Responsibility To Protect (R2P)

Q.
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (R2P)
Introduction:
The Rwandan Genocide of 1994, where the mass murder of approximately 800,000
people took place, did not interest the International community enough to interfere
and avoid the massacre of those innocent people. Most of the world stood on the
sidelines during the Rwandan genocide, hoping to avoid the loss of life and political
entanglement that the American debacle in Somalia had created. As reports of the
genocide spread through the media, the Security Council supplied more than five
thousand troops to give a strong force. But because of the delay and denial of
recommendations, the deployed prevented the force from getting there on time and
arrived months after the genocide was over. In the events that took place after the
genocide, many government officials in the community mourned over the loss of
many and were surprised about the world’s obliviousness to the situation that could
have prevented the massacre from taking place. The Rwandan genocide did not
interest the outside world as the Yugoslavia genocide did. The delay caused
thousands of Rwandan lives to be lost and mentally and psychologically scarred
millions of those who lived the story.
Now when the international community did interfere in Kosovo (Yugoslavian
Genocide), the operation raised major questions of the legitimacy of military
intervention in a sovereign state like -
 Were the human rights abuses committed or threatened by the Belgrade

authorities sufficiently serious to warrant outside involvement?
 Did those seeking secession manipulate external intervention to advance their
political purposes?
 Were all peaceful means of resolving the conflict fully explored?
 Did the intervention receive appropriate authority?
 How could the bypassing and marginalization of the UN system, by “a
coalition of the willing” acting without Security Council approval, possibly be
justified?
 Did the way in which the intervention was carried out in fact worsen the very
human rights situation it was trying to rectify?
These questions started a new debate based of a simple statement: “For some, the
international community is not intervening enough; for others it is intervening much
too often.” The reason for the new debate was the growing membership of the UN
from 51 in 1945 to 191 today, emergence of non-state actors, new security issues, new
demands and expectations and new opportunities for Common action.
Questions like – What happens when Universal Human Rights are violated or what
happens when a genocide occurs somewhere else in the world? Do countries have
the right to intervene in other countries domestic affairs? Do they have the
RESPOSIBILITY TO?
RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (R2P):
The responsibility to protect (R2P or R to P) is a United Nations initiative established
in 2005. It consists of an emerging norm, or set of principles, based on the idea
that sovereignty is not a right, but a responsibility.
R2P focuses on preventing and halting four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes
against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, which it places under the generic umbrella
term of, Mass Atrocity Crimes.
The Responsibility to Protect has three "pillars":
1. A state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war

crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.
2. The international community has a responsibility to assist the state to fulfill its
primary responsibility.
3. If the state manifestly fails to protect its citizens from the four above mass
atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community
has the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such
as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.
The three elements of R2P are:
 The responsibility to prevent – to address root causes.

 The responsibility to react – to respond with appropriate measures.
 The responsibility to rebuild – to provide full assistance with recovery,
reconstruction and reconciliation.
Prevention is considered the most important one, because it would embrace the
causes of conflict and the ability to anticipate and combat attacks. The second
concerns the responsibility to react, applied in the case of failure of prevention,
where it would be necessary to make an approximate intervention of the so called
humanitarian intervention. Finally, the responsibility of rebuilding would be
directed towards peace and development.
SHIFTING TERMS OF THE DEBATE:

The traditional language of the sovereignty–the intervention debate – in terms of
“the right of humanitarian intervention” or the “right to intervene” – is unhelpful in
at least three key respects:
 First, it necessarily focuses attention on the claims, rights and prerogatives of
the potentially intervening states much more so than on the urgent needs of
the potential beneficiaries of the action.
 Secondly, by focusing narrowly on the act of intervention, the traditional
language does not adequately take into account the need for either prior
retentive effort or subsequent follow-up assistance, both of which have been
too often neglected in practice.
 Thirdly, although this point should not be overstated, the familiar language
does effectively operate to trump sovereignty with intervention at the outset
of the debate: it loads the dice in favour of intervention before the argument
has even begun, by tending to label and delegitimize dissent as anti-
humanitarian.
Sovereignty does not grant unlimited power to the state regarding its own people. It
implies a dual responsibility:
 Externally, respecting other states.
 Internally, respecting dignity and rights of their own people.
In 2001, ICISS released a report titled "The Responsibility to Protect". In a radical

reformulation of the meaning of state sovereignty, the report argued that
sovereignty entailed not only rights but also responsibilities, specifically a state's
responsibility to protect its people from major violations of human rights. The ICISS
report further asserted that, where a state was "unable or unwilling" to protect its
people, the responsibility should shift to the international community and "the
principle of non-intervention yields to the international responsibility to protect."
Intervention is a very controversial term. It covers a large number of activities.
However, in this report, Intervention means, “action taken against a state, without
its consent, for claimed humanitarian or protective purposes.”
The ICISS argued that any form of military intervention is "an exceptional and
extraordinary measure", and, as such, to be justified it must meet certain criteria,
including:
 Just cause: There must be "serious and irreparable harm occurring to human
beings, or imminently likely to occur".
 Right intention: The main intention of the military action must be to prevent
human suffering.
 Last resort: Every other measure besides military invention has to have already
been taken into account. (This does not mean that every measurement has to
have been applied and been shown to fail, but that there are reasonable grounds
to believe that only military action would work in that situation.)
 Proportional means: The military means must not exceed that which is necessary
"to secure the defined human protection objective".
 Reasonable prospects: The chance of success must be reasonably high, and it

must be unlikely that the consequences of the military intervention would be
worse than the consequences without the intervention.
 Right authority: The military action has to have been authorized by the Security
Council. Authorization is always sought prior to intervention.
Thus, the debate on R2P is still very controversial. R2P is necessary because
humanity does not need any more Rwandan or Yugoslavian crisis.

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Q.

RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT (R2P)

 Were the human rights abuses committed or threatened by the Belgrade

1. A state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war

The three elements of R2P are:

 The responsibility to prevent – to address root causes.

SHIFTING TERMS OF THE DEBATE:

In 2001, ICISS released a report titled "The Responsibility to Protect". In a radical

 Reasonable prospects: The chance of success must be reasonably high, and it

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