The Development and Evolution of R2P as International Policy

This article traces the arc of global public policy development by using the responsibility to protect (R2P) as a case study and the central role and place of the United Nations in that story. The arc has seven way-stations: policy setting (nonintervention as the entrenched norm of the postcolonial order despite an increasingly internationalised human conscience among many western peoples and governments and the episodic practice of humanitarian intervention); policy challenge (the need to respond to mass atrocity crimes against the unacceptability both of inaction and unilateral intervention); policy innovation (R2P); policy development (an iterative process since 2005 engaging multiple actors); policy implementation (in Libya in 2011); policy paralysis (in Syria since 2011); and the emerging policy parameters (how to ensure interventions are done with due responsibility).