ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief account of the evolution of RtoP from an idea coined by the 2001 report of the International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) to an emerging norm endorsed by almost all the world’s governments. In so doing, it makes two principal arguments. First, that from relatively early on it was possible to discern two strands of thinking about the nature, scope and purpose of RtoP. These strands of thought have continued to characterize debates about the norm and its proper application. The first strand is primarily concerned with persuading states to fulfil their protection responsibilities and providing mutual assistance on a consensual basis. This line of thinking tends to downplay the role of coercive interference (while admitting that such interference may be necessary in extremis) in favour of upstream capacity-building and other non-coercive measures aimed at encouraging and enabling states and non-state actors to pull back from the brink when episodes of political instability threaten to deteriorate into mass violence. Proponents of this view typically see RtoP as primarily concerned with the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities.1 The second strand sees RtoP primarily as a response to the dilemmas of humanitarian intervention. Proponents of this view insist that RtoP’s most significant added value is in the generation of the international political will necessary to avoid repeats of Rwanda and other large-scale conscience shocking episodes of inhumanity. While most of the world’s governments – particularly those in the global south – subscribe to the first view, most academic commentators on RtoP and the principle’s critics subscribe to the second, creating dissonance between what states have actually committed to in relation to RtoP and what commentators and critics either believe they have committed to or would like them to have committed to. These two strands of thinking overlap and complement each other (sovereignty as responsibility and ideas about humanitarian inter vention directly informed RtoP) but also depart on crucial issues relating to the centrality of armed intervention, the scope of prevention, and the function of RtoP. Some of these complementarities and contradictions will become more apparent in subsequent chapters.
