Responsibility to Protect
How the doctrine that sovereignty carries obligations emerged from the failures of Rwanda and Srebrenica, and why R2P remains contested.
Sovereignty as Responsibility
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) emerged from the catastrophic failures of the 1990s. The international community stood by during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, when 800,000 people were massacred in 100 days, and failed to protect civilians in the UN safe area of Srebrenica in 1995. These failures provoked a fundamental question: does state sovereignty shield a government that is slaughtering its own people?
In 2001, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, established by Canada, published 'The Responsibility to Protect.' The report reframed the debate. Instead of asking whether outsiders have a 'right to intervene,' it asked whether states have a 'responsibility to protect' their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. When a state fails to meet this responsibility, the international community bears a residual responsibility to act. This subtle reframing placed the obligation on the sovereign state first and the international community second.
