Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

The origins and evolution of Responsibility to Protect at the UN

The origins and evolution of Responsibility to Protect at the UN This article situates the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) concept, later accepted by many as a principle, in the wider flow of events following on the end of the Cold War. Among the hallmarks of change in the United Nations (UN) Security Council as of the early 1990s, in stark contrast to the Council’s preoccupations during its first four decades of activity, was its growing attention to humanitarian considerations relating to conflict, its new willingness to tackle conflicts (mainly internal ones) it might have avoided earlier, and its willingness to experiment with new approaches to resolving them. Just as worries over terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass destruction were to become dominant themes in its work, the humanitarian imperative also incrementally wove itself into the fabric of the Council’s decision-making. It is against this wider backdrop and that of several spectacular UN failures to prevent genocide and other mass humanitarian distress that UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Kofi Annan was impelled as of 1999 to look beyond existing international law and practice for a new normative framework, that while formally respecting the sovereignty of states nevertheless elevated humanitarian concerns and action to the level of an international responsibility to prevent the worst outcomes. Today R2P finds itself competing with other legal and diplomatic principles, but it remains a potent platform for advocacy and, at times, for action by the UN. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png International Relations SAGE

The origins and evolution of Responsibility to Protect at the UN

Cater, Charles; Malone, David M
International Relations , Volume 30 (3): 20 – Sep 1, 2016
Download PDF
20 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/sage/the-origins-and-evolution-of-responsibility-to-protect-at-the-un-0xwAGkW26u

References (42)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2016
ISSN
0047-1178
eISSN
1741-2862
DOI
10.1177/0047117816659586
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This article situates the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) concept, later accepted by many as a principle, in the wider flow of events following on the end of the Cold War. Among the hallmarks of change in the United Nations (UN) Security Council as of the early 1990s, in stark contrast to the Council’s preoccupations during its first four decades of activity, was its growing attention to humanitarian considerations relating to conflict, its new willingness to tackle conflicts (mainly internal ones) it might have avoided earlier, and its willingness to experiment with new approaches to resolving them. Just as worries over terrorism and the threat of weapons of mass destruction were to become dominant themes in its work, the humanitarian imperative also incrementally wove itself into the fabric of the Council’s decision-making. It is against this wider backdrop and that of several spectacular UN failures to prevent genocide and other mass humanitarian distress that UN Secretary-General (UNSG) Kofi Annan was impelled as of 1999 to look beyond existing international law and practice for a new normative framework, that while formally respecting the sovereignty of states nevertheless elevated humanitarian concerns and action to the level of an international responsibility to prevent the worst outcomes. Today R2P finds itself competing with other legal and diplomatic principles, but it remains a potent platform for advocacy and, at times, for action by the UN.

Journal

International Relations – SAGE

Published: Sep 1, 2016

There are no references for this article.