Minerva’s Allies: States, Secretariats, and Individuals in the Emergence of the Responsibility to Protect Norm

Abstract

In September 1999, reflecting on the Rwandan genocide and NATO’s Kosovo campaign, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the UN General Assembly (GA) to come to terms with the question of humanitarian intervention. He sparked intense debate, but consensus proved elusive as ardent supporters of humanitarian intervention clashed with staunch defenders of state sovereignty. One year later, Canada announced a new initiative designed to bridge the impasse: the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The Commission’s 2001 report sought to reframe the issue of humanitarian intervention in terms of an international “responsibility to protect” civilians from large-scale loss of life or ethnic cleansing if their own states proved unwilling or unable to do so (ICISS 2001a). Despite initial setbacks, this notion — often referred to as R2P — has achieved considerable international recognition, culminating in its unanimous endorsement (in modified form) at the 2005 UN World Summit. Although important components of the ICISS report were sacrificed to secure this endorsement (Coleman, forthcoming) and serious challenges to the norm’s implementation remain, this was a remarkable case of international norm building. R2P shaped contemporary debates about military intervention in Darfur (for example, Williams and Bellamy 2005), was reaffirmed by the Security Council in 2006 (UNSC 2006, §4), and in 2011 the Council invoked R2P in its responses to crises in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya (UNSC 2011a; UNSC 2011b; UNSC 2011c).KeywordsSecurity CouncilHumanitarian InterventionGeneral AssemblyNormative CommitmentState SovereigntyThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.