scholarly journals Assessing the Responsibility to Protect’s motivational capacity: The role of humanity

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Complex Interaction ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Collective Response ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Normative Status

While the concept of humanity is most often referred to as the moral source of the Responsibility to Protect’s motivational capacity, humanity’s normative status and value has continued to be left assumed and/or unexplored. Consequently, there remains a considerable lack of analysis into humanity’s role in supposedly helping to both locate moral harm and subsequently provide a motivational cause that can drive protection practices in support of the Responsibility to Protect principle. In response to this lacuna, this article puts forward three hypotheses regarding the motivational role of humanity in this process: (a) humanity functioning as a rhetorical tool with no motivational qualities, (b) humanity as a concept that works to redefine sovereignty in support of the Responsibility to Protect and (c) humanity as a motivating principle that ultimately diminishes in influence as the Responsibility to Protect principle is diffused into action. Through this analysis, the article offers a more rigorous and systematic evaluation of humanity’s limitations as a moral motivator for generating collective response to mass atrocity crimes, highlighting the need to further develop understanding of the complex interaction between morality and politics in international decision-making.

The Responsibility to Protect after Libya & Syria

Daedalus ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 145 (4) ◽  
pp. 75-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Welsh
Keyword(s):  
Military Intervention ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
The Political ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
World Summit ◽  
Building Capacity ◽  
Collective Response ◽  
Heads Of State ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Despite the commitment made by all heads of state attending the 2005 World Summit to uphold the principle of the responsibility to protect (R2P), atrocity crimes continue to be committed by states and nonstate actors. This essay argues that assessments of R2P's effectiveness too often overlook the political nature of the principle – with the strengths and weaknesses that this status entails – and apply rigid standards of success that both underestimate its contribution to building capacity to prevent and respond to atrocity crimes and overemphasize the role of military intervention. It also suggests that R2P is best understood as a “duty of conduct” to identify when atrocity crimes are being committed and to deliberate on the best form of collective response. The cases of Libya and Syria have nonetheless raised fundamental questions about the prospect of catalyzing international efforts to protect populations, particularly when there is disagreement over the costs and benefits of a coercive response.

Responsibility to Protect in International Criminal Law

Postgenocide ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 112-134
Author(s):  
Jobair Alam
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Minority Group ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
National Politics ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Jus Cogens ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Normative Foundations

This chapter considers the worst contemporary state-led prosecution of a minority group, which amounts to genocide, namely the Rohingya. It examines the atrocity crimes committed against them under international criminal law (ICL) and the application of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) thereupon. It suggests that such atrocities are constitutive of violations of jus cogens which warrants obligatio erga omnes. Accordingly, the perpetrators can be brought to justice under inter/national and universal jurisdictions, which, nonetheless, has not yet occurred. Given the failure of ICL mechanisms, the normative foundations of the R2P can provide valuable tools for intercepting mass atrocity crimes. The Rohingya—who face direct and structural violence at the hands of the Myanmar state—need protection from these crimes. The chapter explains how insular national politics can undo the gains made by the international community in upholding the distinctiveness of humanitarian claims through the application of the R2P.

The Responsibility to Protect and Obama’s Red Line on Syria

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yasmine Nahlawi
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Chemical Weapons ◽  
Legal Basis ◽  
Chemical Attack ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Syrian Conflict ◽  
Red Line

The 21 August 2013 chemical attack on Ghouta led to the mobilisation of the international community after long international paralysis towards the ongoing conflict in Syria. It is unclear, however, why or under what legal basis states chose to react to Syria’s use of chemical weapons in exclusion to other mass atrocity crimes committed within the country. This article evaluates the legal underpinnings of President Obama’s ‘red line’ on the use of chemical weapons in Syria in the context of R2P. It notes that while all states condemned the Ghouta attack and called for accountability in this regard, only a minority of states shared the United States’ position that chemical weapons constituted a red line in their own right. Overall, it is maintained that the ‘red line’ phenomenon was case-specific to the Syrian conflict, reflecting geopolitical interests of world powers rather than signifying a new precedent for R2P’s application.

Implementing r2p: Towards a Regional Solution?

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 459-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bolarinwa Adediran
Keyword(s):  
Security Council ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Effective Response ◽  
Regional Institutions ◽  
International Action ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Regional Organisations ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Syrian Conflict

Since the adoption of the principles of the Responsibility to Protect (r2p) in 2005, proponents and critics alike have accepted that it has not brought about a consistent and effective response to mass atrocity crimes. The incapacity that the Security Council exhibits in addressing the Syrian conflict provides a compelling justification for the need to examine alternative mechanisms through which the principles of the doctrine can be implemented. This paper argues that regional organisations should be considered legitimate authorising mechanisms in place of the Security Council in implementing r2p. The use of regional institutions as authorising mechanisms has not been properly considered or rigorously defended. In the paper, I make a case for regional organisations in authorising international action during mass atrocity situations by first establishing the legitimacy of regional organisations to act in response to local disputes. I propose and defend four arguments that provide justification and establish the utility of regional arrangements as alternative authorising mechanisms. I also examine and respond to three key objections that can be made against regional organisations. Finally, I outline a set of criteria that should determine which regional organisations are considered legitimate actors during mass atrocity situations.

