Responsibility to Protect or Licence to Plunder?

Abstract

Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a relatively new international norm that permits state intervention in cases of gross humanitarian violations. While R2P was designed to protect civilians from harm, this paper argues that it is an uneven trade-off for deconstructing state sovereignty. By assessing the moral and practical ramifications of R2P, one can find the prioritisation of vague liberal ethics over institutionalised legal frameworks comes at a grave cost to efficient responses to conflict. Subjective interpretations of morality increase the selectivity of the doctrine which is further corrupted by the political, financial, and militaristic concerns of the intervening countries. This paper also explores the internal legitimacy of states and finds that R2P obfuscates a state’s moral duty. R2P provides the West the ability to self-legitimise and control the narrative while failing to address the root causes of conflict. Therefore, it is crucial to explore alternatives to R2P that could better address the challenges of humanitarian intervention.