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Abstract
This article bridges Responsibility to Protect (R2P) with work on Global Governance (GG). Both are products of a normative shift away from state-centric conceptualizations of authority and towards collective efforts to address transnational problems where traditional (State) governance mechanisms are absent or have failed. By assessing the governance architecture of R2P and of refugee protection in the case of Syria, the article sheds light on how global structures of authority interact with national and local systems. The constraints on agents operating at multiple levels of authority and the inequalities inherent in these structures have important implications for the effectiveness of R2P outcomes. Given the power asymmetries associated with the governance architecture of R2P and the proxy war in Syria, the article argues that the use of coercive intervention under R2P's Pillar Three risks further de-legitimization of the concept itself. As an alternative, the article calls for greater emphasis on R2P as refugee protection, particularly in light of the largest refugee crisis in the post-World War II era. The international community can take immediate and important steps towards fulfilling R2P by responding to the millions displaced by mass atrocity crimes.
Note on contributor
Alise Coen received her PhD from the University of Delaware in Political Science and International Relations. She earned her BA in International Relations from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan. Her research focuses on global governance, human rights, religion and politics, and US foreign policy towards the Middle East.
Notes
1 Elias Groll, ‘A Record Year in Misery: The World Has Never Seen a Refugee Crisis This Bad’, Foreignpolicy.com, June 18, 2015, http://foreignpolicy.com/2015/06/18/a-record-year-in-misery-the-world-has-never-seen-a-refugee-crisis-this-bad/ (accessed June 18, 2015).
2 See Minerva Nasser-Eddine, ‘How R2P Failed Syria’, Flinders Journal of History and Politics 28 (2012), 16–30; Aidan Hehir and Robert Murray, eds., Libya, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
3 Alex J. Bellamy, ‘A Death Foretold? Human Rights, Responsibility to Protect and the Persistent Politics of Power’, Cooperation and Conflict 50, no. 2 (2015), 286–293, 289.
4 Monica Serrano and Thomas G. Weiss, ‘Introduction: Is R2P “Cascading”?’ in The International Politics of Human Rights: Rallying to the R2P Cause? eds. Monica Serrano and Thomas G. Weiss (New York: Routledge, 2014), 1.
5 See Martin Hewson and Timothy J. Sinclair, eds., Approaches to Global Governance Theory (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999); Steve Hughes and Rorden Wilkinson, eds., Global Governance: Critical Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2002); Alice D. Ba and Matthew J. Hoffman, eds., Contending Perspectives on Global Governance: Coherence, Contestation and World Order (London and New York: Routledge, 2005); Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall, eds., Power in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
6 For a detailed definitional discussion of Global Governance, see Matthias Hofferberth, ‘Mapping the Meanings of Global Governance: A Conceptual Reconstruction of a Floating Signifier’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43, no. 2 (2015): 598–617 and Timothy J. Sinclair, Global Governance (Cambridge and Malden: Polity Press, 2012).
7 Thomas G. Weiss and Rorden Wilkinson, ‘Rethinking Global Governance? Complexity, Authority, Power, Change’, International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2014), 207–215, 207.
8 Anne Orford, International Authority and Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 15.
9 Orford, International Authority, 16.
10 Bellamy, ‘A Death Foretold’, 289.
11 Tom Pegram and Michele Acuto, ‘Introduction: Global Governance in the Interregnum’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43, no. 2 (2015), 584–597, 586.
12 Ian Goldin, Divided Nations: Why Global Governance Is Failing, And What We Can Do About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 112.
13 For an instructive discussion of the emergence of ‘human security’ and its applications, see Richard A. Matthew, Jon Barnett, Bryan McDonald, and Karen O'Brien, eds., Global Environmental Change and Human Security (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2010).
14 See Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh Thakur, Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2010).
15 Goldin, Divided Nations, 94.
16 Tom Pegram, ‘Governing Relationships: The New Architecture in Global Human Rights Governance’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43, no. 2 (2015), 618–639, 622.
17 Ramesh Thakur, ‘The Responsibility to Protect: Retrospect and Prospect’ in Responsibility to Protect and Sovereignty, eds. Charles Sampford and Ramesh Thakur (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), Ch. 10, 209.
