Special Issue for GR2P: Africa's Responsibility to Protect Introduction

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Sarkin ◽  
Mark Paterson
Keyword(s):  
International Adoption ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
African Union ◽  
Weak States ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
Regional Organisations ◽  
External Interventions

AbstractThe introduction sketches the recent development of the 'responsibility to protect' norm and emphasises its African roots, both in terms of its conceptualisation and implementation and with particular respect to two tragedies—the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and the crisis in Darfur since 2003—that have lent urgency to the norm's formulation and widespread international adoption. The number and extent of R2P cases in Africa are outlined and the roles of the African Union and Africa's regional organisations in implementing the norm are briefly considered. The introduction acknowledges the importance of examining R2P through African perspectives. Referencing the justifications and primary principles for action upon which the norm is founded, the authors also assess the relative strengths of competing notions of sovereignty in Africa. The essay further considers how R2P has come to be seen as a mechanism that can bolster the capacity of weak states to fulfil their sovereign responsibilities to their own citizens, and how new international obligations imposed upon states, and particularly those adopted in Africa, have made significant inroads into the old concept of sovereignty as territorial integrity and freedom from external interventions.

A Model Case of R2P Prevention? Mediation in the Aftermath of Kenya’s 2007 Presidential Elections

2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Noële Crossley
Keyword(s):  
Stated Preference ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
African Union ◽  
Model Case ◽  
First Case ◽  
Preventative Intervention ◽  
International Mediation ◽  
Regional Organisations ◽  
Election Violence ◽  
Conflict Mitigation

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) comprises the responsibility to prevent, to react, and to rebuild. What sets R2P apart from the previously prevailing idea of humanitarian intervention is, first, an emphasis on prevention, and second, a stated preference for a multilaterally coordinated response to crises. The third and perhaps newest feature of R2P is the idea that regional organisations have an important role to play in facilitating conflict resolution and the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect. Kenya’s post-election violence in 2007 was widely viewed as the first case of ‘R2P prevention’. International mediation efforts by the African Union Panel of Eminent Personalities, under the leadership of the former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and with the support of the UN and other actors, were successful at resolving the conflict without the use of coercive measures. Kenya was seen as R2P’s success story – multilaterally orchestrated action to prevent an escalation of conflict, with heavy reliance on regional actors. This paper questions to what extent this account holds true, and whether the Kenyan case really was a successful instance of ‘R2P prevention’. An analysis of the Kenyan case ultimately leads to the conclusion that the application of R2P was, in fact, unrelated to the success of the conflict mitigation efforts. The Kenyan context was one which was favourable to the success of the mediation, and it is unlikely R2P would have succeeded without these contingent factors. Nevertheless, the application of R2P to the Kenyan case served to promote R2P as a framework that emphasises non-coercive, preventative intervention facilitated through regional actors.

Interventions and the Limits of the Responsibility to Protect: Regional Organisations and the Global South

2017 ◽  
pp. 192-215
Author(s):  
Joseph Hongoh
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Global South ◽  
Potential Effect ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Economic Empowerment ◽  
Regional Organizations ◽  
Regional Organisations ◽  
Alternative Reading

In Chapter Eight, Sovereignty versus Responsibility to Protect, Joseph Hongoh argues that the struggle in navigating the tension surrounding sovereignty as responsibility to protect actually obscures rather than enables productive engagements with the concept and practice of intervention. Referring to case studies from Africa, Hongoh suggests that integrating regional organizations (ROs) within the international-regional-national axes of R2P potentially restricts the broader conception of intervention. In undertaking this examination, he begins by providing an alternative reading of sovereignty as a responsibility. In this regard, he demonstrates how regional organizations in Africa have perennially engaged with the questions of sovereignty, responsibility, protection and human solidarity within the broader frames of political and economic empowerment and emancipation. In the last two sections of his chapter, Hongo shows how the broader conception of intervention has the potential effect of producing transnational sovereignty, and in ways that are not imagined within R2P. The result, he suggests, may lead to implementation of R2P within the conditions of sovereignty that are determined by ROs.

