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Is there an Islamic version of the UN doctrine of the \"Responsibility to Protect\"? Are Muslims obligated to defend their own community, and to save the rest of the world from tyranny and oppression? The UN doctrine commits member states to protect people from certain types of harm, and specifically includes protecting populations from their own governments. If a comparable Islamic doctrine exists, it is especially ironic that the UN doctrine is so frequently applied to Muslim majority countries in the Middle East. This irony allows for a new perspective on the continuing conceptual and physical conflicts between western powers and states in the Middle East.

In this article, the concept of “responsibility to protect” is considered as one of the aspects of legal globalization. According to this concept, sovereignty is not a right and not a privilege, but an obligation of the state, and if the state is unable to ensure its sovereignty, the international community has the right to intervene in the current situation. Such an approach completely changes the traditionally established ideas about the subject of state sovereignty, since the very possibility of other states interfering in the affairs of another state is a violation of the principle of sovereignty in its generally accepted understanding.

While the Syrian refugee crisis unravels at the EU's doorstep and as the death toll in the Mediterranean continues unabated, questions about the international community's duty to act on behalf of the afflicted people inevitably arise, thereby fuelling convoluted debates about Responsibility to Protect (R2P). In light of the international community's inertia and of the EU's incapacity to adequately manage the worst humanitarian crisis of recent times, this article argues that time is ripe to explore other ways to implement R2P. There is a 'missing' link between R2P and refugee protection and the duty to protect refugees can be framed within the R2P discourse. Building on the idea that asylum is central to the implementation of R2P, we suggest that the acknowledgment of the linkage between R2P and refugee protection is helpful not only to improve the EU management of the current crisis, but also to uphold R2P when the international community is at a stalemate.

Debates on intervention and sovereignty since 1945 can be summarised as a tale of two cities, San Francisco and Bandung, and of two countries, Rwanda and Libya. All are symbolic of different phases of these debates. The UN was born in San Francisco in 1945 with very little substantive participation by Asian and African governments. The great powers established a system in which they would determine when, where and how military interventions could take place. The 1955 Bandung Conference saw Asian and African countries seek to use new norms of intervention to regain their sovereignty. The 1994 Rwandan genocide, however, forced African countries to dilute notions of absolute sovereignty to allow military interventions for human protection purposes. The 2011 NATO military intervention in Libya did potentially irreparable damage to future UN-mandated interventions and was widely seen in the Global South as an abuse of the responsibility to protect (R2P).

An 'idea-shift' is taking place that may be of greater consequence for global governance than is the ongoing 'power shift' or the rise of new powers. A number of non-Western thinkers and practitioners - who may be called idea-shifters - have contributed to new concepts and approaches that have radically altered the way we think about development, security and ecology, among other areas. Their ideas are often dismissed or downgraded in the West as imitation, or the product of the Western education of their creators, or of partnership with Western collaborators, governments, donor agencies and multilateral institutions dominated by the Western powers. Challenging this view, this essay holds that ideas from the postcolonial world, its thinkers and policymakers have played an important role in the making of the postwar norms of governance, such as universal sovereignty, human rights, international development and regionalism. Moreover, some of the important recent ideas about development (human development from Mahbub ul Haq and Amartya Sen), security (responsible sovereignty from Francis Deng and colleagues) and ecology (sustainable development from Wangari Maathai) have come from people who, while trained in the West, are deeply influenced by their local context or point of origin. Appreciating how much this local origin and context matters allows us to consider these as 'ideas-from-below' and a powerful driver of the unfolding global idea-shift.

Migration has been on the increase in contemporary times. However, confronting its rise is the development of exclusionist and intolerant behaviours by citizens of receiving states towards migrants. Utilising secondary data, the study explains constraints to implementing the responsibility to protect (R2P) by the South African and Nigerian governments towards Nigerians in South Africa at the dawn of xenophobia. It argues that intentional denialism at the individual, institutional and national levels of the South African society have contributed to the limited or near absence of commitment to the implementation of R2P to migrants, including Nigerians in South Africa. Therefore, it recommends that both governments put in place mechanisms for the implementation of international principles such as R2P so that the human rights of migrants are protected in line with existing international dictates.