18 Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 7.
19 Matthew S. Weinert, ‘Democratic Sovereignty and The Responsibility to Protect’, Politics and Ethics Review 2, no. 2 (2006), 139–158, 147.
20 Weinert, ‘Democratic Sovereignty’, 149–150.
21 See Jonas Tallberg, Thomas Sommerer, Theresa Squatrito, and Christer Jönsson, The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
22 Goldin, Divided Nations, 57–58.
23 Jocelyn Vaughn and Tim Dunne, ‘Leading From the Front: America, Libya and the Localisation of R2P’, Cooperation and Conflict 50, no. 1 (2015), 29–49, 41.
24 Goldin, Divided Nations, 94.
25 Weiss and Wilkinson, ‘Rethinking Global Governance’, 211.
26 Pegram, ‘Governing Relationships’, 620.
27 Philipp Pattberg and Oscar Widerberg, ‘Theorising Global Environmental Governance: Key Findings and Future Questions’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43, no. 2 (2015), 684–705, 695–696.
28 Leslie F. Goldstein and Cornel Ban, ‘The European Human-Rights Regime as a Case Study in the Emergence of Global Governance’ in Contending Perspectives, eds. Ba and Hoffman, Ch. 9, 154.
29 Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and For All (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2008), 175–180.
30 Pattberg and Widerberg, ‘Theorising Global Environmental Governance’, 693–694.
31 Sinclair, Global Governance, 27.
32 Charles Sampford, ‘Introduction', in Responsibility to Protect and Sovereignty, eds. Charles Sampford and Ramesh Thakur (Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 3.
33 See http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/crisiswatch.aspx (Accessed June 16, 2015).
34 See http://www.globalr2p.org/our_work/r2p_focal_points (Accessed June 16, 2015).
35 Thakur, Responsibility to Protect, 2013, 195–196.
36 See Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, eds., The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
37 James Gelvin, The Arab Uprisings: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 5.
38 David W. Lesch, ‘The Uprising That Wasn't Supposed to Happen: Syria and the Arab Spring', in The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East, eds. Mark L. Haas and David W. Lesch (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2013), Ch. 4, 83.
39 See Jan Aart Scholte, ed., Building Global Democracy? Civil Society and Accountable Global Governance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
40 Brian Tisdall, ‘The Challenge of Access in Syria’, Humanitarian Exchange Magazine 59 (November 2013), http://www.odihpn.org/humanitarian-exchange-magazine/issue-59/the-challenge-of-access-in-syria (accessed June 16, 2015).
41 See Hikaru Yamashita, ‘New Humanitarianism and Changing Logics of the Political in International Relations’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43, no. 2 (2015), 411–428.
42 Orford, International Responsibility, 104.
43 Vaughn and Dunne, ‘Leading From the Front’, 33.
44 Hehir and Murray, Libya, 5.
45 ‘Syria: 58 Countries Urge ICC Referral’, Human Rights Watch, May 20, 2014, http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/05/20/syria-58-countries-urge-icc-referral (accessed June 16, 2015).
46 See Martin Mennecke, ‘The International Criminal Court’ in The International Politics, eds. Serrano and Weiss, Ch. 4.
47 Pattberg and Widerberg, 688.
48 See Justin Morris, ‘Libya and Syria: R2P and the Spectre of the Swinging Pendulum’, International Affairs 89, no. 5 (2013), 1265–1283, 1272 and Monica Serrano and Thomas G. Weiss, ‘Introduction: Is R2P “Cascading”?’, in The International Politics, eds. Serrano and Weiss, 6.
49 Alexandra dos Reis Stefanopoulos and George A. Lopez, ‘From Coercive to Protective Tools: The Evolution of Targeted Sanctions', in The International Politics, eds. Serrano and Weiss, 55.
50 See Serrano and Weiss, The International Politics, 11–12 and Spencer Zifcak, ‘Falls the Shadow: The Responsibility to Protect from Theory to Practice', in The Responsibility to Protect, eds. Sampford and Thakur, Ch. 2.
