Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

2-2023

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to re-theorize the evolution of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) in the UN through to 2011, the apogee of liberal interventionism in the post-Cold War period. Contrary to a common argument in existing literature, and notwithstanding the adoption of the concept as an annual agenda item of the General Assembly, international contestation is not about implementation as neatly separated from meaning, but rather definition or interpretation. To better understand the boundaries of intergovernmental understanding, we need to interrogate the language or terms of the debate, particularly the ways in which those terms have been practiced. There have been two Responsibilities to Protect in international society. A discursive practice called Southern RtoP, traced through UN-based political dialogue, contests a meaning that has been prevalent for 20 years at least: that of Northern RtoP. This article shows evaluative nuance and data from the perspective of the Global South and provides a discursive history of an ongoing non-aligned protest against a NATO-associated theory of defeasible sovereignty.

Keywords

global south, international society, responsibility to protect

Discipline

International Relations

Research Areas

Political Science

Publication

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volume

51

Issue

2

First Page

405

Last Page

430

ISSN

0305-8298

Identifier

10.1177/03058298221138944

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221138

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