R2P, Terrorism, and the Protection of Civilians – ‘Are All Humans Human? Or Are Some More Human than Others?’

Terrorism is often cited in the justifications of state perpetrators of mass atrocities. The reality behind these claims runs the gamut from thin pretext to genuine security threats. Irrespective of this reality, the discursive abuse of counter-terrorism to perpetrate atrocities is a key challenge to the Responsibility to Protect. Perpetrators employing the language of counter-terrorism to justify their actions, in an attempt to pre-empt objections or interventions, disincentivises external action by actors unwilling to incur the risk that they may inadvertently protect terrorists. This risks limiting the application and successful operationalisation of the Responsibility to Protect to relatively simple or ideal cases. This article provides a comparative analysis of two crises often described as successes or failures for R2P, Kenya (2007–08) and Sri Lanka (2009) respectively, to demonstrate this challenge for the operationalisation of R2P even in cases with complex conflict dynamics.