The Responsibility to Protect

Leadership in Global Institution Building

“…4 However, the GA was not a propitious forum for engaging in a constructive dialogue that explored the diversity and potential overlap of states' positions. On the contrary, the 1999 debate tended to polarize states: "fervent supporters of intervention on human rights grounds, opposed by anxious defenders of state sovereignty, dug themselves deeper and deeper into opposing trenches" (Evans and Sahnoun 2002). One Minervian actor, Canada, concluded that the pursuit of a new humanitarian intervention norm had to take on a new shape.…”

The ‘responsibility to protect’ in natural disasters: another excuse for interventionism? Nargis Cyclone, Myanmar

“…The issue must be reframed not as an argument about the "right to intervene" but about the "responsibility to protect"'. 36 The report concluded that whilst state sovereignty is crucial to the maintenance of good international relations its inviolability is no longer applicable in relation to human suffering as a result of war, insurgency, repression or state failure.…”

The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme: An Innovation in Global Governance and Conflict Prevention

“…UN-sponsored peacekeeping missions expanded in number and size. There was talk of a ''responsibility to protect'' innocent citizens, even from their own governments, which would justify active intervention by the international community in contravention of traditional norms of sovereignty (Evans et al, 2002;Finnemore, 1996Finnemore, , 2003International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2001).…”