| Summary/Abstract |
There has been an attempt to redefine the meaning of sovereignty in international legal discourse in the post-Cold War era. This attempt was essentially necessitated by a series of high-profile instances (including Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Darfur) in which the United Nations/international community was seen as doing too little or (occasionally) too much when faced with grave humanitarian emergencies. Accordingly, sovereignty, one of the foundational principles of international law, came to be interpreted as a two-way street conferring rights on States, while at the same time imposing a set of duties on them. This idea is couched in the doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect” (or as it has come to be known—R2P) which was formally endorsed at the UN World Summit 2005. The UN Security Council has invoked this doctrine numerous times in its resolutions over the years. Against this background, the central aim of this article is to examine the legal status of the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect under international law. While claiming that R2P is a new face of the old liberal doctrine of humanitarian intervention, the article will argue that R2P is neither a law nor a legally binding framework and that there are grave ambiguities in terms of its specific normative contents. It will demonstrate that R2P (at the very least its military aspects) does not enjoy consensus either in principle or in practice, and that its international legal implications are not immediately clear. From this analysis the article would conclude that R2P is yet to find its legal feet in the practice of States, particularly the Asian-African States and that if the international community is to take human suffering seriously and address it with timely and effective collective action, democratization of the Security Council should take place as a matter of urgent priority.
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