Evaluating the Responsibility to Protect

Mass Atrocity Prevention as a Consolidating Norm in International Society

Noële Crossley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317307051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book evaluates the extent to which the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has consolidated as a norm in international society.

A consolidated norm in international society is defined here as a regularised pattern of behaviour that is widely accepted as appropriate within a given social context. The analysis is based on the assumption that the R2P could be regarded as a consolidated norm if it were applied consistently when genocide and other mass atrocities occur; and if international responses routinely conformed to the core principles inherent in the R2P: seeking government consent, multilateralism, prevention and regionalism. This book employs Finnemore and Sikkink's norm lifecycle model to determine the putative norm's degree of consolidation, with in-depth case studies of the international responses to crises in Darfur and Kenya serving to illuminate the findings. It advances the argument that, whilst the R2P had fully emerged as a prospective norm by 2005, it has not yet fully consolidated as an international norm. The R2P has been remarkably successful at pervading the international discourse but has been somewhat less successful at consistency in implementation in terms of adherence to its core principles as outlined above (the qualitative dimension of the R2P). Furthermore, it has been least successful, to date, in terms of consistency across cases in terms of resolve and tenacity. The volume concludes with a reflection on the norm's progress so far, and its prospects for further consolidation, assuming the R2P continues on its current trajectory.

This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, humanitarian intervention, international law, security studies and IR.

1 Introduction

The ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P)

The ‘responsibility to protect’ was first codified in a 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS).¹ The aim of the Commission, according to Gareth Evans, co-chair together with Mohamed Sahnoun, was to bring together supporters and sceptics of humanitarian intervention in an effort to address the central issues at stake from a fresh perspective. In particular, commissioners argued, this meant looking closely at the role of state sovereignty as a fundamental ordering principle in international society.² State sovereignty and the norm of non-intervention are traditional pillars of international society – could state sovereignty be reconceived as entailing a further set of responsibilities in relation to human rights?

The report thematised the idea of ‘responsibility’. The architects of the report argued that sovereignty ought to be seen as constituted by responsibility, promoting the idea of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. The report argued that ‘[s]overeignty as responsibility has become the minimum content of good international citizenship’.³ The idea of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ owed much to Francis Deng’s work on Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the 1990s.⁴ Deng had argued that states were responsible for protecting IDPs within their territory, despite the fact that international law provisions to protect refugees (who crossed borders) did not apply to IDPs who did not cross international borders but were equally vulnerable. Continuing the theme of responsibility and responsible state-hood, ICISS set itself the aim of laying out individual states’ responsibility towards their own citizens, as well as the responsibility of the international community towards citizens of states. The Commission’s aim was to spell out precisely what this would mean in practical terms, and what criteria for military intervention could look like.

In thematising ‘responsibility’, the 2001 ICISS Report developed a distinct approach to large-scale, systematic human rights violations, or, in short, ‘mass atrocities’. The task was to balance a need to protect state sovereignty (against illegitimate foreign interference) with the need to protect human rights (from direction violation by a government within a given territory; from government-sponsored violation; or from violations resulting from a lack of ability or will of relevant authorities to prevent mass atrocities). The Commission referred to this as the ‘dual responsibility’ of the state.⁵ The ‘responsibility to protect’ that resulted from months of deliberations was built on four central tenets: the importance of multilateralism; a preference for prevention and non-coercive measures; a reaffirmation of state sovereignty and the central role of individual governments; and the promotion of regional conflict resolution mechanisms.

The Commission held that a ‘modern understanding of the meaning of sovereignty’ provides an approach that ‘bridges the divide between intervention and sovereignty’.⁶ The Commission’s articulation of the responsibility to protect was broad in scope, ranging from prevention (including political, economic, legal, and security sector-related), to reaction (including military intervention as a last resort), to post-conflict peacebuilding (again covering not just security, but a broad range of interrelated issues such as good governance, justice and reconciliation, and economic development).⁷ The ‘responsibility to protect’ comprised the ‘responsibility to prevent’ and the ‘responsibility to rebuild’, as well as the ‘responsibility to react’ (which had been the traditional focus of humanitarian intervention).⁸ The broad scope of the ‘responsibility to protect’ thus conceived set it apart from traditional accounts of humanitarian intervention that understand intervention as an ad hoc response to acute situations of human suffering employing military means.⁹ Humanitarian intervention, as framed within the ‘responsibility to protect’, had implications for an array of policy areas, from the security sector to economic development to justice.¹⁰

Although ICISS took great pains to emphasise its respect for the traditional value placed on state sovereignty, it was, in fact, advancing a very progressive agenda. The idea that atrocity prevention should become an international responsibility – building on the Genocide Convention – and that this responsibility ought, in future, to become institutionalised in a growing system of global governance, was novel and, to some extent, revolutionary.¹¹ The report certainly stirred the controversy around humanitarian intervention. In 2004, the UN High-Level Panel (HLP) report, ‘A More Secure World’, referred to the responsibility to protect.¹² One year later, in 2005, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report, ‘In Larger Freedom’, explicitly endorsed the responsibility to protect.¹³ In the same year, in 2005, the ‘responsibility to protect’ was endorsed in the outcome document of the UN World Summit.¹⁴

