Humanitarian crises since 2005

Getting agreement on an abstract principle is one thing, translating that agreement into actionable policy that adds value to local, regional and global efforts to prevent genocide and mass atrocities and protect the victims is quite another. Therefore, while it is important to understand the politics behind the RtoP principle, we also need to know about how RtoP is used in practice and what (if any) effects it has had on behaviour. Running alongside the General Assembly’s consideration of RtoP, the principle has been used by a variety of different actors in relation to more than a dozen humanitarian crises and cases of acute human rights abuse. Ranging from post-election violence in Kenya, where RtoP was employed by Kofi Annan as part of a diplomatic strategy, to the Russian invasion of Georgia, where the principle was invoked to support unilateral armed intervention, the RtoP has been inconsistently and selectively applied by a wide range of different actors to an equally diverse variety of situations. This chapter briefly identifies the different ways in which RtoP has been used – or not – in relation to humanitarian crises since 2005. In relation to crises in Darfur, Kenya, Georgia, Myanmar/Cyclone Nargis, Gaza, Sri Lanka, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Guinea, RtoP has formed part of the debate about how the international community should respond to imminent or actual episodes of genocide and mass atrocities. In relation to a second set of crises, notably south Sudan, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq, RtoP has not been invoked or debated despite the commission of atrocities. This is despite the fact that in terms of the number of civilians killed, since 2005 Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia have been the world’s bloodiest countries. In relation to a third set of protracted crises, North Korea and Myanmar, RtoP has been invoked by civil society actors to summon international attention to protracted human rights crises, though with little effect. Covering each type in turn, this chapter examines RtoP’s record in practice.