Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2015
This paper assesses the extent to which the recently formulated Chinese concept of “Responsible Protection” (RP) offers a valuable contribution to the normative debate over R2P's third pillar following the controversy over military intervention in Libya. While RP draws heavily on previous proposals including the 2001 ICISS report and Brazil's “Responsibility while Protecting” (RwP), by amalgamating and repackaging these earlier ideas in a more restrictive form the initiative represents a new and distinctive interpretation of R2P. However, some aspects of RP are framed too narrowly to provide workable guidelines for determining the permissibility of military intervention for humanitarian purposes, and should be clarified and refined. Nevertheless, the Chinese proposal remains significant because it offers important insights into Beijing's current stance on R2P. More broadly, China's RP and Brazil's RwP initiatives illustrate the growing willingness of rising, non-Western powers to assert their own normative preferences on sovereignty, intervention, and global governance.
Lecturer, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. I am grateful for valuable comments from Sarah Teitt, Luke Glanville, Ramesh Thakur, Adrian Gallagher, Kingsley Edney, and Jason Ralph, and from the anonymous referees. Part of the research for this paper was completed during a period as a Visiting Scholar at the College of Law at the Australian National University. The paper was completed on 27 August 2014.
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64. Ibid.
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76. Ibid., at 7.
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106. Ibid., at 22.
107. Ibid., at 22–3.
108. A recent illustration of the complexity of UNSC negotiations is the significant length of time it took to reach consensus on the relatively uncontroversial issue of humanitarian aid access in Syria in February 2014. See Security Council Resolution 2139, UN Doc. S/RES/2139 (2014).
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136. BURKE-WHITE, William W., “Power Shifts in International Law: Structural Realignment and Substantive Pluralism” Social Science Research Network (January 2014)Google Scholar, online: SSRN <http://dx.doi.org/10.2139 /ssrn.2378912>.
137. Ibid., at 5.
138. Ibid., at 6.
139. Ibid., at 51.
140. Ruan, , supra note 11 at 12Google Scholar.
141. This is not to say that all of the BRICS currently hold identical positions on R2P; they were, after all, unable to maintain a unified position on proposed civilian protection measures against Syria.
142. This possibility is recognized by Burke-White, supra note 136 at 51.
143. Burke-White, ibid., suggests that “distinct versions of sovereignty and R2P will be championed by competing hubs and applied differently within their respective subsystems”.
144. The next annual diplomatic meeting of the BRICS is due to be held in Russia in July 2015.