R2p (Responsibility to Protect)

Definition
The Responsibility to protect is a political commitment unanimously adopted by all members
of the United Nations General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit and articulated in
paragraphs 138-139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document:

 138. Each individual State has the responsibility to protect its populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility
entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate
and necessary means. We accept that responsibility and will act in accordance with it.
The international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to
exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early
warning capability.

 139. The international community, through the United Nations, also has the
responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, in
accordance with Chapters VI and VIII of the Charter, to help protect populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In this context, we
are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the
Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-
case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate,
should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect
their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue consideration of
the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing
and crimes against humanity and its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the
Charter and international law. We also intend to commit ourselves, as necessary and
appropriate, to helping States build capacity to protect their populations from genocide,
war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assisting those which
are under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

 140. We fully support the mission of the Special Advisor of the Secretary-General on
the Prevention of Genocide.

The Scope of the Responsibility to Protect

The report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which first
articulated the Responsibility to Protect in its December 2001 Report, envisioned a wide scope
of application in its articulation of the principle, which included "overwhelming natural or
environmental catastrophes, where the state concerned is either unwilling or unable to cope,
or call for assistance, and significant loss of life is occurring or threatened.
 THRE PILLERS OF R2P

 Pillar I: The protection responsibilities of the state;

 Pillar II: International assistance and capacity-building;

 Pillar III: Timely and decisive response.

The Responsibility to Protect and 'Humanitarian Intervention'

The Responsibility to Protect differs from humanitarian intervention in four important ways.
Humanitarian intervention only refers to the use of military force, whereas R2P is first and
foremost a preventive principle that emphasizes a range of measures to stem the risk of
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity before the crimes are
threatened or occur. The use of force may only carried out as a measure last resort, when all
other non-coercive measures have failed, and only when it is authorized by the UN Security
Council.

1. As a principle, the Responsibility to Protect is rooted firmly in existing international

law, especially the law relating to sovereignty, peace and security, human rights, and
armed conflict

2. While humanitarian interventions have in the past been justified in the context of
varying situations, R2P focuses only on the four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war
crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity

3. Finally, while humanitarian intervention assumes a "right to intervene", the R2P is

based on a "responsibility to protect

HISTORY

The notion of protecting human lives and preventing large scale massacres goes back a long
Way. In 1864 the International Red Cross was established and through the years many other
Organizations have been established to help the downtrodden and people being abused. After
World War II the UN resolution 260 of 9 December 1948 adopted the convention on the
Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as a direct response to the horror of the
Holocaust. The Wars in Indochina in the 1960s and 70s was also a turning point in many ways.
Young people all over the world witnessed on their TV screen the atrocities that happen during
a war, and the first televised famine in Biafra help spur further commitment to humanitarian
work.

The modern turning point for the notion of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) came out
of the Rwanda experience. “Rwanda in 1994, the genocide, was a very important piece of this,”
Edward Luck, the special advisor to the UN Secretary General on R2P told UN News Centre
recently. He traces the story back to World War II: “Before that, there were the killing fields
in Cambodia, after Rwanda there was the slaughter in the forests of Srebrenica. There was a
whole series of such scars on the 20th century, going really all the way back to the Holocaust,
which created a terrible stain on human history: mass violence targeted against one part of the
population or another,” Luck explained. Speaking at a seminar in Brussels recently, Kiyo
Akasaka, the UN Secretary General for Communication and Public Information, said that the
idea of R2P is not new with respect to states securing their people, but new in that the
international community can intervene to protect civilians.

After the NATO intervention in the former Yugoslavia in 1999 there was a lot of debate
on the legality of the intervention and so two years after, in 2001, the idea of R2P was first
voiced, as a reaction to former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s initiative. In late 2001 the
Canadian government created the International Commission on Intervention and State
Sovereignty (ICISS), that released its report Responsibility to Protect which advocated that
state sovereignty is a responsibility, and that the international community could, as a last resort
use military intervention to prevent “mass atrocities”. The African Union (AU) later endorsed
the idea and put in its founding charter of 2005 that the “protection of human and people rights”
would be a principle objective of the AU and that the Union had the right “to intervene in a
Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely
war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.”

