OVERCOMING THE RWANDA FAILURE: THE IMPACT OF R2P ON THE PROTECTION OF CIVILIANS

This article examines the impact of the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) norm on the international community's ability to protect civilians from mass atrocities, viewing this development as a direct response to the catastrophic failure to intervene in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. It traces the origins and evolution of the R2P doctrine, which was formally adopted at the 2005 UN World Summit. The study analyzes the three pillars of R2P: the primary responsibility of the state to protect its own population, the international community's responsibility to assist states in doing so, and the international community's responsibility to intervene, if necessary, when a state is manifestly failing to protect its population. The research assesses the impact of R2P on the practice of the UN Security Council and in specific crises, such as in Libya and Côte d'Ivoire. The paper argues that while R2P represents a significant normative advance, its implementation remains highly political and selective. The analysis concludes that while the international community has not fully overcome the "Rwanda failure," the R2P norm has created a new and powerful framework for debating and potentially acting on the imperative of civilian protection.

The failure of the international community to prevent the 1994 genocide in Rwanda was a moment of profound shame and a catalyst for a major rethinking of the principles of sovereignty and intervention. This paper analyzes the most important outcome of that rethinking: the emergence of the "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P) norm. The study begins by providing a detailed account of the international inaction during the Rwandan genocide, framing it as the "failure" that R2P was designed to overcome. The core of the article is a conceptual and political analysis of the R2P doctrine itself. It explains how R2P seeks to re-characterize sovereignty not as a right of non-interference, but as a responsibility to protect one's own people. The paper then moves to an assessment of the impact of R2P on international practice since its adoption in 2005. It provides a detailed case study of the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, which was the first and most explicit application of the military dimension of R2P, and it analyzes the intense political controversy that this intervention generated. The findings suggest a mixed and contested record. On the one hand, R2P has successfully created a new and powerful international norm and has been invoked in numerous Security Council resolutions. On the other hand, its application remains highly inconsistent and subject to the geopolitical interests of the major powers, as the subsequent failure to intervene in Syria demonstrated. The paper concludes that while R2P has not been a panacea, it has fundamentally changed the terms of the debate on sovereignty and intervention, ensuring that the question of protecting civilians from mass atrocities is now a permanent and central feature of the international agenda.