International Law and the Responsibility to Protect
Clarifying or Expanding States' Responsibilities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12960586 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jennifer M Welsh (0000-0002-9019-1845, corresponding author), Maria L Banda |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 2 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 213-231 |
| Publication date | 2010-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Global Responsibility to Protect (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1875-984X • E-ISSN: 1875-9858 |
| Publisher | Brill (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1163/187598410x500363 |
| OpenAlex | W2007769953 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) invokes one of the most powerful moral and legal terms in contemporary international politics – namely, responsibility. The nature of the relationship between R2P and international law and morality, however, remains contested, giving rise to questions lying at the core of R2P's normative foundations. What is the source of R2P? To whom is this responsibility attributable, and under what circumstances? Does R2P give rise to legal obligations? Such questions challenge International Relations (IR) theorists to look beyond their discipline for more insightful tools and methods of analysis. In this article, we apply a broadened theoretical framework to explain the ongoing controversy about R2P. In Part II, we borrow tools from moral philosophy to identify the source and the bearer of the responsibility to protect in today's international society. In Part III, we draw on international legal scholarship to analyse whether R2P has emerged as a 'new' norm of customary international law. We find that international endorsement of R2P has helped to clarify existing obligations in international law, but that intrinsic ambiguities in its articulation currently limit R2P's capacity to entrench new obligations for states to protect strangers. At the same time, our finding that R2P is an example of 'soft law' leads us to conclude that R2P can nonetheless exert significant influence on how states interpret their legal obligations and, in the coming decade, it may also help catalyse diplomatic efforts to reform the international architecture for preventing and responding to mass atrocities
Customary international law · International law · International relations · Morality · Norm (philosophy · Normative · Political science · Politics · Public international law · Responsibility to Protect · Scholarship · Sociology · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security
The Limits of Kant’s Cosmopolitanism
Inhumanity’s law
Making Military Interventions Obsolete
The web of responsibility in and for the Arctic
Collectives' and individuals' obligations
Evaluating the United Nation’s Agenda for Atrocity Prevention
Norm Robustness and the Responsibility to Protect
Global constitutionalism and the responsibility to protect
The Practice, Pitfalls, and Prospects of the Responsibility to Protect in Africa
Assessing Advocacies for Forcibly Displaced People
| Citations per year | 0.91 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2015 - 2024 (10) |
| Highly cited | No |