At the World Summit in 2005 the member states included R2P in the Outcome
Document. The next year, in April 2006, the UN Security Council formalized their support of
the R2P by reaffirming the provisions of the paragraphs from the World Summit document.
Finally the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon released a report the same year, Implementing
the Responsibility to Protect, which argued for the implementation for R2P and its arguments
were subsequently discussed at the 2009 UN General Assembly, resulting in Resolution
(A/RES/63/308) which acknowledges the debate and Ban Ki-moon’s report and proposes the
General Assembly to continue its consideration of R2P.

CRITICISM

The Security Council passed Resolution 1973 to prevent, according to its backers, the
impending massacre of innocents in Libya. Critics argue that the decision to take military action
was made with undue speed, that the initial proposal to constitute a “no-fly zone” somehow
expanded into a more open-ended military commitment, and that NATO intervention soon
went beyond protecting civilians. It became, they argue, regime change hidden behind a
humanitarian façade (IBID.).

International political divisions over Syria have had deadly consequences. The
Security Council has not only failed to fulfil its basic function – the maintenance of
International peace and security – it has also dismally failed to uphold its Responsibility to
Protect (R2P) the Syrian people. At the UN World Summit in 2005 all governments
Committed to upholding their responsibility to protect by preventing the crimes of genocide,
War crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. More than 150 heads of state and
Government adopted the World Summit Outcome Document, paragraph 139 of which
Enshrined the primacy of the Security Council in situations where a state was clearly
Unwilling or unable to uphold its sovereign responsibilities:

In this context, we are prepared to take collective action, in a timely and decisive
Manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII,
on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as
Appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to
Protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
Humanity.

The responsibility to protect is primarily a preventive doctrine and it was not until
2011 in Libya that the Security Council specifically referenced R2P while imposing coercive
Military measures against a sovereign state that was murdering its own people. The eventual
Toppling of the government of Muammar Qaddafi by forces that were mandated to conduct a
Civilian protection operation ignited a fierce debate at the UN about the relationship between
R2P and “regime change.

Structural Problems

Political scientist Roland Paris, a proponent of R2P, argues that several problems regarding
usefulness and legitimacy inherent to R2P make it vulnerable to criticism: "the more R2P is
employed as a basis for military action, the more likely it is to be discredited, but paradoxically,
the same will hold true if R2P’s coercive tools go unused."[91] Paris lists the following
problems as inherent to R2P, making it difficult for proponents of R2P to defend R2P and
emboldening critics.

1. The mixed-motives problem - The legitimacy of R2P rests upon its altruistic aim.
However, states will often be wary to engage in humanitarian intervention unless the
intervention is partly rooted in self-interest. The appearance that the intervention is not
strictly altruistic consequently leads some to question its legitimacy.

2. The counterfactual problem - When R2P is successful, there will not be any clear-cut
evidence of its success: a mass atrocity that did not occur but would have occurred
without intervention. Defenders of R2P consequently have to rely on counterfactual
arguments.

3. The conspicuous harm problem - While the benefits of the intervention will not be
clearly visible, the destructiveness and costs of the intervention will be visible. This
makes it more difficult for proponents of the intervention to defend the intervention.
The destruction caused by the intervention also makes some question the legitimacy of
the intervention due to the stated purpose of preventing harm.

4. The end-state problem - Humanitarian intervention is prone to expand the mission

beyond simply averting mass atrocities. When successful at averting mass atrocities,
the interveners will often be forced to take upon themselves more expansive mandates
to ensure that threatened populations will be safe after the interveners leave.

5. The inconsistency problem - Due to the aforementioned problems, in addition to the

belief that a particular military action is likely to cause more harm than good, states
may fail to act in situations where mass atrocities loom. The failure to intervene in any
and all situations where there is a risk of mass atrocities lead to charges of
inconsistency.