Glossary Term:

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In September 2005, at the end of the World Summit held in New York for the 60th anniversary of the United Nations, the attending Heads of States endorsed the concept of a responsibility to protect (R2P) populations from mass violence and atrocities. Paragraph 138 of the General Assembly’s “Outcome Document” thus recognizes the responsibility of an individual state “to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.” It further states that this responsibility “entails the prevention of such crimes, including their incitement, through appropriate and necessary means.” Paragraph 139 then goes on to ascertain the international community’s own responsibility to help and take collective action where and when “national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations” (UNGA, 2005: para. 138-139).

 A- The original coining of the concept

The responsibility to protect demanded the establishment of a link between the concept of sovereignty and the idea of responsibility. That link was first emphasized by Francis M. Deng – the then Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Internally Displaced Persons – in his work related to the fate of vulnerable groups like displaced populations and refugees (Deng, 1995). For Deng and his colleague, Roberta Cohen (Cohen and Deng, 1996), the crux of the protection’s conundrum was to determine how to move beyond the obstruction of national authorities rebuffing international assistance and offers of aid in situations where the state is unable (or unwilling) to fulfill its own responsibility. The solution was to move beyond sovereignty “as control” toward a concept of sovereignty “as responsibility”. Once done, this re-conceptualization of sovereignty opened the door to a two-tiered framework for protection: the first acknowledging that the genuine function and primary responsibility of protection lay with the sovereign government; the second distinguishing a derived responsibility for assistance and protection resting with the international community.

The real breakthrough, though, came when the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS, 2001) introduced the concept of sovereignty “as responsibility” in relation to “avoidable catastrophe”, especially mass violence and atrocities. In the wake of the tension created by the NATO intervention in Kosovo and in response to Kofi Annan’s report on the work of the organization challenging member states to resolve the contradiction between sovereignty and human rights (Annan, 1999: para. 37), Canada’s Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy, and Canadian Foreign Affairs officials advocated the creation of an international commission on humanitarian intervention. The purpose was to reconciliate state sovereignty with the exceptional use of armed force to protect population that are threatened with violent acts.

Released in December 2001, the ICISS report turned upside-down the way we considered both sovereignty and the protection of populations against serious harm. Starting from the point of view of those populations needing protection, instead of those states willing to intervene, the report identified six relevant decision-making criteria that had to be transparently fulfilled before a forcible “reaction” could be considered: Just cause (a serious and irreparable harm or imminent likelihood of harm to human beings); Right authority (Security Council authorization should in all cases be sought, but alternative avenues can be pursued); Right intention (the primary purpose must be to halt or avert human suffering); Last resort (an intervention can only be justified when every non-military option has been explored); Proportional means (the intervention should aim for the minimum necessary to secure the defined human protection goal); Reasonable prospects (the consequences of action should not be worse than the consequences of inaction).

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