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Essay of 14 pages for the course Conflict Rights and Justice at School of Oriental and African Studies (Coursework material)
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AS1. Conflict, Rights and JusticeInternational consensus on R2P
AN INTRODUCTION TO R2P: the problematics behind the lack of international consensus
The principle of the responsibility to protect that emerged in the early 2000s successfully
managed to temporarily reframe humanitarian intervention discourses (Bellamy, 2008:
621). After the NATO illegal bombing campaign over Kosovo in 1998 (Rockler, W., 2001: 1-3),
the international community grew increasingly weary of humanitarian interventions (HIs)
conceived as the “right to intervene” to defend human rights (Bellamy, 2008: 622). Not only
did HIs seem to reiterate the imperial mechanisms of colonialism justified in the name of the
greater good, but also, they undermined international principles of state sovereignty and
non-intervention (Çubukçu, 2013: 49-50).
Therefore, in 2001 the Canadian government set up the International Commission on
Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to overcome the “divisions that emerged among
Western and non-Western states over the legitimacy and legality of external interventions
in civil conflicts” (Hall, 2018: 174). The outcome of the Commission’s efforts was a report on
the Responsibility to Protect based on Deng’s and Cohen’s idea of “sovereignty as
responsibility” (Bellamy, 2008: 618-620). The equation of sovereignty with responsibility
was a cunning concept first devised in 1993 to overcome problems of violence, disease and
deprivation among internally displaced people (IDPs) (Bellamy, 2008: 618-619).
However, the ICISS report, which included a set ofSOAS,specific criteria
School to guide
of Oriental anddecision-making
African Studies 1
on military interventions, did not meet the immediate approval of the international
community (Hall, 2018: 175). The lack of immediate support for the ICISS proposal led to a
revision of the report, as achieving consensus on the ICISS’s criteria was unlikely (Bellamy,
2008: 630). A compromise was ultimately found in 2005 when international agreement was
finally reached via a de-linking of the criteria from the principle of R2P (Bellamy, 2008: 626).
A first problem can be identified; this being the fact that consensus was reached exclusively
on the normative principle, not on its application (Getachew, 2019: 227). The specificity
about R2P’s implementation added by the criteria had been rejected, and hence the norm
became subject to interpretation. The issue here arises when the norm becomes subject to
process that Acharya defines as mechanisms of “norm localisation”, when normative
principles are reinterpreted through national values and beliefs and institutionalised at the
state level (Vaughn and Dunne, 2015:30). The problem is that the very implementation of
the norm will be different according to different national interpretations of the norm. This
problem was clear in the case of the military intervention in Libya, when R2P’s application
was deemed to be the consequence of ‘misinterpretation’ and ‘misuse’ of the principle of
R2P. Libya’s events undermined the already fragile consensus on R2P and eroded its
legitimacy and consensus (Ralph and Gallagher, 2015: 563-566). The subsequent paralysis of
the international community in Syria was a clear symptom of such erosion and lack of
consensus (Ralph and Gallagher, 2015: 569).
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, It seems clear that if consensus is to be reached once again, legitimacy around the principle
of R2P needs to be restored. Hence, addressing questions around how to implement R2P
are fundamental (Getachew, 2019: 227-228). Efforts to develop specific criteria for
intervention, like the one of Brazil with its proposal on the “Responsibility while Protecting”
(RwP), will be beneficial to the cause of restoring legitimacy and legality around R2P (Stefan,
2016: 95-99). It might appear that the rejection of ICISS criteria that added exactly this
specificity on decision-making processes around military intervention decisions should not
have been so readily rejected by the international community, even though they had little
political support.
However, as Bellamy points out, those criteria did not add value to R2P and did not
strengthen the principle (Bellamy, 2008: 625-630). Instead, it is argued here that new
procedural reforms, able to ensure that military interventions remain rare occasions and
able to effectively add value to the concept of R2P, are needed. Secondly, as Lafont
underlines, the principle should place greater weight both on states’ responsibility to
protect vulnerable populations from within and, also on states’ building efforts in order to
guarantee the respect of fundamental human rights (Lafont, 2015: 72-75). Hence, if these
two aspects would be better defined, namely via procedural reforms and the
reinterpretation of R2P through adding more weight to pillars one and two of R2P, then R2P
itself would contribute to strengthen weak states and, to reinforce the very notion of state
sovereignty (Lafont, 2015: 72-74). Consensus around R2P would then increase on the part of
both Western and non-Western states.
SOAS, School of Oriental and African Studies 2
Furthermore, a second problem emerges. To confine the issue to problems of
“interpretation and implementation” means to limit scrutiny to an approach based
exclusively on an “application” model of R2P, ultimately allowing the very principle of R2P to
escape critical scrutiny (Getachew, 2019: 228). Instead, if consensus on R2P is to be reached,
then the very principle needs revision. As Getachew argues, it is also a matter of “practical
and institutional entailments” that the very redefinition of “sovereignty as responsibility”
brings about (Getachew, 2019: 229). In other words, Deng’s and Cohen’s redefinition of
“sovereignty as responsibility”, and the abandonment of the anti-colonial account of
“sovereignty as autonomy, equality, and non-intervention”, ultimately reduced the
normative significance of sovereignty (Getachew, 2019: 229-233). The consequence of R2P
being based on the idea of “sovereignty as responsibility” is that it ultimately subtly
reiterates a hierarchical international order by reducing “sovereignty” to imperial concepts
of instrumentalism, paternalism and conditionality while also empowering external bodies
of global governance with the power to decide which states satisfy the requirements for
membership to access the international community’s club (Getachew, 2019: 229). These
entailments cannot be solved via procedural checks and reforms, and interpretative choices,
like in the application model, but instead, need revision of the very principle of R2P, and of
the very international order (Getachew, 2019: 237). Only in such a way can international
consensus on R2P be achieved.
The paper will illustrate the possibility of achieving consensus on R2P and will demonstrate
that issues of legitimacy around the problem of external intervention due to tensions
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