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This paper examines the motivations and consequences of Labatt’s anti–drinking and driving campaign. The paper considers the economic and political conditions that enabled Canada’s largest brewer to execute a cause-advertising campaign and to establish itself as a “responsible corporation”—even when its leadership cared less about the deleterious effects of Labatt products and more about the company’s earnings. It examines neoliberal governance and the relationship between the public and private sector in tackling a prominent social problem—impaired driving—and how a for-profit business used its influence to create a new subjectivity: the “responsible drinker,” who did not drive while under the influence. It seeks to situate Labatt’s campaign within an increasingly neoliberal, individualistic political economy. This paper argues that Labatt’s actions were part of the neoliberal agenda toward “responsibilization” that shifted the responsibility for drunk driving away from regime-based institutions and onto the individual, allowing the neoliberal state to govern from a distance. It demonstrates that contrary to neoliberal rhetoric the state did not shrink during the late twentieth century but rather took on new regulatory functions.

The Syrian civil war stands as the most serious failure of the responsibility to prevent since the adoption of R2P in 2005. As the war has continued, there have been atrocities and abuse committed against vulnerable populations on a widespread and systematic scale. This article focuses on the atrocity prevention efforts undertaken in the first phase of the crisis from March 2011 to August 2012. It shows that while there were multiple tools utilized by a range of local, regional, and international actors, none of them had a lasting impact on the commission of atrocity crimes in Syria. This failure is due to five principal reasons. First, engagement to prevent atrocities came too late. Second, domestic and regional conditions were not conducive to prevention. Third, there was little reason for the warring parties to compromise. Fourth, there was a disconnect between what Western states wanted to achieve in Syria and what they were prepared to do about it. And fifth, the UN’s envoys had limited options for engagement.

The prevention of atrocity crimes is the cornerstone of R2P. Yet, how prevention works in practice is little understood. In practice, multiple actors at different levels employ multiple prevention tools simultaneously which relate to, and impact upon, the regional, national and local contexts in which atrocity crime risk is evident. Strengthening preventive action requires better understanding of the combination of measures employed and how these measures interact and affect the risk of atrocity crimes. Recognising the growing gap between the promise and practice of atrocity prevention, the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and R2P commissioned a series of case studies to evaluate atrocity prevention efforts, covering the countries of Burundi, Central African Republic, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Kenya, Myanmar, South Sudan and Syria. From these studies, four main lessons become apparent. One, imminently apprehended atrocity crimes are preventable. Two, best outcomes are achieved when atrocity prevention is made a priority. Three, unity of purpose is essential. And four, atrocity prevention relies on several factors, some of which are outside the control of those undertaking prevention. These lessons mean that while atrocity prevention is difficult, it is possible.

Atrocity prevention is a difficult and complex undertaking, one that needs concerted effort by multiple stakeholders to be successful. This article seeks to help bridge the acknowledged gap between the promise of atrocity prevention and its implementation by providing an introduction about lessons learned from various case studies. By doing so, it seeks to develop an evidence base of effective atrocity prevention efforts to benefit practitioners of atrocity prevention. To ensure the evaluation is as rigorous as possible, five principles were incorporated into the research. One, to apply a reasonableness test so as not to confuse association with causation. Two, use a mixed methods approach for data collection. Three, triangulate data with multiple sources. Four, validate data with participants and experts to determine a level of accuracy. And five, consider a counterfactual argument of what would have happened if the preventive action(s) had not occurred.

This chapter examines the role of humanitarian intervention in world politics. It considers how we should resolve tensions when valued principles such as order, sovereignty, and self-determination come into conflict with human rights; and how international thought and practice has evolved with respect to humanitarian intervention. The chapter discusses the case for and against humanitarian intervention and looks at humanitarian activism during the 1990s. It also analyses the responsibility to protect principle and the use of force to achieve its protection goals in Libya in 2011. Two case studies are presented in this chapter. The first one looks at Myanmar and barriers to intervention. The second one centres on the role of Middle Eastern governments in Operation Unified Protector which took place in 2011 in Libya.

