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Document Type

Article

Abstract

This work is about R2P and the responsibility to protect. Currently, the R2P doctrine is under serious pressure. The world climate has changed rapidly since the days of the launch of the R2P principle in 2001, and its most frequent references in 2011-2014, culminating in "responsibility not to veto" (RNVT) proposals in 2015. Recent grave violations of international law in the 2020s, resulting in alleged mass atrocities, have resulted in pessimism about the feasibility of R2P, and the declaration of its death. This article evaluates the 2000s decline in UNSC-mandated military action taken under Chapter VII from the perspective of R2P. Russian and Chinese vetoes in the UNSC have practically deadlocked the UNSC since the mid-2010s. Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the Syrian war, the Yemen conflict, are all conflicts where calls for R2P could not be translated into action. The imminent problem is that the veto powers make the UNSC ill-equipped to respond to mass atrocity situations.

In the 2020s there is a return to the Dark Ages of the Cold War and Just War theories. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Westphalian concept of State sovereignty has been sacred. Thus, unheard went Ukrainian President Zelensky's call for a limited R2P intervention in the form of a NATO-enforced no-fly zone to save civilian lives. The unfolding in the Fall of 2023 of two other major humanitarian crises: on the 7th of October the Hamas large-scale terrorist attacks on Israel and hostage- taking with 1400 Israel casualties, and the ensuing large-scale Gaza war leaving nearly 45,000 civilians dead at the end of 2024; the forced expulsion of the Armenian-majority from the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, forcing 100,000 civilians to flee their homes. They were all textbook examples of mass atrocities, but the international community did not invoke the R2P doctrine. Also, the Taliban government's takeover in the Fall of 2020 in Afghanistan, forcing a chaotic pull-out of U.S. troops, resulted in a return to the Taliban practice of "gender apartheid," and other severe human rights and international humanitarian law violations, as investigated by the International Criminal Court (ICC). All these situations ought to have qualified for R2P interventions. Instead, they were routinely transferred only to the ICC for investigation, a process that is important but might take years.

This work aims to revitalize R2P as a concept that is appropriate and ready to use instantly as a remedy for mass atrocities. I question whether the ICC alone should shoulder the burden of accounting for mass atrocities. Should it become a backup outlet when genocide and other serious international crimes are committed against a population? The final part shows how the current normative framework in the UN Charter can be interpreted to accommodate R2P interventions without any formal amendments and without any agreement on a responsibility not to veto.

My work is divided into three parts. Part 1 describes the normative framework of R2P and analyzes relevant Articles in the United Nations Charter. Part 2 contains a case study of military conflicts from Kosovo in 1999 up to the present, where the UNSC was bypassed but R2P could be considered. Part 3 analyzes the legal options available to enforce an emerging R2P responsibility.

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