Does Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Make Difference to Civilians?: An Analytical and Evaluation Study

Abstract

In 2001, the International Commission on Intervention and State sovereignty (ICISS) proposed rethinking on sovereignty through the prism of a new concept: the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). Several years after, its message has been achieved? This is answer to this question that, in the aftermath of the Arab spring, at the end of an intervention that is controversial in Libya and in the face of the Syrian drama, we decided to make an evaluation, by analyzing this doctrine.

From details of methodological of the purpose of this article, the review of the legal framework of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) in international law is based on pre-existing concepts and rules that are sometimes approached such as the international responsibility and criminal responsibility priori conceptualization of the “Responsibility to Protect”, will be the first axis of this study. In the second, axis the responsibility to protect the population rests primarily on the territorial State against war crimes, crimes against humanity, crimes of genocide and ethnic cleansing. It must be stated that the obligation to protect the concerned State, was necessary before the States itself by establishing international legal standards. If the State is not willing to do or unable, the subsidiary protective role is the responsibility of other actors.

The reality of major obstacles reduces the effective implementation on the ground of the “Responsibility to Protect”. These obstacles can be linked with the same design of it, just as they may result from external causes that could make inoperative the responsibility to protect in view of the situation, the international community application does not rely on the implementation of the responsibility to protect in some cases that meet, however, all the conditions to act within this framework. In the third axis of this study, it will be also a review of the operational legal framework.

The United Nations has adopted several resolutions on the “Responsibility to Protect”, examining not only their support to the doctrine, but also their willingness to authorize the deployment of peacekeeping operations and to adopt resolutions in support of military intervention paragraph. But the Security Council of the United Nations has not always been unanimous about the situations to which the “responsibility to protect” applies. The case of Darfur and the crisis of the Syria, there was something else, they were exemplary cases of the application of the “Responsibility to Protect” inertia, and the different responses by the international community in the face of these crises, will allow us in the Fourth axis of interesting conclusions about the difficulties in the application thereof.