On September 9, 2013, diplomats and civil society activists gathered in a ballroom in New York to welcome Jennifer Welsh as the UN Secretary-General's new Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect. In her first public appearance in that role, Special Adviser Welsh explained that one of her top priorities would be “to take prevention seriously and to make it meaningful in practice.” “In the context of RtoP,” Welsh added during the discussion, “we are talking about crimes, and crimes have (...) implications in terms of how we deal with them. You'll hear me say that a lot.” Welsh's approach of treating RtoP as a principle that is primarily concerned with prevention and is firmly linked to international crimes neatly captures the evolution of RtoP since its formal acceptance by states at the 2005 UN World Summit. Paragraphs 138 to 140 of the World Summit's Outcome Document not only elevated the element of prevention to a prominent place within the principle of RtoP but also restricted the scope of RtoP to four specific crimes under international law: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. The crime and prevention–focused version of RtoP has subsequently been defended and promoted by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and by UN member states. This article seeks to systematically explore some of the implications of linking RtoP to the concept of international crimes, with a particular focus on the preventive dimension of RtoP, the so-called responsibility to prevent. What, then, are the consequences of approaching the responsibility to prevent as the prevention of international crimes?In order to systematically examine this question, this article turns to literature from criminology. While the criminological perspective has so far been neglected in debates on RtoP, the prominent criminologists John Hagan and Wenona Rymond-Richmond argue vehemently that “criminology is crucially positioned to contribute understanding and direction to what the United Nations has mandated as the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ groups that are threatened with mass atrocities.” For the purpose of this article, the label “criminology” comprises domestic criminology, supranational criminology, and international criminal law. While insights from supranational criminology and international criminal law are directly applicable to international crimes, translating knowledge generated in relation to crimes at the domestic level to atrocity crimes at the international level is, of course, not without challenges. Reasoning by analogy is an important method in this regard, though given the anarchical nature of international society some analogies will inevitably be imperfect. The benefits of such an approach, if carefully employed, however, outweigh the risks. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious accounts of International Relations research have extensively focused on deontological ethics in analysing Responsibility to Protect. At the same time, discourse ethics – alo...

Ten years since its adoption by the UN General Assembly, the Responsibility to Protect has become an established international norm associated with positive changes to the way that international society responds to genocide and mass atrocities. In its first decade, RtoP has moved from being a controversial and indeterminate concept seldom utilized by international society to a norm utilized almost habitually. This is an assessment that stands in contrast to the widespread view that RtoP is associated with “growing controversy,” but (...) is one that rests on evidence of state practice. (shrink)

Michael Walzer argues that the just cause for humanitarian intervention is not met if there are only “ordinary” levels of human rights abuses within a state because he believes that respecting the right to collective self-determination is more morally important than protecting other individual rights. Several prominent critics of Walzer advocate for a more permissive account of a just cause. They argue that protecting individuals’ human rights is more morally important than respecting a right to collective self-determination. I argue that (...) these two accounts are far more similar than either Walzer or his critics realize because collective self-determination requires the protection of some human rights in order to allow each person the opportunity to participate in collective choices. Consequently, the just cause for intervention is met whenever at least some important human rights of one person are violated and others are being credibly threatened. The counter intuitive conclusion of my argument is that justified interventions can actually promote rather than undermine collective self-determination because just interventions allow innocents, who otherwise would have excluded from this process, the opportunity to contribute to collective choices. Of course, a just cause is insufficient in itself for intervention to be permissible because other just war precepts must also be met. (shrink)

The failure of the UN Security Council to adequately and effectively address the Syrian crisis has brought renewed scrutiny to the veto and its capricious use during mass atrocity situations. In response to these concerns, the idea of a code of conduct to regulate the exercise of the veto during humanitarian situations is now being increasingly advanced by several states, including France and the United Kingdom. This paper disputes the utility of such a code and argues that it would not (...) make any significant difference to the way mass atrocity crimes are addressed. I examine three core arguments often extended to justify the merit and the utility of the norm: the circumvention argument, the naming and shaming argument, and the Charter reform argument. I show how each of these arguments is undermined by mistaken notions about the norm's procedural effectiveness, and the role the veto plays in cases of what Simon Chesterman calls “inhumanitarian noninterventions.” Additionally, drawing on interviews conducted with diplomats at the United Nations in New York, I present evidence that resistance to a code of conduct comes not only from the permanent five members of the Council but also from the nonpermanent members, further imperiling the idea's capacity to effect change. Ultimately, I contend that the current global effort to curtail the influence of the veto is nothing more than a journey down the rabbit hole: exciting, but ultimately distracting. (shrink)