par Schrijver, Nicolaas
Référence Globalisation, Multilateralism, Europe: Towards a Better Global Governance?, Taylor and Francis, page (317-331)
Publication Publié, 2016-04
Partie d'ouvrage collectif
Résumé : In 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). R2P aims at providing human security by protecting citizens from mass atrocities. It vests the primary responsibility to do so with their national States. Should this State be unable or unwilling to perform this task, it allocates a secondary responsibility to the international community. This way, R2P seeks to find a way to respect the sovereignty of States, while leaving open the possibility of the international community taking adequate measures to protect civilians from mass atrocities. R2P is different from the concept of humanitarian intervention, since it involves a much broader range of actions than a military action. However, R2P is at the same time limited to four concrete core crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, serious war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. Recent practice demonstrates both the application of the new concept, for example the cases of Libya and Côte d'Ivoire in 2011, and non-application, such as the case of Syria. Disagreement over the modalities of putting R2P into practice hinders its firm establishment in international politics as well as international law.