The Choice to Protect. Rethinking Responsibility for Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract

This Essay reexamines the responsibility to protect (“R2P”) from the perspective of states called to intervene—explaining the novelty of a third-party duty to help people in other states and the insufficiency of justifications offered for this moral responsibility. The Essay concludes that R2P will ultimately be defined by states contemplating intervention, in part because there are no agreed standards for responsibility and the doctrine has various triggering conditions that must be assessed by states, including the seriousness of the humanitarian crimes and the proportionality of any response. Moreover, domestic bureaucratic competition and conflict may make it difficult for a state to make a decision to intervene on primarily humanitarian grounds.