Abstract
The aim of this article is to study the “Responsibility to Protect”, its evolution since 2000 and what can be expected for its future. Concurrently, the paper takes into account the need to protect populations, victims of certain types of aggression and to preserve the international order. Major criticisms of this doctrine are highlighted, as well as some of its impacts on the international community and, significantly, some of the difficulties that have arisen during its development – a process that has been controversial and troubled. Some of the main risks and uncertainties that affect its future are investigated, considering that a set of emerging countries who do not agree with the Western liberal order intends to be more active in international affairs. The fundamental argument is that the future of this doctrine might continue to be troubled and full of uncertainties. Thus, for RtoP to evolve in a favourable way, it will be necessary, on the one hand, that the members of the Security Council of the United Nations engage in genuine multilateral cooperation in order to safeguard the changes taking place in the international order; and, on the other hand, that the States consider such crimes to be an essential issue of international security and part of their interests
Highlights
Despite the numerous examples of atrocious violence against innocent populations, it was probably during the 1990s, with the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and approximately 8,000 Bosnians killed in Srebrenica in 1995, that the international community became truly aware of the need to discuss humanitarian intervention
The debate has involved States that argue in favour of intervention to end certain types of conflicts and others that block this type of action through political and legal arguments related to respecting State sovereignty
The foremost intention is to create a resolution by diplomatic means as a way of implementing Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), avoiding military intervention (Pattison, 2015: 936) and having an organ, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), with the responsibility of seeking to foresee potential conflicts in order to avoid certain types of crimes, ideally without direct military intervention – unless it becomes absolutely inevitable or even desirable in preventing an escalation of violence
Summary
Despite the numerous examples of atrocious violence against innocent populations, it was probably during the 1990s, with the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and approximately 8,000 Bosnians killed in Srebrenica in 1995, that the international community became truly aware of the need to discuss humanitarian intervention. There was the intervention of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in March 1999, which bombed the former Republic of Yugoslavia in order to protect the Albanian population in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing. The foremost intention is to create a resolution by diplomatic means as a way of implementing RtoP, avoiding military intervention (Pattison, 2015: 936) and having an organ, the UNSC, with the responsibility of seeking to foresee potential conflicts in order to avoid certain types of crimes, ideally without direct military intervention – unless it becomes absolutely inevitable or even desirable in preventing an escalation of violence For this reason, the “responsibility to prevent” is the most important of them all and must always be carried to exhaustion before other options are considered (ICISS, 2001: xi). Concerning the “responsibility to rebuild”, the report refers to a moral responsibility and need to have a strategic plan on how to proceed to reconstruction in the post-conflict phase, but without materialising it in terms of operationalisation (ICISS, 2001: 39-45)
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