The Responsibility to Protect: from promise to practice

Abstract

Drawing on their combined 25 years of experience with the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), Alex Bellamy and Edward Luck ask the critical question: how do we move closer to implementing R2P? The two authors are uniquely positioned to reflect on both the history and practice of R2P: Bellamy is the founding director of the Asia–Pacific Centre on R2P and Luck was the United Nations' first special adviser on R2P. The book is essential reading for those who want to better understand the current state of R2P implementation and the ongoing gaps and challenges. The breadth and depth of the book are impressive, drawing on the authors' wealth of research and policy experience within think-tanks, the UN and academia more broadly. The authors begin by retelling the history of R2P––a story that has been told many times before. However, they revisit this narrative from a distance of some years and as individuals with close proximity to events as they unfolded and thus are able to tell a new version of R2P's evolution. Their historical analysis focuses on how the original mandate of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty led to an initial emphasis on questions of humanitarian intervention, as opposed to the prevention of mass atrocities. The dominance of debates on humanitarian intervention, they argue, has made R2P too UN-focused, when the most fundamental prevention activities are carried out by states. By moving beyond the UN forums, they stress the importance not only of local, regional and international actors, but also of the collaboration between them.