51 Zeynep Sahin Mencütek, ‘The “Rebirth” of a Dead Organization? Questioning the Role of the Arab League in the “Arab Uprisings” Process’, Perceptions 19, no. 2 (2014), 83–112, 98.
52 ‘Annex to U.S.–Gulf Cooperation Council Camp David Joint Statement’, Whitehouse.gov, May 14, 2015, https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/05/14/annex-us-gulf-cooperation-council-camp-david-joint-statement (accessed June 16, 2015).
53 See Alex de Waal, ‘My Fears, Alas, Were Not Unfounded: Africa's Responses to the Libya Conflict’ and Theresa Reinold, ‘Africa's Emerging Regional Security Culture and the Intervention in Libya’ in Hehir and Murray, eds., Libya, Chs. 4 and 5.
54 Kevin Boreham, ‘Sovereignty and R2P Ten Years after East Timor and Kosovo: A Failure to Protect: The UN Human Rights Council and Darfur’ in The Responsibility to Protect, eds. Sampford and Thakur, Ch. 7, 132–133.
55 Mencütek, ‘The Rebirth’, 101.
56 Lesch, ‘The Uprising’, 94.
57 Mencütek, ‘The Rebirth’, 85.
58 Robert Murray, ‘Humanitarians, Responsibility or Rationality? Evaluating Intervention as a State Strategy’ in Libya, eds. Hehir and Murray, Ch. 2, 43.
59 David Held, ‘Restructuring Global Governance: Cosmopolitanism, Democracy and the Global Order’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 37, no. 3 (2009), 535–547, 536–37.
60 Weiss and Thakur, Global Governance, 340.
61 Pegram and Acuto, ‘Introduction’, 591.
62 For a discussion of the ambiguity of the ‘manifest failing’ requirement see Adrian Gallagher, ‘Syria and the Indicators of a “Manifest Failing”’, The International Journal of Human Rights 18, no. 1 (2014), 1–19.
63 Nasser-Eddine, ‘How R2P Failed’, 22.
64 Thomas G. Weiss, ‘Halting Genocide: Rhetoric versus Reality’, Genocide Studies and Prevention 2, no. 1 (2007), 7–30, 18–19.
65 Martha Finnemore, ‘Dynamics of Global Governance: Building on What We Know’, International Studies Quarterly 58, no. 1 (2014), 221–224, 222.
66 ‘Libya: Humanitarian Situation Report’, UNICEF, March 2015, http://www.unicef.org/appeals/files/UNICEF_Libya_Sitrep_March_2015.pdf (Accessed June 16, 2015).
67 Morris, ‘Libya and Syria’, 1280.
68 Morris, ‘Libya and Syria’, 1266.
69 Zifcak, ‘Falls the Shadow’, 33.
70 See Geraint Alun Hughes, ‘Syria and the Perils of Proxy Warfare’, Small Wars & Insurgencies 25, no. 3 (2014), 522–538.
71 Khaldoun Khashanah, ‘The Syrian Crisis: A Systemic Framework’, Contemporary Arab Affairs 7, no. 1 (2014), 1–21.
72 Patrick Cockburn, The Rise of the Islamic State: ISIS and the New Sunni Revolution (London and New York: Verso, 2015), 94.
73 Nasser-Eddine, ‘How R2P Failed’, 17.
74 Khashanah, ‘The Syrian Crisis’, 18.
75 Finnemore, ‘Dynamics’, 222.
76 Gallagher, ‘Syria and the Indicators’, 9.
77 Brian Barbour and Brian Gorlick, ‘Embracing the “Responsibility to Protect”: A Repertoire of Measures Including Asylum for Potential Victims’, International Journal of Refugee Law 20, no. 4 (2008), 533–566, 561.
78 Mark Gibney, Global Refugee Crisis: A Reference Handbook (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010), xv.
79 Gibney, Global Refugee, 51.
80 See Gibney, Global Refugee, 51–56.
81 Rochelle Davis, ‘Syria's Refugee Crisis’, Great Decisions (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 2015), 65–76, 75.
