From Humanitarian Intervention to the Responsibility to Protect

The evolution away from the discourse of humanitarian intervention, which had been so divisive, and toward the embrace of the new concept of the responsibility to protect has been a fascinating piece of intellectual history in its own right. As to legitimacy, the author identifies five criteria that should be applied by the Security Council, and be used by the world at large, to test the validity of any case made for a coercive humanitarian intervention. All five have an explicit pedigree in Christian just war theory, but their themes resonate equally with other world religions and intellectual traditions. The most interesting thing about the Responsibility to Protect report is the way its central theme has continued to gain traction internationally, even though it was almost suffocated at birth by being published in December 2001, and by the subsequent massive international preoccupation with terrorism rather than internal human rights catastrophes.