Responsibility to Protect, Polarity, and Society

Robert Keating and Tom Murray argue that the implementation of R2P has failed despite the rhetorical consensus around R2P over the last decade. They suggest that the behaviour of the US and its NATO allies are partly to blame. These powers ignored the UN Security Council over Kosovo, which other world powers such as the BRICs took as an affront and a challenge. Normative defiance to the liberal world order was the reaction: Russia in particular became less willing to support humanitarian intervention than it had been throughout the 1990s. Similarly, in Libya, NATO refused to conform to the limitations on the intervention imposed by UNSC Resolution 1973. This weakened confidence in the Security Council’s ability to manage interventions, further undermining support for such operations generally. Thus the manner in which Western powers have sought to implement R2P has alienated the emerging powers on whose support successful R2P implementation depends.

The Status of the “Responsibility to Protect (Rtop)“ Doctrine in Light of the Conflicts in Libya and Syria

In 2001 the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty introduced a new doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect (RtoP)”, which signified an obligation of each state to protect its population from mass atrocities occurring in that state, as well as an obligation on the part of international community to offer such protection if the state in question fails to fulfill its duty. The doctrine of RtoP was subsequently endorsed by states in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, though it was formulated more restrictively in comparison to the 2001 Report. In 2011 a conflict broke out in Libya between its ruler Muammar Gaddafi and the protesters against his rule. Government forces were brutal in their attempt to quell the protests and it was not long before different international bodies started to report mass violations of human rights. Surprisingly, the UN Security Council was not deadlocked by veto and passed the Resolution 1973, which invoked the RtoP principle and authorized the use of force. Supporters of RtoP hailed such an application of the principle and believed that the case of Libya was just a beginning of a successful bringing RtoP to life. Such predictions turned out to be premature. Not long after the Libyan conflict, the one in Syria began. Although Syrian people was faced with the same humanitarian disaster as Libyan did, the Security Council could not agree on passing of the resolution which would authorize the use of force to halt human rights violations. Two crises are being analyzed, as well as reasons behind such a disparate reaction of the Security Council in very similar circumstances.

Libya: A UN Resolution and NATO’s Failure to Protect

This chapter examines whether the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) intervention in Libya was predicated on an “ulterior motive exemption” that actually put civilians at greater risk and violated international law. On February 25, 2011, the United Nations Security Council held its first formal meeting on the situation in Libya. The following day, the Council adopted Resolution 1970, which referred to “widespread and systematic attacks…against the civilian population” that may constitute crimes against humanity. Resolution 1973 was adopted to authorize member states “through regional organizations or arrangements…to take all necessary measures…to protect civilians and civilian populated areas under threat of attack in the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.” This chapter considers NATO's violations of international humanitarian law and its complicity in crimes committed by the rebels in Libya during the civil war, including their summary execution of Muammar Qaddafi.

The Dog That Didn’t Bark? A Response to Dunne and Gelber’s Analysis of RtoP’s Influence on the Intervention in Libya

In this article I challenge the argument presented by Tim Dunne and Katherine Gelber in ‘Arguing Matters: The Responsibility to Protect and the Case of Libya’ (Global Responsibility to Protect vol. 6, iss. 3, 2014). I argue that the evidence supplied by Dunne and Gelber to support their argument that the Responsibility to Protect played a role in the debate on the international response to the crisis in Libya is based on an unsustainable expansion of what constitutes RtoP language, fails to acknowledge the historical evolution of human rights-orientated discourse, and exaggerates the extent to which references were made to RtoP during the debates preceding Resolution 1973.

Post-Gaddafi Libya and the African Union: Challenges and the Road to Sustainable Peace

The overthrow of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt by revolutionary demonstrations during the Arab Spring in 2011 inspired Libyans to depose the Gaddafi regime. The heavy handedness of Gaddafi attracted the intervention of the West and the United States under the emblem of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The article argues that instead of effecting regime change, the demonstrations whose epicentre was Benghazi culminated in a deeply contested civil war. This was caused partly by the United States of America and its allies’ active involvement at the expense of the African Union and its member states.

Arguing Matters

This article analyses international negotiations over the 2011 Libyan crisis during the short weeks between the start of the uprising and the passage and implementation of un Security Council Resolution 1973. We make two arguments: first, following Risse, we demonstrate how and when argumentation around the humanitarian norm of protecting civilians mattered in these debates; second, we show that failure on the part of the supporters of the intervention on humanitarian grounds to maintain consistent and genuine argumentation in relation to that mandate is a key factor in explaining the subsequent lack of agreement about collective action inside the Security Council. We conclude that the lesson that arguing mattered in relation to Libya has been insufficiently appreciated, but needs to be better understood in order to facilitate the future traction of the RtoP norm in international negotiations.