The responsibility to protect and non-state armed groups

Abstract

The Majority of chapters in this volume address the question of how legal mechanisms, situated within the ‘zone between’ international human rights and humanitarian law, can better protect civilians against both old and new threats to their security. The discussion here, by contrast, considers the potential of an expressly political instrument: the principle of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. As I will show, R2P was designed by its advocates to serve as a means of enhancing compliance with existing bodies of law that aim to protect civilian populations, but also, more broadly, of fostering greater political will and institutional capacity to prevent and respond to atrocity crimes.[1] After setting out the rationale and function of R2P, I suggest how its initially state-centric focus might be expanded to address the challenge of non-state armed groups (NSAGs) as threats to civilians. I begin with an analysis of how we might conceive of both the legal and political responsibilities of these actors, before setting out potential strategies for combating or mitigating the protection challenges such actors create. The next section examines the difficult questions of whether and how states can call upon military assistance from the international community to assist them in addressing the threat posed by NSAGs. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the responsibilities that can be assigned to states for the actions of NSAGs over which they have a degree of control, particularly when those actions include grave violations of human rights or IHL.