Abstract:
The Responsibility to Protect is a new human security paradigm
that re-conceptualizes state sovereignty as a responsibility rather than a
right. Its seminal endorsement by the 2005 World Summit has however
not consolidated the intellectual parameters of the norm. Neither has it
succeeded in galvanizing R2P’s doctrinal development; hence the January
2009 appeal by the UN secretary-general for the international community
to operationalize R2P at the doctrinal level, in addition to at institutional
and policy levels. R2P represents a critical stage in the debate on
intervention for human protection purposes, but its key concepts require
more exploration. Africa is a uniquely placed stakeholder in R2P on account
of its disproportionate share of humanitarian crises and because
Africans have played key roles in conceptualizing the norm. The continent
should therefore not just off er an arena for, but indeed take the lead
in, the conceptual journey that R2P’s doctrinal development requires.
