Reflecting on the prime hurdles and successes of the International Community’s Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect in Central Africa Republic 2013-2021
- March 6, 2022
- Posted by: RSIS
- Categories: Governance and Leadership, IJRISS
International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume VI, Issue II, February 2022 | ISSN 2454–6186
Jonah Marawako
Lecturer, Department of Governance and Public Management, Midlands State University, Zimbabwe
Abstract: The objective of this paper is to provide an analysis of the challenges and successes of the international community’s implementation of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in Central Africa Republic (CAR) from 2013 to 2021. The introduction of the R2P doctrine in 2005 has activated debate among scholars on the efficacy of the R2P in mitigating war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. State sovereignty is arguably the major obstacle in implementing the R2P doctrine, but the 2013 coup in CAR has opened a Pandora box of the other challenges to its operability which are vested interests and sectarian cleavages. The structure and functions of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) also affected the success of the R2P in CAR. The veto powers of the permanent five are inimical to the peace process in CAR. This paper also argues that although there are some problems in implementing the R2P in CAR, the international community was able to prevent the conflict from crystallising into genocide and averted a regional spill of the conflict. The study interrogates the evolution of the R2P as well as proffer recommendations on how the international community can improve the implementation of the R2P. The methodology employed in the study was qualitative desk research with emphasis on secondary sources of information such as books, journals, internet sources and newspapers.
Keywords; R2P, CAR, mass atrocity, ethnic cleansing, state fragility
I. INTRODUCTION
Since its inception, the responsibility to protect (R2P) has triggered an avalanche of debate about its implementation, success and challenges in the international system. The principal motive of the R2P has been to promote international peace and security through humanitarian intervention. The concept evolved in response to the failure of the international community to avert mass atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, (Bellamy and Lupel 2015 ). The former Secretary General of the United Nations (UN) Kofi Annan in his 2000 Millennium Report once affirmed that, “if the humanitarian intervention is an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica, to gross and systematic violation of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”.
