Publication Date

7-9-2009

Journal

Global Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

Most agree that prevention is the most important aspect of the Responsibility to Protect. The best way, after all, to protect populations from mass atrocities is to ensure that they do not occur in the first instance. Nonetheless, Since the adoption of the R2P Doctrine at the World Summit, academic and policy debate concerning the legal and normative content of R2P, continue to neglect its preventative dimension. This paper begins to fill that lacunae in policy and scholarship by examining seeks to develop the preventative dimension of R2P by examining the relationship between evolving international human rights law on prevention and R2P, with two objectives. The first objective is to bring a much needed focus to the law on prevention, and the second objective is to mediate the debate between those who claim R2P it is a major departure from existing law and those who claim it adds nothing new to the existing body of law. The paper argues that, resting upon international human rights principles, R2P provides, under certain circumstances, for an obligation of due diligence requiring states to take such reasonable measures of prevention as could be expected of states in a similar position. R2P's strength is that harnesses the disparate body of law on the duty to prevent and provides a modicum of conceptual clarity and discipline to its application to mass atrocities.

Volume

1

Issue

4

First Page

442

Last Page

477

Publisher

Brill

Keywords

prevention, 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, international human rights, duty to protect/prevent, due diligence, positive obligations in international human rights law, international law, Bosnia v. Serbia judgment

Disciplines

Human Rights Law | Law

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