A responsibility to protect : obligations of states and the international community to prevent genocide under existing and developing norms of public international law with an emphasis on the obligations of ‘fragile states’.

Abstract

The research centres around the responsibility of states to protect their own populations. The research determines the obligations of states toward their own populations. The research also focuses on the implementation of these obligations and how the international community of states might respond to a breach of these obligations should they exist. The research has a focus on the obligations of states toward the prevention of genocide. The research starts with the understanding of the definition of genocide and how the definition has become accepted by the international community of states. After confirming an accepted definition and development of genocide, the research moves toward the obligations that states have toward the prevention and punishment of genocide. The research asks whether international law has developed in such a way that the obligations of the international community extend toward intervention and whether such intervention could be legally justified in terms of international law, especially taking into account the development of the responsibility to protect and the so-called failed-state principle where states are not able to protect their populations and possibly not fulfil their obligations.