The Transformative Agendas of R2P Discourses in International Law

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The contributions to this volume have sought to shed light on the transformative character of the discourses on the responsibility to protect (R2P). According to this overarching assumption, the ideas developed around the discourses on R2P have impacted the developments of primary obligations found within the international legal order as much as the very foundations and systemic features of that order. Before offering some concluding remarks on this general claim and its substantiation in the chapters of this volume a preliminary remark must be formulated on the evolving character of the discourses on R2P. Indeed, it seems uncontested that, since entering the world discursive stage, the discourses on R2P have dramatically transformed themselves. Every now and then, there is a feeling that a new generation of thinking has come to existence with R2P at its helm. In that sense, it does not seem controversial to contend, at this introductory stage, that, prior to 2005, the debate surrounding R2P mostly pertained to the entitlement to intervene, construed as an ersatz for humanitarian intervention. R2P first rested on a primarily reactive and interventionist stance. By 2005, however, the debate became multi-layered as to include a preventive and restorative dimension. As a result, R2P was no longer exclusively the manifestation of a reactive and interventionist agenda. With the second generation of R2P thinking initiated in 2005, reactive and interventionist R2P came to be endowed with prevention and state-building functions.

The sophisticated scholarship mustered within this volume undoubtedly perpetuates this evolving thinking. New scholarly constructions and avenues of reflection are elegantly put forward throughout these chapters. The creativity, imagination and sophistication deployed by all these authors on that occasion are remarkable. It seems that the evolving discourses on R2P have not yet had their heyday and that new ideas will continue to embellish R2P thinking for many years.

The evolving character of the discourses on R2P, despite being conducive to scholarly adornment and creativity, is not what these concluding remarks intend to dwell on. Rather, the ambition of these concluding observations is to shed light on (and raise awareness about) some of the recurrent functional and methodological moves which permeate the chapters of this volume as well as the literature on R2P.