Failure to Protect Girls from Female Genital Mutilation

2015 ◽  
Vol 79 (5) ◽  
pp. 344-357
Author(s):  
Theodora A. Christou ◽  
Sam Fowles
Keyword(s):  
Female Genital Mutilation ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Parental Responsibility ◽  
Genital Mutilation ◽  
International Obligations ◽  
The Law ◽  
Failure To Protect ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Female Genital

Whilst FGM had been a crime in the UK for over 2 decades, over 60, 000 girls continued to be mutilated. In 2015 the UK took its international obligations to protect girls from such physical harm more seriously and enacted new legislation. This article focuses on the parental responsibility to protect their daughter from harm and their criminal liability if they fail to take adequate action to prevent the mutilation occurring. We explore the socio-legal setting, the gaps in the law, the state's international obligations and finally the newly introduced rebuttable presumption.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-148
Author(s):  
Gregor P. Hofmann ◽  
Lisbeth Zimmermann
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Major Field ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives

Contestation is currently one major field of research on international norms: does contestation strengthen or weaken a norm? What role does international law play in this regard? How do norm proponents and norm challengers change their strategies in norm contestation processes? Drawing on constructivist perspectives as well as on international law, the articles in this Special Issue explore the effects of norm contestation and its dynamics by analysing the Responsibility to Protect ( R2P ) and the responsibility to prosecute from different theoretical perspectives.

The Responsibility to Protect and Humanitarian Intervention in Africa

2010 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 371-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Sarkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Criminal Court ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Crimes Against Humanity ◽  
Primary Responsibility ◽  
Un Security Council ◽  
The Will ◽  
Global Peace ◽  
External Interventions

AbstractThis essay investigates the connection between humanitarian intervention and R2P within an historical, legal, and conceptual context. It challenges the widely held view that Africa lacks the capacity to intervene in areas of conflict and human rights violations, arguing instead that the continent possesses the will and instruments to protect human rights. The author notes that, while the UN Security Council retains the primary responsibility for promoting global peace and security, the R2P norm remains contested even within the UN. The ECOWAS interventions in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s were initially undertaken without UN approval, but were later sanctioned by the world body. These interventions undermined the idea of state sovereignty as independence from external interventions, which had previously constrained humanitarian missions in Africa. However, the essay argues that the R2P principle was boosted by the establishment of the International Criminal Court in 2002 to prosecute persons suspected of committing war crimes, crimes against humanity, and/or genocide. In addition, the intervention clause in the AU's Constitutive Act of 2000 supports the R2P principle while prohibiting unilateral interventions. Notwithstanding these developments, the author notes that the AU and Africa's regional bodies still have a long way to go in translating the R2P doctrine into practice.

“The Legitimacy to Legitimise”: The Security Council Action in Libya under Resolution 1973 (2011)

2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 359-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constantine Antonopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Peace ◽  
The Real ◽  
Peace And Security ◽  
Regional Organisations ◽  
Resolution 1973 ◽  
And Control

Abstract The power of the Security Council to adopt military measures for the maintenance of international peace and security has never been implemented as originally envisaged by the text of the UN Charter. The Council never acquired armed forces permanently at its disposal and under its command and control and it adopted the practice of authorisation of force leaving coalitions of willing States or regional organisations to implement it by conducting an operation under their command and resources with minimum control by the Council. The mandate of the operation in an enabling resolution is in principle a safeguard against abuse but its interpretation lies primarily (but not exclusively) with the participating States. The SC action in Libya intended to protect civilians (humanitarian intervention). Moreover, it revealed the real dimensions of humanitarian intervention and the vagaries of responsibility to protect: a suspension of the substance of Article 2(4).

The Role of the United Nations, the African Union and Africa's Sub-Regional Organizations in Dealing with Africa's Human Rights Problems: Connecting Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect

2009 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Sarkin
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
African Union ◽  
Regional Institutions ◽  
African Context ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Right

AbstractThis article examines the basis for humanitarian intervention (HI) in the United Nations Charter, the African Union (AU) Charter and in a number of African sub-regional institutions. It traces the historical development of HI and argues that, while the right to HI emerged more than 100 years ago, that right also emerges from the Genocide Convention. The article argues that this treaty connects HI to the developing norm of the responsibility to protect (R2P) and examines the extent to which R2P is garnering wider support around the world. It focuses on the UN, and the various AU and sub-regional institutions and instruments that sanction HI. It assesses whether intervention can be authorized even in the absence of a UN Security Council mandate and examines the principles, application and interrelationship of R2P and HI in the African context. It traces the use of these norms in Africa, including in the various sub-regional structures, and evaluates the AU's political will and capability to deal with conflict and human rights abuse.

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