Responsibility to Protect and Prevent

If governments and policymakers agree on the principles of responsibility to protect (R2P), then why do they continue to ignore them and deal with violations of human rights ineffectively? ‘Responsibility to Protect and Prevent: Principles, Promises and Practicalities’ explores the evolution of R2P, a principle which – according to its supporters – has evolved into a new type of responsive norm for how the international community should react to serious and deliberate human rights violations. Arguing that the R2P ethos has been misunderstood and used ineffectively, this work defends the validity of R2P and urges for a more practical understanding that moves beyond theory.

The progression of R2P from an initial concept to formal ratification has been a very difficult one, with a great deal of disagreement over its validity as a substantive norm in international affairs. The disagreement is not that protection or prevention are unimportant, nor that the international community does not have at least some responsibility to try to stop extreme human rights violations. Rather, it is primarily about how the fine-sounding R2P principles are supposed to work in practice, and the utility of such principles when governments and policymakers continue to ignore the basic premise of protection.

This volume presents a number of important arguments that are directly related to the state vs. human security debate, with a critical analysis of the nexus between the protection verses prevention theses Through the case study of the Libyan Crisis, Janzekovic and Silander offer an example of the discrepancy and confusion regarding how R2P should be applied in practice, and support the claim that prevention should be more than an adjunct to protection.