1. Introduction to Political Science (IRE 101) Week 7 Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect

2. The Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P)
In September 2000, the Canadian government established the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS).
Trying to figure out how should we respond to crises. The genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda and Bosnia, as well as crimes against humanity in Kosovo, East Timor and Darfur.
Based on the idea that sovereignty entailed not only rights but also responsibilities, specifically a state's responsibility to protect its people from major violations of human rights.

3. Just cause: There must be "serious and irreparable harm occurring to human beings, or imminently likely to occur".
Right intention: The main intention of the military action must be to prevent human suffering.
Last resort: Every other measure besides military invention has to have already been taken into account.
Proportional means: The military means must not exceed what is necessary "to secure the defined human protection objective".
Reasonable prospects: The chance of success must be reasonably high, and it must be unlikely that the consequences of the military intervention would be worse than the consequences without the intervention.
Right authority: The military action has to have been authorized by the Security Council.

4. Responsibility to protect (R2P)
In 2005, at the UN’s World Summit, R2P was included in the United Nations’ outcome document:
“It’s a state's responsibility to protect its citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. If a state fails to do so, it then becomes the responsibility of the international community to protect that state's population.
R2P was intended to be the first piece in a new international legal framework for stopping war crimes after a century of ad-hoc humanitarianism.

5. The Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P)
ISSUES WITH R2P:
Who exactly is the international community? Russia and China have historically been reluctant to support any form of intervention.
The danger of precedent setting.
‘Mission creep’: You start off with one, limited plan, and it grows into something far larger.

6. The Responsibility to Protect Doctrine (R2P)
R2P mandate – should regime change be a part of it?
What about ‘Responsibility to rebuild’? ‘You break it, you own it’.
We have a Responsibility to Protect, but we also should have a responsibility to learn from history’s mistakes to see when it has actually worked.
R2P riddled with hypocrisy and self interest. Humanitarian Imperialism.