| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) requires states and international society as a whole to protect civilians from genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. This article argues that, instead of considering RtoP as a continuum to the humanitarian intervention doctrine aimed at performing limited protection tasks, RtoP might best be understood as a form of another doctrine which has been recently emerging in global conflict management, namely sovereignty-building. The main value added of this methodological shift resides in its potential to show that RtoP involves not only limited functions of short-term rescue and protection of civilians from immediate physical harm but also more long-term and ambitious efforts aimed at building responsible sovereigns and transforming societies. RtoP projects two kinds of images of responsible sovereignty on weak, fragile and failed states: the 'Bodinian' image, which implicates institution-building, reconstruction and empowerment of societies emerging from civil war and the 'Lockean' image, which refers to attempts to socialise states to a global human rights culture, by means of collective peer pressure, political and diplomatic means, and the use of coercive force, as demonstrated by military interventions in Libya and Côte d'Ivoire in 2011. This article argues that the sovereignty-building paradigm embodied in RtoP also involves potential pitfalls: it gives an opportunity for sub-state actors such as rebel groups to manipulate RtoP as an instrument (or weapon) to enhance their own political objectives in civil wars against incumbent national authorities.
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