3. Human Rights, Sovereignty, and the Responsibility to Protect

2017 ◽  
pp. 47-73
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Responsibility To Protect

Humanitarian Intervention

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Caplan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Security Council ◽  
Future Development ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Real Effect ◽  
General Decline ◽  
Humanitarian Crises ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Way

States – Western ones, at least – have given increased weight to human rights and humanitarian norms as matters of international concern, with the authorization of legally binding enforcement measures to tackle humanitarian crises under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. These concerns were also developed outside the UN Security Council framework, following Tony Blair’s Chicago speech and the contemporaneous NATO action over Kosovo. This gave rise to international commissions and resulted, among other things, in the emergence of the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) doctrine. The adoption of this doctrine coincided with a period in which there appeared to be a general decline in mass atrocities. Yet R2P had little real effect – it cannot be shown to have caused the fall in mass atrocities, only to have echoed it. Thus, the promise of R2P and an age of humanitarianism failed to emerge, even if the way was paved for future development.

scholarly journals The Dog That Didn’t Bark? A Response to Dunne and Gelber’s Analysis of RtoP’s Influence on the Intervention in Libya

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 211-224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan Hehir
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Historical Evolution ◽  
International Response ◽  
Global Responsibility ◽  
Resolution 1973

In this article I challenge the argument presented by Tim Dunne and Katherine Gelber in ‘Arguing Matters: The Responsibility to Protect and the Case of Libya’ (Global Responsibility to Protect vol. 6, iss. 3, 2014). I argue that the evidence supplied by Dunne and Gelber to support their argument that the Responsibility to Protect played a role in the debate on the international response to the crisis in Libya is based on an unsustainable expansion of what constitutes RtoP language, fails to acknowledge the historical evolution of human rights-orientated discourse, and exaggerates the extent to which references were made to RtoP during the debates preceding Resolution 1973.

scholarly journals Is the Responsibility to Protect an Accepted Norm of International Law in the post-Libya Era?

2018 ◽  
pp. 11
Author(s):  
Jeremy Sarkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Human Rights Violations ◽  
One Dimensional

This article explores the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) in the post-Libya era to determinewhether it is now an accepted norm of international law. It examines what RtoP means intoday`s world and whether the norm now means that steps will be taken against states thatare committing serious human rights violations. The building blocks of RtoP are examined tosee how to make the doctrine more relevant and more applicable. It is contended that theresponsibility to react should be viewed through a much wider lens and that it needs to bemore widely interpreted to allow it to gain greater support. It is argued that there is a need tofocus far more on the responsibility to rebuild and that it ought to focus on the transitionallegal architecture as well as transitional justice. It is contended that these processes ought notto be one-dimensional, but ought to have a variety of constituent parts. It is further arguedthat the international and donor community ought to be far more engaged and far moredirective in these projects.

Human Rights, Sovereignty, and the Responsibility to Protect

2017 ◽  
pp. 47-73
Author(s):  
Cristina Lafont
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Essential Role ◽  
Military Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
General Assembly ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Global Institutions ◽  
Sovereign Equality ◽  
International Human ◽  
Human Rights Standards

In 2005 the General Assembly unanimously endorsed the Responsibility-to-Protect doctrine. This led to heated debates that suggest that principled commitments to human rights and sovereignty are on a collision course, so that we cannot have international enforcement of demanding human rights standards without simultaneously undermining the sovereign equality of states. To question this assumption, Lafont switches the focus of analysis from the context of military intervention to the global economic order. She shows how demanding international human rights standards can play an essential role in strengthening the sovereign equality of states within global institutions. On this basis, she offers an account of the international community’s responsibility to protect human rights that is more demanding than the currently acknowledged account and which avoids undermining the sovereignty of states.

Sovereignty as Responsibility

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Cohen ◽  
Francis M. Deng
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Secretary General ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Internally Displaced Persons ◽  
Displaced Persons ◽  
Brookings Institution ◽  
Internally Displaced ◽  
Human Rights Standards

The concept of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ is without question one of the foundations for the concept of the responsibility to protect (R2P). As United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon observed in 2008, R2P is built on the ‘positive and affirmative concept of sovereignty as responsibility—a concept developed by . . . Francis Deng, and his colleagues at the Brookings Institution more than a decade ago’. This chapter discusses how the concept of sovereignty as responsibility developed from discussions about governance in Africa and from the application of human rights standards to the protection of internally displaced persons. It also identifies the differences in emphasis, scope, and usage between the concept and R2P.

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