Addressing the Gender Gap in R2P

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Davies
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Since its inception, the responsibility to protect (R2P) principle has been progressively narrowed in its scope and application in order to capture widespread support from governments and civil society. However, as this chapter will explore, R2P came perilously close to failing to recognize the gendered dimension of mass atrocity crimes and the prevention of these crimes. The chapter examines how R2P came to be characterized as ‘gender blind’, and details how, since 2006, the principle’s supporters have engaged and responded to this challenge. The author argues that there is a need to continually theorize and engage in areas of common discourse to collectively progress the mutual agenda of gender equitable human protection.

s.V Modalities, Ch.21 From Machinery to Motivation: The Lost Legacy of Criminal Organizations Liability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Saira
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Law ◽  
International Criminal ◽  
Criminal Liability ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Military Tribunal ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes ◽  
Missed Opportunity

This chapter considers the lost legacy of the concept of criminal organizations in international criminal law. When the notion of declaring the criminality of organizations, in addition to determining the guilt of individuals, was first proposed in anticipation of the trial before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, organizational criminality was viewed as an opportunity both to recognize the role of organizations in nurturing mass criminality and to facilitate the prosecution of masses of individuals. But by the time the Tribunal was in operation, the first of these goals had faded away, and organizational criminality represented nothing more than a tool to accomplish individual criminality. This chapter argues that treating criminal organizations as a means to secure individual criminal liability represents a loss, a missed opportunity, in international criminal law. The condemnation of organizations that can attend organizational liability could have created within international criminal law an opportunity to expose the role of organizations in the perpetration of mass atrocity, to call attention to and analyze the institutionalized nature of mass atrocity crimes, which makes these crimes not only unthinkably destructive, but also inherently and importantly distinct from criminal wrongdoing in which a person’s conduct diverges from the standards of most of society. The missed opportunity of abandoning criminal organizations liability is particularly acute, this chapter contends, in light of the research in the decades since Nuremberg establishing how organizations affect individual behaviour. With greater understanding about the mechanisms for individuals’ desire to conform with peers, to obey authorities, and to rationalize their own actions, we can now see that organizations contribute to individuals’ decisions to commit crimes by providing forums and creating environments in which individuals come to believe that criminal behaviour is necessary or normal or even good, or in which individuals fail to recognize their own part in a criminal system. The organizations thus provide not only the machinery for atrocity, but also the motivation. By abandoning the substantive core of criminal organizations, international criminal law fails to identify the foundational role of organizations in creating mass atrocity crimes.

R2P Ten Years After the World Summit: Explaining Ongoing Contestation over Pillar iii

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 300-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Garwood-Gowers
Keyword(s):  
Fluid Dynamic ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
World Summit ◽  
Dynamic Nature ◽  
Normative Structure ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
External Sources ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

This article examines how and why contrasting interpretations of the international community’s role in preventing and responding to mass atrocity crimes continue to exist a decade after the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was unanimously endorsed at the 2005 World Summit. Building on recent critical constructivist insights into the fluid, dynamic nature of norms, it advances two main arguments. The first is that continuing contestation over R2P’s third pillar is a product of a combination of internal and external sources of norm dynamism. R2P’s inherently complex normative structure, coupled with several external factors, including the broader normative environment, norm implementation experiences and a shift in global power towards the brics, have contributed to a period of renewed contestation and triggered attempts to re-formulate R2P thorough Brazil’s ‘Responsibility while Protecting’ (RwP) proposal and China’s semi-official ‘Responsible Protection’ concept. The second central argument is that such contestation is affecting R2P’s distinct normative prescriptions in different ways. While resistance to the implementation of coercive pillar iii measures is currently impeding the normative progress of that component of the norm, this contestation has not prevented consensual pillar ii assistance from becoming more deeply embedded in international practice and discourse.

Atrocity Prevention: From Promise to Practice in the Asia Pacific

2016 ◽  
Vol 8 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 180-199
Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy
Keyword(s):  
East Asian ◽  
Responsibility To Protect ◽  
Asia Pacific ◽  
Pacific Region ◽  
Asia Pacific Region ◽  
The Third ◽  
Dramatic Decline ◽  
Global Action ◽  
Mass Atrocity ◽  
Atrocity Crimes

Drawing upon talks delivered at the Second Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes conference, held in Manila 2016, this paper examines the extent to which the Asia Pacific region has begun to translate its commitment to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) into practice. It finds that the so-called “East Asian Peace” has transformed the region from one of the world’s deadliest to one of the world’s most peaceful. But many key challenges remain and there is much to be done to make R2P and atrocity prevention a daily lived reality. This article proceeds in three parts. The first briefly describes the dramatic decline of atrocity crimes in East Asia. The second points to some key challenges on the ideational and institutional fronts. The third section turns specifically to the need to develop national architectures for atrocity prevention.

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