Democracy and UN Peace-Keeping - Conflict Resolution Through State-Building and Democracy Promotion in Haiti

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Leininger
Keyword(s):  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
State Building ◽  
Democracy Promotion

scholarly journals State Building Interventions in Post Cold War Period: A Critique of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ and ‘Humanitarianism’

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-103
Author(s):  
Shahida Aman
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Human Security ◽  
War Crimes ◽  
State Building ◽  
State System ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Moral Ground ◽  
Major Powers

This paper explores the concepts of humanitarianism and responsibility to protect, which have most influentially guided state building interventions in the post Cold War period. With more than fifty states intervened in the guise of ‘responsibility to protect,’ this paper attempts to analyze why interventionist state building has developed as a major concern for the international state system. It further delves into the impacts of such interventionist rationale on the nature and functioning of the international state system. This paper argues the rise of sovereignty as responsibility and humanitarianism challenged the inviolable sovereignty of states by making it conditional on the government’s exercise of monopoly over violence within its territory and extension of protection to its citizens against war, crimes, violence and bloodshed. The paper further argues that the selective application of the principle of human security and non-intervention by major powers in crucial conflicts makes the moral ground of this principle very dubious. It also highlights that in post 9/11 period, the mixed successes of these concepts in practice, resulting form a large number of political, institutional and operational challenges, underlie the need to use non-military diplomatic, political and economic means for conflict resolution.

scholarly journals The Responsibility to Protect norm cluster and the challenge of atrocity prevention: an analysis of the European Union’s strategy in Myanmar

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 660-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eglantine Staunton ◽  
Jason Ralph
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Conflict Resolution ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Democracy Promotion ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Normative Power ◽  
Extensive Analysis ◽  
Elite Interviews ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Normative Implication

This article investigates the complex relationship between atrocity prevention and other related – yet distinct – norms of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm cluster. It analyses how this cluster operates to help states, and other actors, properly discharge their responsibility. Central to the analysis is the realisation that abstractly aligned norms can clash in practice. Based on an extensive analysis of the 67 European Union (EU) documents and statements referring to R2P, and drawing on elite interviews with EU diplomats, we find that atrocity prevention has been ‘grafted’ onto the EU’s other normative commitments – including conflict resolution and democracy promotion – without sufficient acknowledgement of the cluster’s complexity and the need to prioritise atrocity prevention vis-à-vis these other linked norms. We ask whether this framing not only filtered but also diluted the normative power of atrocity prevention, leading to policies that manifestly failed to prevent the genocide that occurred in Myanmar from 2017. We find that the grafting of atrocity prevention onto related yet distinct norms contributed to an underestimation of the threat of genocide and a misplaced faith in the ability of democratic transition to prevent atrocity. However, we also find that factors unrelated to the normative framing of R2P influenced the EU’s willingness and ability to respond to atrocity crimes that occurred in the lead up to the genocide that began in 2017. The article contributes to our understanding of the as yet unstated normative implication of clustering norms and the EU’s implementation of R2P.

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