ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the commonalities and differences between human security and responsibility to protect (R2P). Human security puts the individual at the centre of the debate, analysis and policy and demands that the state acts as a collective instrument to protect human life and promote human welfare. Human security shifts the territorial or national security of sovereign states to what individual humans need, in total, to feel secure. The chapter critically examines the evolution of the concept of responsibility to protect over the decade, its gradual shift from a norm to a policy. R2P was globally recognised and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in its 2005 World Summit Outcome document. R2P came to resolve the controversy between the positive notion of 'humanitarian' and the negative notion of 'intervention'. R2P applies to four situations, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
