The responsibility to protect and the limits of international authority

Abstract

This chapter explores the symptoms of the need to address the limits that have arisen through attempts to implement the responsibility-to-protect concept. Attention in internationalist literature exploring the nature and scope of the responsibility-to-protect concept has focused on the ways in which that concept justifies the expansion of international authority in situations where a state has failed to protect its population. The subsequent International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) report, titled The Responsibility to Protect, sought to transcend the perceived tension between sovereignty and humanitarian intervention that had divided international responses to t..