Tracing the Process

Evans (2008a, b) argues that the ‘whole point of embracing the new language of “responsibility to protect” is that it is capable of generating an effective, consensual response in extreme, conscience-shocking cases, in a way that “right to intervene” language simply was not’. While addressing the question of ‘how humanitarian intervention could be possible’, the ICISS was aware of the need to shift the terms of the intervention debate. By adding the responsibility component to the classical conceptualisation of state sovereignty, the Report suggested ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ understanding as a first measure to prevent conscious acts of violence within states. Second, it argued, rather than a natural right to intervene, there exists for the international community the responsibilities to prevent, react, and rebuild when states themselves fail to uphold their responsibility due to either inability or unwillingness. As Finnemore and Sikkink (1998, p. 908) note, ‘[t]he relationship of new normative claims to existing norms may also influence the likeliness of their influence. This is most clearly true for norms within international law, since the power or persuasiveness of a normative claim in law is explicitly tied to the “fit” of that claim within existing normative frameworks’. In this vein, entrepreneurs of the norm differentiated the ‘responsibility to protect’ from the controversial notion of the ‘right to intervene’ and embedded the concept within the well-established principle of sovereignty. With this, they aimed to preclude any negative connotation stemming from past practices or arguments in favour of forceful interventions.