India’s Crimes Against Humanity and Application of “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P): Prospects and Challenges in the Case of Jammu and Kashmir

AbstractThe Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is developed to stop genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. Since 2005, the UN operationalized it in Libya, Yemen, Liberia, Syria, South Sudan, and Congo. However, to address India’s genocide in Kashmir, the framework is contested and politicized. So the paper test the parameters of R2P and its possible implementation. It asks (a) Why the UN has failed to operationalize R2P in Kashmir. (b) What are the underlying reasons and how realpolitik is undermining R2P implementation? It argues that India is involved in a systematic and sustained genocide of the Kashmiri population and illegal settlements of the Hindu community. Nevertheless, major powers’ geo-economics and geopolitical interests, a paradigm shift in the global order where India is placed at the heart of U.S. hedging strategy against China, and New Delhi's sustained role in regional and global politics prevent the international community from invoking R2P.Keywords: Kashmir conflictResponsibility to Protect (R2P)genociderealpolitikIndia-Pakistan RivalryIndo-Pacific Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 ICISS, “The Responsibility to Protect”, International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2001.2 Spencer Zifcak, “The Responsibility to Protect”, The Use of Force in International Law, 2017, pp. 571–596, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315585062-34 (accessed 25 July 2022).3 Jennifer Welsh, “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect”, Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict, 2009, pp. 1–10.4 Rajat Ganguly, “India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute”, in Asian Studies Institute & Centre for Strategic Studies, Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 1998.5 Saman Zulfqar, “Kashmir: Nature and Dimensions of the Conflict”, Journal of Current Affairs, Vol. 1, No. 1 & 2, 2016, pp. 51–65.6 Hijab Shah and Melissa Dalton, “Indian Revocation of Kashmir’s Special Status”, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2019, https://www.csis.org/analysis/indian-revocation-kashmirs-special-status (accessed 10 June 2022).7 U.N.H.C.R., “Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir: Developments in the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir from June 2016 to April 2018”, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, no. 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He writes on Chinese Foreign Policy, China–Pakistan Relations, South Asian Regional Security, Kashmir Conflict, Regional Connectivity and Integration, Civil–Military Relations, and CPEC. E-mail: mhussain328@gmail.com