Chapter 2 - Twisting Sovereignty

Summary

The chapter traces the history of responsibility in the field of security through the development of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). By using the idea of ‘responsibility’ as a lens through which to assess which and whose interests, objectives, and aims the R2P was designed to advance, and how this was articulated in the inception of R2P, I show that in spite of claimed ancestry, R2P was a product of the late 1990s and the aim to address the lack of international response or intervention in the humanitarian crises of that decade. In so doing, the chapter contributes to broadening our historical account of R2P by linking and situating aspects of R2P to and alongside earlier initiatives of the 1980s.