R2P: From Idea to Norm—and Action?

TL;DR: 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.

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.

Full text

R2P: From Idea to Norm—and Action?
Author
Thakur, Ramesh, G. Weiss, Thomas
Published
2009
Journal Title
Global Responsibility to Protect
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1163/187598409X405460
Copyright Statement
© 2009 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden. This is the author-manuscript version of this paper.
Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher. Please refer to the journal
website for access to the definitive, published version.
Downloaded from
http://hdl.handle.net/10072/40521
Griffith Research Online
https://research-repository.griffith.edu.au

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R2P: From Idea to Norm—and Action?
Ramesh Thakur and Thomas G. Weiss
**
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.
**
Ramesh Thakur is the Foundation Director of the Balsillie School of International Affairs and
professor of political science at the University of Waterloo; Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential
Professor of Political Science and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, The
CUNY Graduate Center. This article draws on their forthcoming book, The United Nations and Global
Governance: An Unfinished Journey (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009).

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The most fundamental human right is to life itself. Indeed, what could be more
fundamental to a working system of global governance, however defined and
however rudimentary? As Pope Benedict XVI put it in his address to the United
Nations General Assembly in New York in April 2008, ‘[r]ecognition of the unity of
the human family, and attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman, today
find renewed emphasis in the principle of the responsibility to protect…this principle
has to invoke the idea of the person as image of the Creator’.
1
But establishing a
universal standard to protect life under the most extreme threats represents a
normative challenge because outsiders wishing to protect or assist affected
populations confront the harsh reality of the nonintervention principle enshrined in
Article 2(7) of the UN Charter.
Possibly 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 use of military force to protect human beings. The
publication of Global R2P reflects the fact that no longer is it necessary to finesse the
tensions between sovereignty and human rights in the Charter; they can now be
confronted. Sovereignty no longer implies the license to kill. Or, as Princeton
University’s Gary Bass puts it in his masterful history of nineteenth-century efforts to
halt mass atrocities, “We are all atrocitarians now—but so far only in words, and not
yet in deeds.”
2
A norm can be defined statistically to mean the pattern of behaviour that is most
1
Pope Benedict XVI, ‘Address to the General Assembly of the United Nations’, UNO, New York
(Vatican City: Holy See Press Office, 18 April 2008).
2
Gary J. Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Knopf, 2008),
382.

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common or usual, or the ‘normal curve’, a widely prevalent pattern of behaviour.
Alternatively, it can be defined ethically, to mean a pattern of behaviour that should
be followed in accordance with a given value system—or the moral code of a
society—a generally accepted standard of proper behaviour. In some instances, the
two meanings may converge in practice. In most cases, they will complement each
other, but in some cases, they may diverge. An especially good illustration of
divergence is the difficulty in operationalizing the norm of the responsibility to
protect as agreed to by heads of government meeting at the 2005 World Summit and
now commonly referred to as R2P.
Nonetheless, no idea has moved faster in the international normative arena than the
‘responsibility to protect’ the title of the 2001 report from the International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS).
3
Over time, domestic
and international jurisdictions are blurring, which became most evident with the
willingness—sometimes authorized by the United Nations, sometimes by regional
organizations—to shelve sacrosanct sovereignty by using military force for human
protection purposes in the 1990s.
Created from the ashes of the Second World War with the allies determined to
prevent a repeat of Adolf Hitler’s abominations, the United Nations for most of its
existence has focused far more on external aggression than internal mass killings. Yet
Nazi Germany was guilty of both. Unlike aggression against other countries, the
systematic and large-scale extermination of Jews was a new horror. In this new
century, the world organization is at long last elevating the doctrine of preventing
3
International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect
(Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001).

