China and the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P)

How the international community should respond to large - scale intra-state human rights violations continues to be highly contentious within international law and international relations. One attempt to address this issue , the responsibility to protect (R2P), has been described as the ‘most dramatic normative development of our time’ (Thakur and Weiss 2009, p. 22). Yet, more than a decade after R2P was unanimously endorsed by United Nations (UN) member states at the 2005 World Summit there remains significant contestation over both the content and implementation of the concept. States continue to hold diverging interpretations of R2P’s meaning and scope , while attempts to operationalise its more coercive elements have often been resisted, as illustrated most dramatically by the UN Security Council’s paralysis over Syria from 2011 onwards.