RESPONSIBILTY TO PROTECT(R2P)

B026-KRISHI MALDE
B027-SHREYA MAMNIYA
B028-YASH MARU
B029-SHRUTI MISTRY
B030- ANANT UDAY NAIK
 Introduction
• The Responsibility to Protect – known as R2P – is an international norm that seeks
to ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass
atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity. The concept emerged in response to the failure of the international
community to adequately respond to mass atrocities committed in Rwanda and
the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.
• At the 2005 United Nations World Summit, world leaders came together in historic
agreement to unanimously endorse R2P, acknowledging that state sovereignty
entails a responsibility to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes
• The authority to employ the use of force under the framework of the
Responsibility to Protect rests solely with United Nations Security Council and is
considered a measure of last resort . The United Nations Secretary-General has
published annual reports on the Responsibility to Protect since 2009 that expand
on the measures available to governments, intergovernmental organizations, and
civil society, as well as the private sector, to prevent atrocity crim
 History
 1990s: Origins - The norm of the R2P was borne out of the international
community’s failure to respond to tragedies such as the Rwandan Genocide in
1994 and the Srebrenica massacre in 1995.
 2000: African Union proposes a right to intervene – Many critics of the R2P’s third
pillar claim that R2P is a Western concept, but it was the African Union (AU) that
pioneered the concept that the international community has a responsibility to
intervene in crisis situations if a state is failing to protect its population from mass
atrocity crimes.
 2001: The Canadian government established the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to address the issues of humanitarian
intervention and state sovereignty. It emphasized the responsibility of states to
protect their populations from mass atrocities and the responsibility of the
international community to intervene if states failed to do so.
 History
 2005: World Summit Outcome Document- The concept of R2P gained significant
attention and recognition at the 2005 United Nations World Summit. The World
Summit Outcome Document, adopted by world leaders, included a section on
R2P. It affirmed that every state has the responsibility to protect its population
from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. It also
stated that the international community has the responsibility to help states fulfil
this responsibility and to intervene when states manifestly fail to protect their
populations.
 2009: United Nations General Assembly Resolution- The resolution emphasized
that R2P is based on three pillars: the responsibility of the state to protect its
population, the responsibility of the international community to assist states in
fulfilling this responsibility, and the responsibility of the international community to
intervene when states fail to protect their populations.
India and R2p

 India has refrained from actively engaging with R2P, despite its longstanding
contributions to UN Peacekeeping operations. In terms of troop contribution,
India’s commitment to UN Peacekeeping far exceeds that of European Union
states. India has contributed nearly 1,95,000 troops, the largest number from
any country, and participated in 49 missions. However, throughout the
evolution of R2P, particularly in its initial years, India was sceptical about the
concept, and regarded it as a pretext for intervention to enforce Western
interests.Due to this stance, India was considered one of the recalcitrant
opponents of the idea of R2P.However, the inconsistency and reluctance in
India’s approach cannot be explained linearly, as most scholars have done.
India’s continuing support to peacekeeping operations, while opposing
humanitarian military intervention, demonstrates that the basis of India’s
approach to multilateral peace and security is the principle of sovereign
equality, and its corollary, non-intervention.
Shruti mistry b029

PRAISE
• Anne-Marie Slaughter from Princeton University has called R2P "the
most important shift in our conception of sovereignty since
the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648."

• Louise Arbour from the International Crisis Group said that "The
responsibility to protect is the most important and imaginative
doctrine to emerge on the international scene for decades."

• Francis Deng, former UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of

Genocide, stated that "R2P is one of the most powerful and
promising innovations on the international scene”
i. there was the language we used – the ‘responsibility to protect’
being much less inherently abrasive than the ‘right to intervene’.
ii. there was emphasis on multiple actors sharing that responsibility,
not just the big military players.
iii. there was our emphasis on multiple layers of response – on
preventive strategies, not just reactive ones, and on a whole
continuum of reaction measures, not just military ones but
including diplomatic isolation, and sanctions and embargoes, and
threats of International Criminal Court prosecution.
iv. there was our insistence that the bar for any military intervention
be set very high, with legality dependent on Security Council
endorsement, and legitimacy dependent on satisfying clear
prudential criteria, including proportionality and doing, on
balance, more good than harm.
v. R2P establishes “conditional” state sovereignty contingent upon
fulfilling certain domestic and international obligations. R2P
norm of conditional sovereignty a communitarian approach as it
recognizes states have the right to self-determination and self-
governance, but they also have a responsibility to the international
community to protect the environment, promote peace, and not
 Criticisms
 R2P and certain implementations of it have come under criticism by
some states and individuals.

