The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Responses from Southeast Asia

Author(s):  
See Seng Tan

This chapter examines extant understandings of sovereignty as responsibility, beginning with the idea of sovereign responsibility as conceptualised by Francis Deng and his collaborators, who contend that sovereignty can no longer be seen as a protection against interference, but as a charge of responsibility where the state is accountable to both domestic and external constituencies. The understanding is foundational to the thinking behind the 2001 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) report, which introduced the responsibility to protect (R2P) with the aim to popularise the concept of humanitarian intervention and democracy-restoring intervention. Since its endorsement by the United Nations, the R2P has evolved through efforts by the UN and others to enhance, operationalise as well as to implement it in actual crisis situations – with varying degrees of success and in some instances not without controversy. The chapter discusses the relevance of the sovereignty as responsibility idea to Southeast Asia. It also examines the existing academic and policy debate over the R2P and its relevance to international security and sovereign responsibility, as well as its ambivalent reception in Southeast Asia.

Author(s):  
Thomas G. Weiss

The responsibility to protect is central to the current policy debate on humanitarian intervention in war zones, and so it is instructive to explore its immediate post-Cold War origins in the decade preceding the December 2001 release of the report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The history of the turbulent decade of the 1990s is essential to understanding the normative and policy problems that the Commission was trying to resolve as well as the remaining contestation that surrounds coming to the rescue of civilians caught in the throes of war. This chapter provides a sense of the practical and political problems that animated the development of R2P along with the distance yet to be covered to make mass atrocities an unpleasant memory instead of an ugly and continuing current reality.


Author(s):  
Alex J. Bellamy ◽  
Stephen McLoughlin

This chapter examines the implications of humanitarian intervention for international security. It considers the debate between those who argue that the protection of civilians from genocide and mass atrocities is far more important than the principle of non-intervention in certain circumstances and those who oppose this proposition. This has become a particular problem in the post-Cold War world where the commission of atrocities in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur prompted calls for international society to step in to protect the victims with military force if necessary. Humanitarian intervention causes problems for international security by potentially weakening the rules governing the use of force in world politics. The chapter first considers the case against humanitarian intervention before discussing the principle known as ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P).


Author(s):  
Poeliu Dai

The search for some means to terminate the Vietnam conflict by negotiation has given rise to certain anomalies in the application of the law and procedure of the United Nations and of the existing regional arrangements affecting Southeast Asia. It has also revealed the existence of a lacuna in the provisions of these international instruments governing the discharge of peacekeeping functions. This, however, is not the case in respect of the International Commission for Supervision and Control in Vietnam which constitutes the only tangible instrument of the Geneva settlement specifically created to fulfil, on a continuous basis, the tasks of control, observation, inspection, and investigation connected with the application of the Cease-fire Agreement for Vietnam.


2009 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Sarkin

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.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 425-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mónica Serrano

AbstractWhile critics have claimed that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a North-South polarising issue and is therefore controversial, this is a deliberate misrepresentation in a rhetorical war led by a small minority of UN member states. The first section of this article briefly reviews the evolution of this emerging norm from its inception in the 2001 report by the International Commission on State Sovereignty and Intervention (ICISS), to its endorsement in 2005 by more than 150 heads of states in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, to its more recent configuration in a three-pillar structure. The next part seeks to identify the main criticisms that have been levelled at R2P. It touches on some of the myths and allegations that have long accompanied R2P, as well as on the chief legitimate concerns underlying the shift towards implementation. The third and concluding section briefly touches upon the impact of the interventions in Libya and Côte D'Ivoire upon the evolving R2P consensus, and critically assesses the implications of a normative strategy that has put a premium on unanimity and unqualified consensus.


Jurnal ICMES ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-63
Author(s):  
Dewi Agha Putri ◽  
Hasan Sidik

Artikel ini bertujuan untuk menjelaskan intervensi militer yang dilakukan oleh Amerika Serikat (AS) dalam menanggapi genosida yang dilakukan oleh Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terhadap komunitas Yazidi di Irak. Peneliti menggunakan konsep Responsibility to Protect (R2P), yang merujuk pada laporan dari the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) u This article aims to explain the military intervention carried out by the United States in response to the genocide carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against Yazidi community in Iraq. The researchers use the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P), which refers to a report from the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty to see the procedure for procuring military intervention in the R2P framework in detail. This article found that besides several collateral damages, military intervention carried out by the United States was following the procedures set out by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. The United States’ intervention was done by the Iraqi government's approval, which had previously requested assistance from the United States. This intervention can be seen as Iraqi collective self-defense as stated in Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations or intervention based on approval as stipulated in Article 20 of the Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Acts 2001. This research was conducted qualitatively using sources in the form of a variety of documents and mass media reports. ntuk melihat prosedur intervensi militer dalam kerangka kerja R2P secara terperinci. Artikel ini menemukan bahwa meskipun telah terjadi sejumlah dampak sampingan (collateral damages), intervensi militer yang dilakukan oleh AS mengikuti prosedur yang ditetapkan oleh ICISS, antara lain, dilakukan AS atas persetujuan pemerintah Irak yang sebelumnya meminta bantuan dari AS. Intervensi ini dapat dilihat sebagai pertahanan diri kolektif Irak sebagaimana tercantum dalam Piagam Perserikatan Bangsa-Bangsa Pasal 51 atau intervensi berdasarkan persetujuan sebagaimana diatur dalam Pasal 20 Responsibility of States for International Wrongful Acts tahun 2001. Penelitian ini dilakukan secara kualitatif dengan menggunakan sumber-sumber berupa berbagai dokumen dan laporan media massa.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura McAlpine

This MRP seeks to illustrate why and how states circumstantially employ their sovereignty in regards to international forced migration. My thesis is, that states, dependent on their degree of sovereignty, are negligent in their capacity to accommodate refugees. In pursuing this thesis, I examine state sovereignty from the International Relations framework and conceptualize sovereignty as a derivative of the state. Furthermore, I situate ‘the state’ with political realism; and align its opposing paradigm, political idealism, with the United Nations. Using qualitative measurements of state sovereignty, I find that although states have signed international agreements that hold them accountable to facilitate in the resettlement of refugees when international conflict ensues, states claim that because refugees threaten security, as well as the economic, political, social integrity of the state, they cannot and will not accept them. Key words: sovereignty, the state, refugees, International Relations, the United Nations


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