New Challanges Within The Framework of The Responsibility To Protect: Terrorism And Protection of Populations

Abstract

In response to ongoing human rights violations, as well as the debates on humanitarian interventions, the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) developed the notion of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2001 and it was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in the 2005 World Summit. At the core of the R2P notion liesthe sovereignty as responsibility understanding and the responsibility of the international community to protect populations when their states are unable or unwilling to do so. From 2006, to date, the United Nations Security Council has invoked R2P in more than 50 resolutions. Moreover, since 2009, the United Nations General Assembly has held nine informal interactive dialogues on R2P. Essentially, since the first introduction of R2P, UN member states are working to form consensus around it, as well as to narrow the gap between conceptual progress and preventive action. To date, R2P has found wide coverage in the International Relations literature, nevertheless, there are still underexplored aspects of the topic. In this vein, building its analysis on the observation that States are not the only actors who are responsible for mass atrocities, this thesis aims to make a contribution to the existing literature by focusing on non-state actors, and more precisely terrorist organizations, within the context of R2P and protection of populations. In the current era, together with technological progresses and globalization, non-state actors have become major challengers to states and the international system. In this regard, this thesis focuses on the international R2P response in situations wherein the perpetrators are non-state actors, and accordingly focuses on the two select cases of the Islamic State (ISIS) and Boko Haram within the context of the mass atrocity crimes that are grounds for invoking R2P action.