Shared advocacy between the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) and the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agendas is vital to help realise their stated objectives.
Dr Mills talks about R2P, neo-humanitarianism, the limits of norms, the practicality of the International Criminal Court, and the importance of academic networks.
The challenge is to find the right balance of deploying strong UN missions that effectively protect civilians whilst maintaining an impartial position in the conflict.
If R2P will not save lives as quickly as one would like it to, its application to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can serve the search for a peaceful and just solution.
If there is anything that the current humanitarian tragedy in Gaza teaches us about R2P, it is that history challenges the fulfillment of the international R2P agenda.
Does the R2P apply in Gaza? This is a silly question – of course it does. R2P is a universal principle, not a light switch to be turned on and off at whim or convenience.
More civilians will die without concerted efforts to break the cycles of impunity and escalation that have been allowed to establish themselves in Israel and Palestine.
The ignorance by R2P advocacy groups of the situation in Gaza contributes to the perception that the R2P is a selective tool of western states.
The real challenge facing the R2P is that there are multiple ‘manifest failings’ occurring on a range of different scales therefore we should not expect too much from it.
It is not enough to say R2P must have a gendered approach without identifying what such an approach should look like, and who is responsible for taking this forward.
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