In the throes of war, protecting such cultural heritage as the Bamiyan Buddhas, the Mostar Bridge, the Timbuktu libraries and Palmyra supposedly is a priority on the international public policy agenda; but government responses so far have been limited to deploring such destruction. This article explores the evolving, albeit contested, norm of the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P) and its relevance for cultural heritage. There is no need for a hierarchy of protection - civilians or culture - because the juxtaposition is as erroneous as choosing between people and the environment. This essay begins with a discussion of cultural heritage and defines the scope for the application of any new international normative consensus. It then explores why R2P, in the original concept of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), is an appropriate framework for thinking about cultural protection, despite considerable political headwinds. It then examines the current opportune political moment and existing legal tools. Finally, there is a brief consideration of the obstacles facing the creation of a better framework for cultural protection in zones of armed conflict.

The significant link between human rights violations and the eventual outbreak of atrocity crimes has been widely promoted across the UN system. However, the question of how the connection between the R2P norm and human rights plays out in the actual practices and debates of the UN Security Council has been relatively under explored. In response, the article builds on constructivist research into norm robustness in order to trace how the R2P's shift to an atrocity prevention focus has generated increased applicatory contestation over the push to expand the link between human rights and threats to international peace and security. Based on extensive analysis of UN Security Council meeting records and three case studies, the article highlights two competing ideological frames that currently divide the Security Council's approach to atrocity prevention. This division has emphasised a key disconnect between the work of the Security Council and other UN institutions such as the Human Rights Council, therefore severely limiting the potential for effective atrocity prevention responses. Thus, without a stronger connection to human rights in the process of threat identification, the R2P norm will remain considerably limited as a prevention tool. Consequently, the article also contributes to a new understanding of the critical role evolving institutional rules and practices play in state attempts to both constrain and reshape human protection norms.

This article assesses Russian strategic narratives towards its interventions in Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014–16) based on a new database of 50 statements posted on the websites of the Russian Mission to the United Nations and the President of Russia homepage. By looking more broadly at Russian strategic narratives aimed at persuading other global actors and publics abroad and at home, this article identifies how Russia attempted to develop a story that could win global acceptance. This analysis shows that contrary to traditional Russian emphasis on sovereign responsibility and non-intervention, Russia supported claims for self-determination by separatist groups in Georgia and Ukraine. Russia used deception and disinformation in its strategic narratives as it mis-characterized these conflicts using Responsibility to Protect (R2P) language, yet mostly justified its own interventions through references to other sources of international law. Russian strategic narratives focused on delegitimizing the perceived opponents, making the case for the appropriateness of its own actions, and projecting what it proposed as the proper solution to the conflicts. It largely avoided making any references to its own involvement in the Donbas at all. Additionally, Russia’s focus on the protection of co-ethnics and Russian-speakers is reminiscent of interventions in the pre-R2P era.

Within the discourse surrounding the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), scholars have typically categorized the stakeholders as either proponents or staunch detractors, commonly referring to them as R2P ‘champions’ and ‘anti-preneurs,’ respectively. However, there is a significant gap in the existing research devoted to comprehending the nuanced positions adopted by states that fall within the spectrum between these two extremes. This article offers a comprehensive exploration of Latin American states’ stances concerning R2P norms and provides a typology based on their level of engagement with and degree of support for R2P norms. While certain states overtly contest the legitimacy of R2P, perceiving it as a pretext for external intervention, others challenge existing perceptions of how R2P should be practically implemented. To understand these diverse perspectives, the article differentiates contestation of the R2P norms themselves from contestation of the implementation mechanisms. Through an empirical analysis, it explores various Latin American countries’ perspectives on R2P from 2005 to 2023, highlighting their proposals like the Brazilian Responsibility while Protecting, as well as Costa Rica and Mexico’s contributions to the Responsibility Not to Veto initiatives. By unraveling the complexities of R2P contestation in Latin America, this article expands our understanding of how diverse regional perspectives shape and influence the advancement of R2P norms.