Global Responsibility To Protect 

About: Global Responsibility To Protect is an academic journal published by Brill. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Responsibility to protect & Human rights. It has an ISSN identifier of 1875-984X. Over the lifetime, 267 publications have been published receiving 2498 citations. The journal is also known as: R2P.

Norm Contestation and the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract: Drawing on international relations theory, this article seeks to both account for and analyze the contestation that continues to surround the norm of R2P. It begins in Section I by arguing that while the 2005 Summit Outcome Document – as an example of ‘institutionalization’ – provided greater precision about the source, scope, and bearer of the responsibility to protect, there is continuing debate about when the international community’s remedial role in protection can and should be activated. In order to understand this reality – which is a challenge to positivist and linear accounts of normative change – we must embrace the intuitions of post-positivist constructivist scholars about the intersubjective nature of norms, and their emphasis on analyzing norms’ ‘meaning in use’. Section II demonstrates in more detail the two kinds of contestation surrounding R2P: procedural contestation concerning who (which body) should ‘own’ its development as a norm; and substantive contestation about its content. R2P is particularly susceptible to contestation, given its inherently indeterminate nature, and the erroneous tendency to measure its impact in terms of whether or not military intervention occurs in particular cases. To respond to these issues, it is argued that the norm of R2P is best conceived as a responsibility to consider a real or imminent crisis involving mass atrocity crimes - what in legal literature is sometimes called a ‘duty of conduct’. Whether or not international action actually occurs - particularly action involving military force - depends on a series of other factors. The final section addresses the challenge to constructivist scholars to be more transparent about the normative commitments that underpin their empirical studies of normative change. It argues that the contestation surrounding R2P can be better understood by giving greater attention to the normative underpinnings of contemporary critiques of the principle – most prominently those which stress the importance of sovereignty equality.

The R2P and Norm Diffusion: Towards A Framework of Norm Circulation

Abstract: The case of R2P calls for greater attention to agency and feedback in norm dynamics. New international norms are more likely to spread if the responsibility for their creation and diffusion is seen to have been more broadly shared than being credited to any particular group. Many new norms have multiple sources and contexts, yet there is a tendency to credit them to their final point of articulation. Moreover, once created, norms do not remain uncontested and static. The application of new norms in different locations and contexts can lead to their subsequent modifications, which in turn can reshape its initial features and support mechanisms. This feedback constitutes a form of agency, which might broaden the legitimacy and appeal of the norm and the possibility of its greater diffusion. The case of R2P shows that although it is generally attributed to the work of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, the norm had multiple prior sources, including the idea of ‘responsible sovereignty’. Furthermore, its development has had a strong African context. Lastly, subsequent controversies over the norm’s application, especially in Libya, attests to the possibility of critical feedback, such as calls for stricter enforcement of the norm’s criteria of last resort and proportionality, and greater accountability in operations conducted in defence of the norm.

Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror

Abstract: David Mickler reviews Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (New York: Pantheon, 2009). ISBN 978-0-307-37723-4.

R2P: From Idea to Norm—and Action?

Abstract: The most dramatic normative development of our time—comparable to the Nuremberg trials and the 1948 Convention on Genocide in the immediate aftermath of World War II—relates to the 'responsibility to protect', the title of the 2001 report from the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. It no longer is necessary to finesse the tensions between sovereignty and human rights in the UN Charter; they can now be confronted because sovereignty no longer implies the license to kill. This essay outlines the origins of the R2P idea, describes the background factors in the 1990s that paved the way for the advancement of this norm by norm entrepreneurs, champions, and brokers. It continues with an account of the process by which the ICISS arrived at its landmark report, a description of the sustained engagement with the R2P agenda from 2001, when the ICISS report was published, to its adoption at the 2005 World Summit. The essay concludes with a sketch of the tasks and challenges that lie ahead to move R2P from a norm to a template for policy and action.

Sovereignty, Choice, and the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract: It is commonly asserted that the chief obstacle to advancing acceptance of the responsibility to protect (RtoP) is the reluctance of developing countries to compromise their sovereignty. This paper argues, instead, that both developing and some of the more powerful developed countries have concerns about the implications of RtoP for their sovereignty. The former are more likely to be concerned about territorial sovereignty and the latter about decision-making sovereignty. Both sets of concerns were openly expressed during the debates leading up to the consensus at the 2005 World Summit on RtoP. That consensus was facilitated by the fact that the wording of the relevant provisions of its Outcome Document took both types of reservations about sovereignty into account. The paper argues that the recognition that countries of the North and the South tend to be more united than divided by their determination to preserve their sovereignty should facilitate efforts to achieve consensus on how to operationalise and implement the responsibility to protect.