Toward a Global Responsibility to Protect

ON 23 JULY 2009, THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY CONVENED TO consider the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P). What ensued was perhaps one of the liveliest debates that member states had ever seen. For supporters of R2P, however, the debate proved a disappointment as detractors had the opportunity to air familiar grievances and attempt to roll back the delicate consensus reached at the 2005 World Summit.1 Instead of moving the debate forward, the 2009 session ended with the adoption of a rather hollow resolution, which simply stated the Assembly’s intention to continue its consideration of R2P.2 This essay will analyze the General Assembly’s deliberations against the backdrop of three recent works on R2P, each of which constitute significant benchmarks in the ongoing efforts to realize the responsibility to protect. The first, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocities Once and for All, by Gareth Evans, provides a compelling account of how to fulfill the promise of R2P from the perspective of someone who has been involved in the R2P process since its inception. The second piece, Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities, by Alex Bellamy, a leading academic in the field, offers a slightly different understanding of how to carry R2P forward. The final piece, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect—the immediate catalyst for the 2009 General Assembly session—sets out the secretary-general’s vision for translating the responsibility to protect from words into deeds. I will begin this essay by reviewing Gareth Evans’s and Alex Bellamy’s advocacy of the responsibility to protect and then broaden the discussion to consider the issue of R2P misapplication, which has been a key challenge for advocates. I will then assess the efforts of Ban Ki-moon to refocus the debate

Disappointment · General assembly · International law · Law and economics · Political science · Responsibility to Protect · Sociology · Summit · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Development and Aid · Law · Peacebuilding and International Security · Psychology

• Introducing Jus ante Bellum as a cosmopolitan approach to humanitarian intervention

  Open Access•George W Brown, Garrett Wallace Brown et al.•European Journal of International…•2016

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• Major powers and the contested evolution of a responsibility to protect

  Philipp Rotmann, Gerrit Kurtz et al.•Conflict Security and Development•2014

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• Whither the Responsibility to Protect? Humanitarian Intervention and the 2005 World Summit

  Open Access•Alex J Bellamy•Ethics & International Affairs•2006

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• When is it Right to Fight

  Gareth Evans•Survival•2004

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