The Responsibility to Protect and Cosmopolitan Global Justice

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between R2P and both the distributive and criminal forms of cosmopolitan justice. It argues that the doctrine shares a diminutive relationship with the ‘poverty and causation’ model of distributive justice, through tacitly acknowledging the importance of the global socio-economic realm in achieving justice for individuals and, furthermore, through beginning to provide recommendations on how global conditions of poverty and inequality conducive to protracted intra-state conflict could potentially be subverted. Moreover, the chapter contends that R2P can be equated with the ‘cosmopolitan’ model of criminal justice. This is evidenced by the residual duty inculcated on the international community to intervene in instances of genocide, war crimes , ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity in order to remedy an ‘injustice’ and protect people’s rights and interests. The chapter also articulates that R2P has enhanced the relevance of this cosmopolitan vision of criminal justice, through countering opposition grounded in the narratives of realism, liberalism and liberal-nationalism.