• National sovereignty
 One of the main concerns surrounding R2P is that it infringes upon
national sovereignty. This concern is rebutted by the Secretary General
Ban Ki-moon in the report Implementing the Responsibility to Protect.
According to the first pillar of R2P, the state has the responsibility to
protect its populations from mass atrocities and ethnic cleansing, and
according to the second pillar the international community has the
responsibility to help states fulfill their responsibility. Advocates of
R2P claim that the only occasions where the international community
will intervene in a state without its consent is when the state is either
allowing mass atrocities to occur, or is committing them, in which
case the state is no longer upholding its responsibilities as a sovereign.
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In this sense, R2P can beShruti Mistry B029
understood as reinforcing sovereignty.
• Military intervention
 The question of military intervention under the third pillar of R2P remains
controversial. Several states have argued that R2P should not allow the
international community to intervene militarily on states, because to do so is
an infringement upon sovereignty. Others argue that this is a necessary facet of
R2P, and is necessary as a last resort to stop mass atrocities. A related
argument surrounds the question as to whether more specific criteria should be
developed to determine when the Security Council should authorize military
intervention.

• Structural Problems
 Political scientist 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.
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 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• The end-state problem – Humanitarian intervention is prone to expand
the mission beyond simply averting mass atrocities. When successful at
averting mass atrocities, the intervenors will often be forced to take upon
themselves more expansive mandates to ensure that threatened
populations will be safe after the intervenors leave.
• 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
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atrocities loom. The failure to intervene in any and all situations where
there is a risk of mass atrocities lead to charges of inconsistency
THREE PILLARS OF RESPONSIBILITY TO
PROTECT
 PILLAR ONE: Every state has the collective as well as individual Responsibility
to Protect its populations from four mass atrocity crimes: genocide, war crimes,
crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing.

 PILLAR TWO: The broader international community has the responsibility to

encourage and assist individual states in achieving that responsibility.

 PILLAR THREE: If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the

international community must be ready to take necessary collective action, in a
timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the UN Charter.
Humanitarian Intervention and R2P
Differences
 The first key difference between the R2P and humanitarian intervention is that
humanitarian intervention implies only military force, while the R2P stands
primarily for prevention of a humanitarian catastrophe.
 The second major difference between the R2P and humanitarian intervention is
the fact that the R2P is legal and sanctioned by international law while
humanitarian intervention may be sanctioned by international law.
 The third difference is that the R2P is very specific – only war crimes, crimes
against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide fall under its ambit – while
humanitarian intervention does not have such a defined range of crimes that
specify when it is acceptable.
 The fourth difference is that while the R2P assumes a fundamental responsibility
to protect, humanitarian intervention assumes a right to intervene.
 Practical examples of R2P
 R2P has been invoked in more than 80 UN Security Council resolutions concerning
crises in Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Liberia, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, as well as thematic
resolutions concerning the prevention of genocide, prevention of armed conflict and
restricting the trade of small arms and light weapons. The Responsibility to Protect has
also been invoked in more than 50 Human Rights Council resolutions and 13 General
Assembly resolutions. These resolutions and their related preventive and – as a last
resort – coercive measures, have demonstrated that collective action to protect
populations at risk is possible.
 Individual states and global networks, such as the Global Network of R2P Focal Points,
have undertaken various national initiatives to ensure they are preventing mass
atrocity crimes through upholding their pillar I and pillar II commitments.
R2P-driven engagement can also be credited with stopping the recurrence of strife in
Kenya after 2008, and in the West African cases of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and
Cote d’Ivoire over the last decade where ECOWAS has repeatedly played a constructive
role. I also think it is fair to say that as a result of the explicitly acknowledged normative
force of R2P, volatile situations such as Burundi now get the kind of continuing Security
Council attention unknown to Rwanda in the 1990s: whenever Burundi has moved close
to the volcano’s edge, the Council has met and the AU has usually become more closely
engaged, and the crisis has subsided.
 As Russia’s aggression threatens the human rights of millions of Ukrainian
civilians caught in the crossfire of war, concerns have arisen about the
Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in Ukraine. R2P emerged as an international
norm in response to the failure to prevent mass atrocities in Rwanda and the
former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
 As international condemnation of Russia’s atrocities grows it calls to question
the importance of invoking the R2P norm to protect civilians. President
Biden had stated unequivocally that the United States has no intention of
engaging in a military confrontation with Russia. Numerous countries and
regional organizations have equally responded with targeted sanctions and
other punitive economic measures.
 Russian forces continue to perpetrate war crimes and crimes against humanity
by bombarding towns and cities in eastern, central, and southern Ukraine with
indiscriminate explosive weapons, causing a massive humanitarian crisis.
The United Nations has confirmed more than 1,480 civilian deaths,
emphasizing that the actual number of civilian casualties is much higher
 Therefore, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threatens to widen the gap between the
political commitment expressed by the United Nations to protect populations at
risk and the reality of civilians caught in the crossfire of war. This failure reveals
ethical and practical challenges in global governance in situations where the
sanctity of state sovereignty is accorded greater priority over appeals for
intervention for human protection.