R2P

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is an agreement established by the United Nations (UN) which serves to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity from occurring in any nation. It bolsters the basic premise of the UN which is to uphold liberal Western rights in various nations around the world (in all 193 member states of the UN). It retains human rights in all nations by enabling the UN to intervene, through hard power, in nations where extreme human rights abuses are occurring. The R2P Was published in the ICISS document (“The Responsibility to Protect”) in 2001 and was later ratified in the 2005 World Summit.

The R2P declares that every state has the responsibility to protect its population from the four mass atrocities (genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity). However, when the nation is unable to uphold these human rights due to military/economic/political instability, the international community has to intervene in that individual state so that they can reduce the human rights abuses. This is because every nation which is a member state of the UN has the responsibility to encourage and assist individual states in meeting their responsibility to protect their populace. If a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations from the four atrocities, the international community is prepared to take collective action in a timely and decisive manner in accordance to the UN charter (international intervention is legitimised due to the nation’s failure to abide by the rule of the R2P).

The R2P was founded due to the Rwandan genocide of 1994 where no nations intervened whilst the nation of Rwanda was breaching their R2P the citizens by enabling ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity. The Rwandan genocide is often dubbed the "100 days of slaughter" of 1994 where during the period of 100 days, around 800,000 Rwandan people were slaughtered by the ethnic Hutu extremists. The members of the minority Tutsi community of Rwanda along with the opposition of the ethnic Hutu extremists were slaughtered (irrespective of their ethnic origin). Over those 100 days, mass atrocities were committed, for example "on the night of 6 April 1994 a plane carrying then-President Juvenal Habyarimana, and his counterpart Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi - both Hutus - was shot down, killing everyone on board" (BBC). Even during these atrocities, the world turned a blind eye. Because of no countries intervening and, thereby, enabling the continuity of the Rwandan genocide, the UN realised that the R2P needed to be created.

However, is the R2P really worth all the effort? The R2P appears to destroy the entire concept of state sovereignty. Sovereignty is defined as 'a state's ability to rule itself'. States are sovereign when they have full control and authority of what happens within their nation. States should also respect the sovereignty of all other nations. But when another country exercises the rules of the R2P by intervening in a nation where the government is committing crimes against humanity, they are breaching that nation's sovereignty as they are hindering the government's ability to have the authority of what happens within their nation. In addition to this, the R2P is often flawed when nations have to intervene. This is because there is no single document in international law that codifies all war crimes so there is an element of subjectivity and degrees of human rights abuses. This means that nations often do not intervene when human rights abuses are occurring as they do not want to violate state sovereignty illegitimately. Because of the element of subjectivity, many nations also do not feel obliged to intervene unless they are very powerful and in the scope of international attention (eg. the USA is usually obliged to intervene in other nations).

Although there are issues with the R2P, it is still one of the most fundamental and necessary agreements of the UN as it attempts to promote human rights internationally. It defends the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and it is extremely necessary to exist as it also gives an impression of a "rhetorical presence" (David Scheffer) – this presence means that the nations feel as though the international community is looming overhead so sovereign nations understand that if they make irresponsible decisions, there will be intervention from foreign sources. This "rhetorical presence" forces the nations to consider their every action and attempt to work towards bettering the welfare of their populace.