cognitive dissonance led to a new attempt at resolution: the Responsibility to
Protect (R2P).
R2P, the product of a high-level commission featuring many of the key
protagonists of the 1990s debates on humanitarian intervention, linked them to
ongoing debates on how to reconceptualise sovereignty to resolve the tension
between sovereignty norms and human rights norms, through notions such as
Francis Deng’s “sovereignty as responsibility”.^81 It created a framework in which, for
the worst “mass atrocity crimes”, there would always be a responsible agent: in the
first instance the host state, and if unwilling or unable to fulfil its responsibilities,
the wider community of states, led by the UN Security Council. Responsibility here
is conceived of across three parameters: preventing, reacting and rebuilding. A
watered-down version of R2P was endorsed by the 2005 UN World Summit.
Since then there has been much debate on what R2P represents. In the
absence of new international legal obligations, it is at best a doctrine. But a doctrine
implies a consistent impact on the shape of international policy-making, which is as
yet difficult to detect. Alex Bellamy, who has been providing almost real-time
academic comment on the evolution of R2P, recently concluded that as
indeterminacy makes it unlikely that RtoP will act in the near future as a
catalyst for international action in response to genocide and mass atrocities,
it seems reasonable to argue that the most prudent path is to view the
principle as a policy agenda in need of implementation rather than as a ‘‘red
flag’’ to galvanize the world into action.^82That is, it provides no shortcut to professional humanitarians in search of reliable,
consistent action, and a robust internationalised responsibility for mass atrocity
crimes. R2P offers a change, and perhaps a useful one, in vocabulary, but it does not
81
ICISS, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre,
2001). Available at http://www.iciss.ca/pdf/Commission-Report.pdf; accessed on 18 June
- A recent account, and defence, by a key protagonist is Gareth Evans, The
Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Washington, D.C.:
Brookings Institution Press, 2008). 82
Alex J. Bellamy, "The Responsibility to Protect - Five Years On", Ethics & International
Affairs 24, no. 2 (2010): 166. For a book-length survey see Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to
Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).