Protection in the Shadow of Empire

Abstract

Since the late 1950s, the United Nations (UN) and other international actors have developed and systematised a body of practices aimed at ‘the maintenance of order’ and ‘the protection of life’ in the decolonised world. These practices range from fact-finding and the provision of humanitarian assistance to peacekeeping, the management of refugee camps and territorial administration. As the UN and humanitarian organisations expanded and consolidated those practices, a new form of authority began to emerge. This book is an exploration of the ways in which those practices of governing and that form of authority have been represented. It focuses in particular upon a new basis for justifying and rationalising international rule that emerged at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The international authority to undertake executive action for protective ends was given a detailed normative articulation in the form of a 2001 report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) entitled ‘The Responsibility to Protect’. ICISS was an initiative, sponsored by the Canadian government, undertaken in response to serious concerns about the legality and legitimacy of the 1999 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) action in Kosovo. The responsibility to protect concept is premised upon the notion, to quote former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, that ‘the primary raison d’etre and duty' of every state is to protect its population. If a state ‘manifestly’ fails to protect its population, the responsibility to do so shifts to the international community.