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
Citation
Patrick QUINTON-BROWN, .(2023). Two responsibilities to protect. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 51(2), 405-430.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/3899
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1177/03058298221138