ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has been framed and co-opted by states to the point that it is now devoid of prescriptive merit and, often employed to serve mendacious interests that run counter to its ethos. R2P has been invoked by the Security Council in Resolutions and, despite the post-intervention crisis in Libya and the conflict in Syria, the Security Council's use of R2P increased after 2011. R2P is evidence of an additional type of relatively underappreciated norm, however, namely an established norm that is often applied in ways that actually run counter to its original ethos. Victims of systemic human rights violations are, prey to geopolitics, as they were prior to the establishment of R2P. From an anthropological or social-psychological perspective, the determination to maintain an image of R2P as effective, dynamic and a force that has 'begun to change the world' would no doubt serve as an interesting case study on group-think, collective delusions and/or denialism.
