A Proposal for Advancing Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

This article takes as its starting point the support for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) expressed during the General Assembly’s 2022 debate on the R2P, and the express interest of states in shifting discussions about the R2P away from debate about the principle’s normative content and status, towards implementation. It asserts that efforts to advance the implementation of R2P face three key obstacles. First, the R2P is insufficiently defined, leaving room for damaging misperceptions about the R2P to be sustained. Second, states have not been supported to translate their in-principal commitment to the R2P into national strategies or plans. Third, the R2P is not sufficiently institutionalised either within the United Nations (UN) or regional organisations. Drawing on the atrocity prevent literature as well as the policy and practice of states, this article proposes a three-part strategy for advancing implementation of the R2P, responding to these three identified challenges.