Abstract

The Responsibility to Protect (RtP) was born in 2001 with the publication of a report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) aimed at being a comprehensive doctrine capable of overcoming the deadlock between state sovereignty/non-intervention and human rights, which had characterised the humanitarian intervention debate in previous decades, due to its broader understanding of security crises. RtP’s core idea is the primary responsibility of a state towards the security of its population and the secondary responsibility of the international community in this regard.
This chapter explores the role of the RtP doctrine in providing security to vulnerable individuals. It does so in the light of the book’s two main questions – whether international law can address the types of security risks that threaten our existence in the 21st Century and where and how international law might fall short in meeting the problems that arise in situations of insecurity. To answer these questions, the chapter critically engages with RtP, examining how it constructs the nature of insecurity and what assumptions are made about the role of international law in providing security.