Evaluating the Efficacy of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) Doctrine in the Prevention of Mass Atrocity Crimes

Abstract

Mass atrocity crimes prevention remains one of the major dilemmas facing the current international law and world governance. Following the deceptions of the international community to prevent genocides and rampant crimes against civilians in the late twentieth century, the concept of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) became a normative approach that aimed at balancing the sovereignty of states and the duty to protect of the population against genocides, crimes against humanity, and war-related crimes as well as ethnic cleansing. This study attempts a critical evaluation of the effectiveness of R2P in preventing crimes against humanity on mass scales using factors such as legal underpinnings, institutionalization and field practice. The study places R2P in the context of the whole development of international law, and questions its historical precursors with the international humanitarian law, international criminal law and international human rights law and its formal recognition in the United Nations world summit in 2005. It breaks down the tripartite structure of R 2 P and appraises how the principle of sovereignty and non- interception theories as mutually supportive has been transformed by the doctrine in question. This investigation, by selectively questioning the main case studies, such as Libya (2011), Syria, Myanmar (the Rohingya crisis) and the Israel Palestine situation, reveals the asymmetric application of R2P and the powerful impact of the politics in the United Nations Security Council. Its results fill in a long-term gap between the normative promise of R2P and its empirical results. Though the doctrine has elicited much discussion about atrocity prevention, early warning, and accountability measures, it has not been able to prevent and end the mass atrocity crimes at all times. Pickiness, Council of Security paralysis and militarization fears and shortage in accountability still puts limits on its success. Nonetheless, the principle that sovereignty contains duties and that mass atrocity crimes are the matters that ought to have a lawful international interest has been reiterated through R2P.The article finds that R2P is not a legal rule but a passing normative tool that is mainly a soft-law tool. It argues that the strengthening of R2P requires further emphasis on the preventive elements, the legal boundaries of the step, the restrictive use of the veto in the cases of atrocities, and the increased collaboration with the stakeholders in the regions and the country. The solution to these dilemmas can help R2P to better fulfill its initial mandate in guaranteeing the populations of states against extreme violence without undermining legitimacy of the international law order.