The International Community and Global Governance of Human Security

Abstract

This paper addresses the global governance of human security and particularly its provision across borders. It argues that the responsibility to protect (R2P) framework is part of global governance. Of special interest to this paper is the role the international community plays within the global governance of human security. The international community is assigned a collective responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity that becomes activated when an individual state fails in its primary, individual responsibility to protect. Moreover, the international community is assigned an on-going preventative responsibility. In a sense the international community is a “governor” of sorts. Yet, the R2P framework is unclear in its conceptualization of the international community. Evidently within the R2P framework the international community is not a world government, a formal international organization, or necessarily synonymous with the society of states. Yet, existing alternative conceptualizations of “international community” are unhelpful. Hence the paper offers a novel suggestion: the international community as “potentiality.” The concept refers to the possibility of forming a configuration of actors and networks for the purposes of solving global governance issues. My proposal captures both how the international community is in flux and ad hoc, and how one can see some permanence in the international community “governing” without being a government.