This volume is a collection of some of the key essays by Ramesh Thakur on the origins, implementation and future prospects of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm.
The book offers a comprehensive yet accessible review of the origins, evolution, advances and shortcomings of the R2P principle. A literature review is followed by an overview of the background, meaning and development of R2P. With a focus on the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), Part I analyses the features of, and explains the factors that make for success and failure of commission diplomacy. Part II discusses the controversies surrounding efforts to implement R2P, including the role and importance of emerging powers. Part III describes the remaining protection gaps and explains why R2P will remain relevant because it is essentially demand driven. Finally, the book concludes with a look back at the origins of R2P and looks ahead to possible future directions.
This book will be essential for students of the Responsibility to Protect, and of much interest to students of global governance, human rights, international law and international relations.
Author(s): Ramesh Thakur
Series: Global Politics and the Responsibility to Protect
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2018
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
1 Introduction
ICISS and R2P
Structure of the book
2 The Responsibility to Protect at 15
From humanitarian intervention to R2P
Prevention: work in progress
Implementation gaps
Actors: multilevel responsibility vacuum
R2P scepticism
Conclusion
Notes
Part I
Origins, meaning and evolution
Power, principles, ideas and the normative international architecture
The darker sides of Western virtue signalling
Origins and evolution of R2P
Notes
3 High-level panels
The changing diplomatic landscape
Commission diplomacy
Impacts
Explaining success
Conclusion
Notes
4 Rwanda, Kosovo and the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty
Policy setting: non-intervention as the default norm
Policy challenge: mass atrocity crimes
Policy controversy: an emerging norm of humanitarian intervention?
Policy innovation: ICISS and the Responsibility to Protect
Notes
5 From the right to persecute to the Responsibility to Protect: Feuerbachian inversions of rights and responsibilities in state–citizen relations
The Feuerbachian analogy
The Westphalian protection racket
Sovereign legitimacy – domestic and international
Developing countries and sovereignty
Concrete challenges
The United Nations: an organisation of, by and for sovereign states?
The logic of Feuerbachian inversion: sovereign rights are human rights
Notes
6 From humanitarian intervention to R2P: cosmetic or consequential?
Annan’s ‘challenge of humanitarian intervention’
Political
Conceptual
Normative
Procedural
Operational
Conclusion
Notes
Part II
Implementation controversies
Libya
Structural flaws as the explanation for R2P failures in Libya
Resuscitating the responsibility to rebuild
R2P is a global normative answer to a universal moral failing
Notes
7 R2P after Libya and Syria: engaging emerging powers
R2P: between unilateral intervention and institutional indifference
Libya 2011
Syria 2012
Rebalancing the normative order?
Notes
8 R2P’s ‘structural’ problems: a response to Roland Paris
R2P vs. humanitarian intervention, protective or otherwise
Confusing the structural dilemmas of the use of force and R2P implementation
Libya and Syria as R2P hard cases
Ways forward?
Conclusion
Notes
9 The UN Secretary-General and the forgotten third R2P responsibility
Twenty-first century international interventions
The shift from ‘humanitarian intervention’ to ‘the Responsibility to Protect’
The responsibility to rebuild
The Secretary-General as an actor
Conclusion
Notes
Part III
Gaps in and demands for atrocity prevention
Who will protect the Palestinians?
Non-intervention in Syria
Notes
10 Protection gaps for civilian victims of political violence
Africa and the civilian protection agenda
Limitations on the use of force in UN peace operations
A gap analysis
R2P and POC as sibling protection norms
Remaining protection gaps
Conclusion
Notes
11 Atrocity crimes and global governance
Twin norms: duty to prosecute and responsibility to protect
Sources of demand
Mixed motives
African agency
The way forward
Conclusion
Notes
12 Retrospect and prospect
Looking back
Looking ahead
Conclusion
Notes
Index