The Responsibility to Protect as an international norm

The responsibility to protect has been described as ‘the most important and imaginative doctrine to emerge on the international scene for decades’;¹⁵ as ‘one of the most powerful and promising innovations on the international scene’;¹⁶ and as ‘a major paradigm shift for the protection of victims worldwide’.¹⁷ Whilst it is not difficult to agree with the notion that the responsibility to protect is imaginative or even promising, the suggestion that it constitutes a ‘major paradigm shift’ is one that deserves closer attention. Is the responsibility to protect, as Gareth Evans suggests, a doctrine that has the power to ‘end mass atrocity crimes once and for all’?¹⁸ Ending mass atrocities once and for all, with immediate effect, is an idea that anyone would endorse without hesitation. However, is Evans’ claim that the responsibility to protect provides a solution to a difficult problem credible? This is an important question and not to be taken lightly, not least because of the seriousness with which this proposal has been made, and the intellectual and political stature of the leading actors involved. The campaign to promote the responsibility to protect effectively amounted to earnest and determined norm entrepreneurship.

There are various angles from which the responsibility to protect has been considered. A number of evaluations have focused on the legal dimension, assessing R2P’s potential impact on international law.¹⁹ Others have considered implications for international criminal justice and the work of the International Criminal Court (ICC).²⁰ Other scholars have focused on the ethical or normative dimension of the responsibility to protect: whether the assumptions and ethical claims inherent in the idea are persuasive and whether, consequently, the responsibility to protect doctrine deserves to be supported.²¹ Yet others focus on the problem of agency: the responsibility to protect is all well and good, but responsible actors need to be identified.²²

A number of scholars discuss prospects for success, probing into the doctrine’s ability to effect changes in international behaviour.²³ This is where the present research is situated. This book engages with the question to what extent the idea of a responsibility to protect, if implemented successfully, can prevent genocide and other mass atrocities. In effect, the question is whether the responsibility to protect is, or has the potential to become, an international norm: to what extent is the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) a consolidated norm in international society today?

In what follows I use the term ‘responsibility to protect’ (lower case) to represent the idea as outlined in the 2001 report of the ICISS, with all of its wider implications and connotations, as well as subsequent modifications of the idea over time. When I use the term ‘Responsibility to Protect’, or its acronym, ‘R2P’, I am specifically referring to the ‘responsibility to protect’ as outlined in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document (WSOD). This document, because of its status as a UN General Assembly resolution, better reflects an emerging international consensus about what the concept entails, and as such better reflects what the responsibility to protect is, or what states think it ought to be.

As is evident from the way the question is phrased, the concept of ‘norm’ is central to this research. The question implicitly recognises the importance of beliefs and practices in constituting identities and shaping behaviour. It is based on an assumption that international proclamations or treaties are essentially meaningless unless there is intersubjective agreement on their validity, on how they are to be interpreted, and unless this is evidenced by repeated and consistent practice. Rarely will one find absolutes in the social sciences, and so it is with norms: they are fluid; they emerge, diffuse, consolidate, fluctuate, erode, or disappear. To make matters worse, they may be practised consistently but for some exceptions. They may apply unequally. The relationship between norms and other factors in politics is complicated – but this does not make them any less important or relevant in understanding social behaviour.

The aim of this work is to probe deeply into the question of norm consolidation and the Responsibility to Protect. In order to answer the question above it is necessary to address a range of sub-questions: Does R2P even qualify as a potential norm? If so, where does it stand in the so-called ‘norm-lifecycle’?²⁴ If R2P is consolidating as a norm, what of implementation? As Alex Bellamy points out, there is an intimate link between norm consolidation and implementation: ‘it is not possible to separate “norm building” from “operationalization”, because the building of real capacity depends on agreement about the desirability of committing the necessary resources and political will’.²⁵ Furthermore, international practice is not one-directional, in the sense that international practice is not simply the result of policies that are ‘implemented’. The experience of the so-called processes of ‘implementation’ in turn affects the general d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 An analytical framework for assessing the consolidation of R2P as an international norm
• 3 The antecedents of the Responsibility to Protect (1945–2001)
• 4 The emergence of the Responsibility to Protect as a prospective international norm (2000–2005)
• 5 Institutionalising R2P: the Responsibility to Protect since the 2005 World Summit
• 6 R2P reaction: the Responsibility to Protect and the case of Darfur
• 7 R2P prevention: mediation in the aftermath of Kenya’s 2007 presidential elections
• 8 The Responsibility to Protect: international practice since 2005
• 9 Conclusion
• Appendix I: a chronology of the Darfur conflict and international responses
• Appendix II: a chronology of the post-electoral crisis in Kenya 2007–2008
• Appendix III: list of interviewees
• Index