ABSTRACT
The question of ‘what can we do to stop people harming others?’ has animated much public engagement with international politics since the end of the Cold War. During the 1990s, this question was discussed in terms of the legitimacy of humanitarian intervention. The resort to force in international relations began to achieve a new respectability, not least because for many it seemed to offer a means for the international community, or at least a liberal alliance of democratic states, to bring human rights and democracy to protect people suffering in situations of genocide, civil war or large-scale human rights violations. In 2001, a significant shift in this debate was signalled with the publication of a report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (or ICISS) entitled The Responsibility to Protect (ICISS 2001). ICISS was an initiative, sponsored by the Canadian government, undertaken in response to serious concerns about the legality and legitimacy of the 1999 NATO action in Kosovo. The responsibility to protect concept is premised upon the notion, to quote former secretary-
general Kofi Annan, that ‘the primary raison d’être and duty’ of every state is to protect its population (United Nations Secretary-General 2005: para. 135). If a state manifestly fails to protect its population, the responsibility to do so shifts to the international community. The responsibility to protect concept has since colonized internationalist debates about conflict prevention, humanitarian action, peacekeeping and territorial administration, and has garnered the support of a strikingly diverse range of states, international and regional organizations and civil society groups.
