Edward Luck, the UN special advisor on the Responsibility to Protect talks about the issue of a possble blockage of the UN Security Council. Ebenezer Appreku, deputy permanent representative of Permanent Mission of Ghana to the UN talks about the African Union's experience with r2p.   read more >>

Within the concept of r2p there is a need for criteria: in which cases and under which circumstances a military intervention is justified, and therefore to act consistently and to avoid a moral double standard. The criterion of reasonable prospects of success, as was introduced by the ICISS in 2001 (and also mentioned directly in the HLP of 2004, and indirectly in the reports of the secretary-general in 2005 and 2009), points out that there is no chance to protect the population of majo...   read more >>

Followers of this blog might also be interested in the IJCentral, a resource for concerned citizens around the world who want an effective International Criminal Court that will be able to prosecute perpetrators of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The blog running on this site provides a number of videos and commentaries. For more information please visit the blog here.   read more >>

Three years ago, at the Hague Joint Conference on Contemporary Issues of International Law, Prof. Alvarez talked about ‘the schizophrenias of R2P’ to add that, ‘R2P’s normative legs result from its not consistent, various iterations, as well as from the lack of clarity as to whether it is a legal or merely political concept. It means too many things to too many different people.’ Three years later, the deliberations of the previous week proved the continuing existential question around t...   read more >>

On 27 December 2007, Kenyans went to the polls in the most spirited national elections since the return to multiparty politics in 1992. As results began to pour in from key constituencies, rumours of election-rigging began to surface. Shortly thereafter, the country became engulfed in waves of violence, which killed over a thousand people, left up 600,000 displaced, and created an enabling environment for systematic rape. In response to the escalating violence, an African Union Panel of...   read more >>

One of the highlights of Wednesday’s conference sessions was the screening of film 'Worse Than War', which explores the phenomenon of genocide and how it can be stopped. The film is based on a book with a similar name by the award-winning author Daniel Jonah Goldhagen. Just as interesting as the film was Daniel Goldhagen’s presentation at the conference, in which he stressed that whether or not genocide occurs is not as dependent on the oft-cited root causes of genocide (such as ethnic...   read more >>

The emergence of the R2P as a distinct set of principles is usually traced to the report of the Canadian government-established International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). However, during the discussions at the conference, several references were made to the 'African origins' of the R2P. Edward Luck, for example, referred to the influence the ideas of Francis Deng, the present UN special adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, had on the drafters of the ICISS...   read more >>

At a conference on R2P, one has to be modest when talking about humanitarian interevention, since much emphasis is put on the distinction between the two. Indeed, as we have learned, concerns about military intervention can be seen as the main obstacle in the search for international consensus on R2P. So let me start with the following: I agree that R2P is about much more than military intervention, I agree that R2P has not legalized unilateral humanitarian intervention, and I agree that pr...   read more >>

It was a successful start to the conference sessions on Wednesday, with stimulating, thought-provoking presentations by the day’s speakers and equally interesting, incisive questions and comments from the audience. Among the recurrent issues in Wednesday’s (and also Thursday’s) discussions was the status of the R2P doctrine in international law. This question drew rather varied responses from the participants. For example, in his opening presentation tracing the evolution of the R2P doc...   read more >>

Our morning session started off with the intriguing legal question of whether the Security Council is obliged, under national law, to authorize the use of force in r2p situations. This, in its last analysis, would make an 'abusive' veto by a permanent member of the SC legally irrelevant. Anne Peters dissected the legal intricacies of this question and concluded with a resounding 'yes' (you can download her handout at the end of this post), while her fellow panelist, Daphna Shraga, denied...   read more >>

We have heard more than once today that it should be considered as progress that R2P has now been focused to be triggered by genocide, crimes against humanity or ethnic cleansing, as it should mean that the concept is becoming more operational. While this may be the case, we need to remind ourselves that these are the crimes that not only states, but almost everybody, would only ever see the proverbial 'other' commit (examples could be Britain’s or Australia’s reluctance to sign the Genocid...   read more >>

The parade of presentations this morning led us through, while perhaps not conclusively answering, possibly all the relevant legal aspects of the r2p – its legal basis, its scope, its content and its nature. While there is little agreement on whether we should talk about a (general) principle of international law, a political doctrine or an (emerging) norm, no one seems to think that what r2p entails is a radical departure from existing legal obligations. From common Article 1 of the Ge...   read more >>

Many commentators tend to argue that paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome document have created a new legal obligation for States and the international community to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Indeed, R2P is thought to constitute a new international legal norm – some even contend of customary value – which would be distinct from pre-existing legal obligations. It seems difficult to sustain that the conce...   read more >>

This morning's session was opened with remarks by Edward Luck, special advisor to the secretary general of the UN with a mandate concerning the conceptual, political and operational aspects of the responsibility to protect (r2p). He sketched out the development of the concept, from its formation in the 2001 report to the 2005 'Outcome' document, and emphasized a number of prominent aspects. These included the important fact that the r2p encompasses not only citizens, but the more general ca...   read more >>

André Nollkamper, the chair of the conference, opened our first plenary today by outlining what he called the potential of the r2p, which will hopefully guide the upcoming exchanges and deliberations between the participants, both offline and online. Clearly, while consensus on the r2p is broad but still feeble, many challenges remain and need to be addressed if this 'emerging doctrine' is to fulfil the hope to bring about effective responses to 'another Srebrenica'. Even among his peers...   read more >>

Prof. André Nollkaemper is the chair of the Linköping R2P conference. With five days to go until the R2P event in Linköping, many R2P watchers still have time to follow events over at Kampala, Uganda, where the ICC review conference is taking place. R2P and the ICC are largely concerned with the same situations: Darfur, the election violence in Kenya, the ongoing conflict in Uganda, and others. Indeed, R2P even is defined in terms of the core crimes that are within the jurisdiction of th...   read more >>

'Never again' – this may be the most commonly cited post-WWII pledge, epitomizing a common determination to be capable of learning from history after all and to move towards a time when turning a blind eye towards grand-scale atrocities would no longer be thinkable. After the shock of the Holocaust, however, the onset of the Cold War quickly dissolved hopes for the emergence of an international consensus on a robust regime to prevent the worst crimes against humanity in the future. Achi...   read more >>