The problem with R2P is precisely that which rendered “Never Again!” and the Genocide Convention impotent, namely that its enforcement is conditional on the support of the permanent five members of the Security Council. Only the very naive imagine that the P5 honour Article 24.1 of the Charter and act on behalf of UN member states; each state’s respective national interest determines their position.
NGOs have been voicing concerns that the military have intruded into their domain by conducting short term aid work and long term ‘hearts and minds’ projects that have blurred the lines between aid workers and military troops. This has had worrying consequences for humanitarianism.
The UN was neither designed nor expected to be a pacifist organisation. Its origins lie in the anti-Nazi wartime military alliance amongst Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union. The all-powerful UN Security Council is the world’s duly, and only, sworn in sheriff for enforcing international law and order.
Forced migration and refugee flows from Burma to Bangladesh are becoming increasingly difficult for the international community and the region to deal with. Failure at state, regional and international level to deal with the problems facing the Rohingya refugees reflects a wider need to re-evaluate international protection regimes when it comes to dealing with forced migration and minority groups in Southeast Asia.
The responsibilities to prevent and react have been addressed in Libya, but the third stage of the R2P, “the responsibility to rebuild”, remains an ongoing issue. The extent to which the R2P can be seen as a “success” in Libya rests largely how this part of the R2P is implemented. In many respects, the “responsibility to rebuild” is the one of the most important parts of the R2P because requires intervening actors to establish a clear and effective post-intervention strategy.
One of the most depressing, and distressing, realities we have to acknowledge has been our inability to prevent or halt the recurring horror of mass atrocity crimes.
Institutionalism rejects the realist assumption that international politics is a struggle for power in which military security issues are top priority and argues that instead, force is an ineffective instrument of policy. In order to understand the impact of internationalism on IR theory and its criticisms we must first look at its definition and how it differs from realist perspectives.
Any research on the Greek Civil War should have three levels of analysis: the international, the regional, and the national. These three terms could respectively be translated into the fragile relationship and power balancing among the Allies; the spread of communist regimes in the Balkans; and the internal struggle for the modernization of the political system, the constitutional issue, and the conduct of free elections.
With the exception of Raphael Lemkin’s efforts and the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, no idea has moved faster in the international normative arena than “the responsibility to protect”. While blow-back from Libya is inevitable, nonetheless R2P is alive and well.
Although they face extreme difficulties, international sanctions in foreign policies can still be ethical. This essay begins by stressing the two dimensional problem of ethics and gives the reasons why the existence of international ethics is still possible. The essay will then analyze the difficulties sanctions face, and under which conditions ethical international sanctions can be realized.
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