The Rise of R2P and the Fall of Human Rights

Abstract

This Chapter outlines the rationale behind R2P’s efficacy and the nature of the “progress” it has ostensibly made and illustrates that the “success” of R2P is predicated on the view that the growing willingness of states to affirm and invoke the concept, join groupings like the “R2P Focal Points” and “Group of Friends of the Responsibility to Protect” and commit to campaigns such as “Restrain the Veto”, impels changes in state interests while other states become ostensibly ‘rhetorically entrapped’. This Chapter additionally analyses, however, the various reports published since 2015 by human rights NGOs detailing declining respect for human rights internationally. I identify the report’s commonalities and, in particular, highlight that all note, in stark contrast to the narrative of “progress” advanced by R2P’s supporters, that states have increasingly turned against their own people, and also that the capacity and willingness of the “international community” to halt these intra-state abuses has diminished. Chapter 2, therefore, establishes the contrast between R2P’s increased prominence and the recent decline in respect for human rights internationally.