scholarly journals Institutional Responsibility for Mass Atrocity Crimes with Thomas Pogge

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 131-152
Author(s):  
Jed Lea-Henry ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Institutional Responsibility

scholarly journals A Poggean Reform Agenda for Improving Political Will in Response to Mass Atrocities

2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-116
Author(s):  
Jed Lea-Henry
Keyword(s):  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Specific Intervention ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Reform Agenda ◽  
Thomas Pogge ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Abstract Like other types of humanitarian intervention before it, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has suffered in practice from a pervasive lack of political will. This represents a failure of moral motivation, but also a failure to accept the often steep political, material and human costs associated with intervening to try and halt mass atrocity crimes. In order to ease this second barrier to intervention, we need a reform agenda that will limit the prevalence, intensity and duration of mass atrocities as well as the crisis situations that make them possible, thereby reducing the various costs associated with any specific intervention. This can be achieved through certain aspects of the work of cosmopolitan philosopher Thomas Pogge.

Responsibility to Protect in International Criminal Law

Postgenocide ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
Jobair Alam
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Normative Foundations

This chapter considers the worst contemporary state-led prosecution of a minority group, which amounts to genocide, namely the Rohingya. It examines the atrocity crimes committed against them under international criminal law (ICL) and the application of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) thereupon. It suggests that such atrocities are constitutive of violations of jus cogens which warrants obligatio erga omnes. Accordingly, the perpetrators can be brought to justice under inter/national and universal jurisdictions, which, nonetheless, has not yet occurred. Given the failure of ICL mechanisms, the normative foundations of the R2P can provide valuable tools for intercepting mass atrocity crimes. The Rohingya—who face direct and structural violence at the hands of the Myanmar state—need protection from these crimes. The chapter explains how insular national politics can undo the gains made by the international community in upholding the distinctiveness of humanitarian claims through the application of the R2P.

The Responsibility to Protect and Obama’s Red Line on Syria

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmine Nahlawi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Chemical Attack ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Syrian Conflict ◽  
Red Line

The 21 August 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta led to the mobilisation of the international community after long international paralysis towards the ongoing conflict in Syria. It is unclear, however, why or under what legal basis states chose to react to Syria’s use of chemical weapons in exclusion to other mass atrocity crimes committed within the country. This article evaluates the legal underpinnings of President Obama’s ‘red line’ on the use of chemical weapons in Syria in the context of R2P. It notes that while all states condemned the Ghouta attack and called for accountability in this regard, only a minority of states shared the United States’ position that chemical weapons constituted a red line in their own right. Overall, it is maintained that the ‘red line’ phenomenon was case-specific to the Syrian conflict, reflecting geopolitical interests of world powers rather than signifying a new precedent for R2P’s application.

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