82 Pegram and Acuto, ‘Introduction’, 597.
83 Davis, ‘Syria's Refugee Crisis’, 71.
84 See http://www.rescue.org/crisis-syria (accessed July 28, 2015).
85 Mohammad Abo-Hilal and Omar Said Yousef, ‘Beyond Survival: A Brief Description of Psychological Services for Syrian Refugees’, Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology 20, no. 3 (2014), 334–336.
86 See Noura Erakat, ‘Palestinian Refugees and the Syrian Uprising: Filling the Protection Gap during Secondary Forced Displacement’, International Journal of Refugee Law 26, no. 4 (2014), 581–621.
87 Barbour and Gorlick, ‘Embracing’, 562.
88 Barbour and Gorlick, ‘Embracing’, 563.
89 ‘IOM Monitors Migrant Arrivals, Deaths in Mediterranean’, International Organization for Migration, April 28, 2015, https://www.iom.int/news/iom-monitors-migrant-arrivals-deaths-mediterranean (accessed June 16, 2015).
90 Tara Brian and Frank Laczko, eds., ‘Fatal Journeys: Tracking Lives Lost during Migration’, International Organization for Migration (2014), 12, http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/FatalJourneys_CountingtheUncounted.pdf (accessed June 16, 2015).
91 ‘Europe Response to Mediterranean Migrant and Refugee Tragedy Falls Short’, Oxfam International, June 16, 2015, https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/reactions/europe-response-mediterranean-migrant-and-refugee-tragedy-falls-short-oxfam (Accessed June 18, 2015).
92 Erakat, ‘Palestinian Refugees’, 610.
93 Germany, Canada, Australia, Norway, and Sweden have disproportionately provided resettlement pledges since 2013. ‘Fact Sheet on Resettlement and Other Forms of Admission for Syrian Refugees’, UNHCR, February 11, 2015, http://data.unhcr.org/syrianrefugees/asylum.php (Accessed June 16, 2015).
94 See Davis, ‘Syria's Refugee Crisis’, 70–75 and Cockburn, The Rise of the Islamic State.
95 See Erakat, ‘Palestinian Refugees’.
96 Bill Frelick, ‘Paradigm Shifts in the International Responses to Refugees’ in Fear of Persecution: Global Human Rights, International Law, and Human Well-Being, eds. James Daniel White and Anthony J. Marsella (Lanham, MD and Plymouth: Lexington Books, 2007), Ch. 2, 47.
97 Davis, ‘Syria's Refugee Crisis’, 75. It is noteworthy that in 2014 the US government did renew the availability of Temporary Protected Status for Syrian passport holders and residents, allowing for the renewal of visas; thousands of Syrians were given visas to come to the US through family requests, but these were considered temporary and were not asylum cases.
98 Martin Matishak, ‘Republican Fears US has Created “Federally Funded Jihadi Pipeline”’, The Hill, February 11, 2015, http://thehill.com/policy/defense/232526-republican-fears-us-is-creating-federally-funded-jihadi-pipeline (accessed June 16, 2015).
99 Goldin, Divided Nations, 59.
100 Richard Wike, ‘In Europe, Sentiment against Immigrants, Minorities Runs High’, Pew Research Center Fact Tank, May 14, 2014, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/05/14/in-europe-sentiment-against-immigrants-minorities-runs-high/ (accessed June 16, 2015).
101 Alain Toumayan, ‘The Responsibility for the Other and The Responsibility to Protect’, Philosophy and Social Criticism 40, no. 3 (2014), 269–288, 270.
102 Barbour and Gorlick, ‘Embracing’, 2008, 565.
103 Gibney, Global Refugee, 25.
104 William Thomas Worster, ‘The Contemporary International Law Status of the Right to Receive Asylum’, International Journal of Refugee Law 26, no. 4 (2014), 477–499, 478.
105 Angus Francis, ‘Refugees and Military Intervention in the Name of Responsibility to Protect’, in The Responsibility to Protect, eds. Sampford and Thakur, Ch. 3, 183.
106 Toumayan, ‘The Responsibility’, 278.