One of the most important developments in world politics in the last decade has been the spread of the idea that state sovereignty comes with responsibilities as well as privileges, and that there exists a global responsibility to protect people threatened by mass atrocities. The principle of the Responsibility to Protect is an acknowledgment by all who live in zones of safety of a duty of care towards those in zones of danger. Thakur and Maley argue that this principle has not been discussed sufficiently in the context of international and political theory, in particular the nature and foundations of political and international order and the strength and legitimacy of the state. The book brings together a range of authors to discuss the different ways in which the Responsibility to Protect can be theorised, using case studies to locate the idea within wider traditions of moral responsibilities in international relations.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of France’s relationship to human protection since the 1980s by investigating the mutual impact interconnected yet distinct domestic and international norms of human protection have had on each other over time.

Following the humanitarian horrors of the 1990s, the international community began to seek consensus on a new norm to help address the tension between upholding the sovereign right of states to administer their own internal affairs, and the pressing need for civilian populations to be protected from their own government in certain situations. The result was the responsibility to protect initiative from the UN, accepted as an emerging norm and based on existing legal structures although not itself necessarily accepted as law. This volume looks not only at the humanitarian-inspired interventions of the past 15 years, such as those that took place under the Force for Good banner of the UK Government under New Labour, but also looks at what this has meant for the people actually involved in doing them. What responsibilities do states have towards their own soldiers when sending them to protect ‘other’ people? Should that responsibility extend to moral and psychological protection as well as physical protection, and if so, how? How far does the duty go when considering the protection of one’s own citizens who have deliberately placed themselves in harm’s way, such as journalists who have chosen to leave the safety of a protected area? What happens when institutions are faced with the choice of protecting their people or their reputation? What does it feel like for the inhabitants of a state who become ‘protected’ by the international community? The book brings together international scholars and practitioners to address these concerns from both sides of the coin, recognising that international initiatives have practical implications.

In Responsibility to Protect and Women, Peace and Security: Aligning the Protection Agendas, editors Sara E. Davies, Zim Nwokora, Eli Stamnes and Sarah Teitt address the intersections of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle and the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) agenda. Contributions from policy-makers and academics consider both the merits and the utility of aligning the protection agendas of R2P and WPS. A number of actionable recommendations are made concerning a unification of the agendas to best support the global empowerment of women and the prevention of mass atrocities.

Preventing humanitarian atrocities is becoming as important for the United Nations as dealing with inter-state war. In this book, Ramesh Thakur examines the transformation in UN operations, analysing its changing role and structure. He asks why, when and how force may be used and argues that the growing gulf between legality and legitimacy is evidence of an eroded sense of international community. He considers the tension between the US, with its capacity to use force and project power, and the UN, as the centre of the international law enforcement system. He asserts the central importance of the rule of law and of a rules-based order focused on the UN as the foundation of a civilised system of international relations. This book will be of interest to students of the UN and international organisations in politics, law and international relations departments, as well as policymakers in the UN and other NGOs.

Despite the disasters of Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and ever more visible evidence of the horrors of war, the concepts of ‘Humanitarian Intervention’ and ‘Just War’ enjoy widespread legitimacy and continue to exercise an unshakeable grip on our imaginations. Robin Dunford and Michael Neu provide a clear and comprehensive critique of both Just War Theory and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, deconstructing the philosophical, moral and political arguments that underpin them. In doing so, they show how proponents of Just War and R2P have tended to treat killing in a way which obscures the complex and often messy reality of war, and pays little heed to the human impact of such conflicts. Going further, they provide answers to such difficult questions as ‘Surely it would have been just for us to intervene in the Rwandan genocide?’ An essential guide to one of the most difficult moral and political issues of our age.

The adoption of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle by world leaders assembled at the UN summit in 2005 is widely acknowledged to represent one of the great normative advances in international politics since 1945. The author has been involved in this shift from the dominant norm of non-intervention of R2P as an actor, public intellectual and academic and has been a key thinker in this process. These essays represent the author's writings on R2P, including reference to test cases as they arose, such as with Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008.