Punishing or Preventing? The Responsibility to Protect and the Wars in South Sudan

Abstract

The chapter retraces the intricate link between the responsibility to protect and South(ern) Sudan. First, a historical retrospective shows how humanitarian efforts in Southern Sudan created the consciousness that an international norm to prevent human rights abuses was vital. Subsequently, an analysis of the 2013–2018 civil war in South Sudan illustrates highly diverging interpretations of R2P’s implementation in practice. Four dimensions of how R2P’s preventive and punitive aspects find expression in discourses and actions are highlighted: judicial accountability, limits to national sovereignty, the United Nations’ changing self-conception, and sanctions regimes. Findings show the mutual exclusivity of different measures, the UN’s shift to human security, the salience of civil society activism in setting the agenda and South Sudanese actors’ active utilization of the R2P norm.