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mass atrocities against people to the same level of collective responsibility as
preventing and repelling armed aggression against states.
Traditional warfare is the use of force by rival armies of enemy states fighting over a
clash of interests: us against them. Collective security rests on the use of force by the
international community of states to defeat or punish an aggressor: all against one.
Traditional peacekeeping involves the insertion of neutral and lightly armed third-
party soldiers as a physical buffer between enemy combatants who have agreed to a
ceasefire. Peace enforcement accepted the use of force by better armed—but still
neutral—international soldiers against spoilers.
R2P is a more sophisticated, and politically a far more broadly acceptable,
reformulation of the more familiar ‘humanitarian intervention’. It differs in that it
refers to the use of military force by outsiders for the protection of victims of mass
atrocities. R2P redefines sovereignty as responsibility and locates the responsibility in
the first instance with the state, but it argues that if the state is unwilling or unable to
honour the responsibility, or is itself the perpetrator of atrocities against its people,
then the residual responsibility to protect victims of atrocity crimes shifts to the
international community of states, acting ideally through the Security Council.
R2P has a decided UN flavour. Its roots are to be found in statements by former
Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the norm gives pride of place to the UN if the
international community of states is to honour its international responsibility to
protect—and if the norm is to be the basis of a new international consensus, this can
only come about in the UN forum.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in "R2p: from idea to norm—and action? author" ?

The most dramatic normative development of their 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 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. This article draws on their forthcoming book, The United Nations and Global Governance: An Unfinished Journey ( Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009 ). 

Q2. What is the role of the UN agencies in preventing and rebuilding?

The action to prevent and rebuild has to be undertaken by UN agencies acting collaboratively with local civil society actors, NGOs, and representatives of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. 

Q3. What is the meaning of the word ‘sovereignty as responsibility’?

Humanitarian imperatives and principles of sovereignty are reconciled through ‘the responsibility to protect’, a paraphrase of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ with some conceptual and enormous political consequences. 

Q4. What is the effect of the speed of modern communications on borders?

The speed of modern communications makes borders increasingly permeable, while the volume of crossborder flows threatens to overwhelm the capacity of states to manage them. 

Q5. What is the effect of the proliferation of states on the sovereignty of the United Nations?

the proliferation of states has led to the creation and recognition of many states that are weak, fragile, disrupted, collapsed or failed. 

Q6. What is the need for continued advocacy and activism by civil society and concerned governments?

The need exists for continued advocacy and activism by civil society and concerned governments to remain steadfast and hold all governments’ feet to the fire of individual and collective responsibility to protect atrisk populations. 

Q7. How many people are uneasy with the publicity about the plight of those people?

Algeria, and Russia together account for what may be 1.5 million IDPs and are clearly uneasy with any publicity about the plight of those people. 

Q8. What is the role of international law in preventing mass atrocities?

The international community of states has responded by drafting and adopting international legal instruments that ban mass atrocities. 

Q9. What are the main donors of the Global Centre for R2P?

78 Supported by Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Rwanda, and other foundations and private donors, it will generate research, conduct high-level advocacy, and facilitate activities of those working to advance the R2P agenda.78 

Q10. What is the thorough survey to date of victims in war zones?

For instance, the most thorough survey to date of victims in war zones suggests that there is too little rather than too much humanitarian intervention. 

Q11. What was the supportive criticism of the summit?

Some of the most supportive critics criticized the summit’s emphasis on the state and the requirement for coercive measures to be authorized by the Security Council as constituting ‘R2P lite’, and others thought that the actual language in paragraphs 138- 139 of the World Summit Outcome Document was wordier and woollier than the ICISS version. 

Q12. How many people died in the aftermath of the cyclone?

Contradicting official sources, independent observers estimated that the death toll from Burma’s deadly Cyclone Nargis could surpass 100,000. 

Q13. What does the use of force to protect civilians in a sovereign jurisdiction require?

At the same time, both require sensitive judgments: the use of external military force to protect civilians inside sovereign jurisdiction should first satisfy legitimacy criteria rooted largely in just war theory, while the prosecution of alleged atrocity criminals should be balanced against the consequences for the prospects and process of peace, the need for post-conflict reconciliation, and the fragility of international as well as domestic institutions. 

Q14. What is the main reason for the rise of R2P?

15There is yet another key background factor behind the rise of R2P, namely the softening of sovereignty in so many of its empirical dimensions. 

Q15. What is the weight of that historical baggage?

The weight of that historical baggage is simply too strong to sustain the continued use of the language of humanitarian intervention.