Assurance for Implementing the State’s Responsibility to Protect: Lessons from Burundian Practice

Abstract

The state’s responsibility to protect is one of the well-established principles of international law recalled by the Resolution a/res/60/1 of 16 September 2005. Given the controversies surrounding the scope of the principle, this paper analyses the practice of its implementation with a particular focus on Burundi which withdrew from the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court on 27 October 2017. The reflection consisted in collecting and analysing previous academic works and official documents inter alia national laws, international instruments, official statements, reports, and records of meeting on the responsibility to protect and related topics. The paper demonstrates that Burundi has made progress to build the state’s resilience to atrocity crimes by establishing a deterrent legal framework and institutional mechanisms. Nonetheless, these significant efforts failed to achieve the expected outcomes in terms of legal effect.