdependent, sharp social and economic inequalities persist. Some of the poorest countries and communities remain isolated from economic integration and the benefits of globalization, and are disproportionately vulnerable to crisis and social upheaval. […] More conflicts are within states than between them, and the risk of terrorism and infectious disease illustrate that security threats travel across borders’ (UN 2006, p. 8).
As the genuine purpose of a humanitarian intervention is supposedly to secure human lives, human security approach lies at the core of the doctrine of humanitarian intervention as well as the R2P norm. Thomas and Tow (2002, pp. 189–190) argue that ‘traditional interpretations of security cannot fully meet the international security community’s present needs’ since, in the contemporary international structure, states’ internal activities are highly connected to the security constraints of the international society. Therefore, they suggest approaching transnational security issues from a human security point of view (Thomas and Tow 2002, p. 190), which brings human rights and human development together and focuses on the security of individuals rather than that of states (Kaldor 2008, p. 182). It is such an understanding that provides a rationale for undertaking humanitarian interventions for states and the international community.
It is important to clarify the meaning of ‘human security’. The people-centred, universal concept of human security was taken up in the UN Development Programme’s (UNDP) 1994 Human Development Report. The Report while defining the concept generally as ‘freedom from fear and want’ (King and Murray 2001–2002, p. 585) enumerates seven types of security—specifically economic, food, health, environmental, personal, community, and political—as central interdependent components of the concept of human security (Kaldor 2008, p. 182). The Report maintains that ‘development must be focused on people (even though grouped by country) rather than the security of their national boundaries, and on advancing health, education, and political freedom in addition to economic well-being’ (King and Murray 2001–2002, p. 587). In this approach, the emphasis is placed on the interconnectedness of various kinds of security, and along with development, it takes security as a strategy—such understanding was later echoed in the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change and the Secretary-General’s response (Kaldor 2008, p. 183).
Inge Kaul identifies two prominent features of human security as human survival and sustainability. The former means that individuals are capable of ensuring ‘their own basic livelihood and hence their security’, and the latter means that ‘people should be protected against an undue degree of unpredictability and radical change in their living conditions’ (Kaul 1995, p. 315). Accordingly, to highlight a transformation of the security understanding Thomas and Tow (2002, p. 178) remind the argument presented in the 1995 report of the UN Commission on Global Governance that ‘recent episodes of humanitarian intervention in the Balkans, Africa and elsewhere by collective security entities (i.e. NATO and the UN) necessitated a widening of the security concept to recognize the “unrelenting human costs of violent conflicts” within boundaries’.
Later, in 2003, the Commission on Human Security (2003, p. 4) defined human security as the protection of
the vital core of all human lives in ways that enhance human freedoms and human fulfilment. Human security means protecting fundamental freedoms—freedoms that are the essence of life. It means protecting people from critical (severe) and pervasive (widespread) threats and situations. It means using processes that build on people’s strengths and aspirations. It means creating political, social, environmental, economic, military, and cultural systems t...