Operators of major hazard chemical sites increasingly face the problem that their assets are ageing. This paper highlights the major hazard aspects of ageing, particularly in the Netherlands where there are around 400 major hazard chemical sites, many coming to the end of or exceeding their design lifetime. Targeted inspections find failures in the safety management of ageing and every year there are ageing related accidents. Dutch investigated major accidents are analysed in a bow-tie structured database called Storybuilder, which contains 83 major accidents resulting from material degradation, this being 25% of all accidents in the database. The paper provides unique details on the accident causes and the difficulties operators have in foreseeing the outcomes. It explains the reasons for taking a holistic approach to modelling, which considers management, human and technical aspects. The analysis results provide information on the safety barrier, barrier task and barrier management failures. A detailed ageing accident scenario is also illustrated within the holistic model. Two prevention approaches are suggested. One uses scenarios as a basis for identifying the necessary prevention measures. The other results from a Dutch multi-disciplinary maintenance programme concerning smart maintenance, a shared initiative approach of companies looking for innovative solutions. The conclusion is that a scenario-based approach is needed for identifying currently unanticipated material degradation causal events and that, given the condition of ageing assets, a shift to condition-based maintenance, combined with technical, organisational and cultural changes, underpins the future approach to physical ageing.

The protection of civilians has become the principal issue on which UN peacekeeping missions are judged, but its principles and methods require refinement.

Arising from the horrors of Rwanda and Srebrenica, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) holds that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own populations from atrocity crimes, that the international community should encourage and assist individual states to fulfil their responsibility, and that when states are “manifestly failing” to protect their populations, the international community should respond in a “timely and decisive” fashion. This chapter examines the emergence and developments of R2P. It shows that R2P confers responsibilities upon specific actors, but that the principle is grounded in international politics. It is best thought of, therefore, as a “responsibility to try.” The principle’s mixed record in practice should not obscure the fact that the international community increasingly recognizes a collective responsibility to protect populations within other states. The chapter also shows that the allocation of responsibility is complicated by the emergence of non-state armed groups both as perpetrators and protectors.

‘How can we know if the peace … is a stable peace?’ So opens Richard Caplan’s excellent new book on Measuring Peace (p. 1). The question is an important one. Not least, because the significant numb...

For as long as humans have fought wars, we have been beguiled and frustrated by the prospect of world peace. Only a very few of us today believe that world peace is possible. Indeed, the very mention of the term “world peace” raises incredulity. In contrast, as part of the roundtable “World Peace (And How We Can Achieve It),” this essay makes the case for taking world peace more seriously. It argues that world peace is possible, though neither inevitable nor irreversible. World peace, I argue, is something that every generation must strive for, because the ideas, social structures, and practices that make war possible are likely to remain with us. The essay proceeds in three parts. First, I briefly set out what I mean by peace and world peace. Second, I explain why I think that world peace is possible. Third, I examine how the world might be nudged in a more peaceful direction.

This chapter charts the debate between those who believe that the protection of civilians from genocide and mass atrocities ought to trump the principle of non-intervention in certain circumstances and those who oppose this proposition. This has become a particular problem in the post-Cold War world where atrocities in places like Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur prompted calls, in the West especially, for international society to step in to protect the victims with military force if necessary. While intervening to protect populations from mass atrocities does have moral appeal, humanitarian intervention causes problems for international security by potentially compromising the rules governing the use of force in world politics. Since the end of the Cold War, a broad international consensus has emerged around a principle called the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P). The R2P holds that states have a responsibility to protect their populations from genocide and mass atrocities and that the international community has a duty to help states fulfil their responsibilities and use various measures to protect populations when their own states are manifestly failing to do so. In 2011, the principle helped the UN Security Council authorize the use of force against a sovereign state for human protection purposes for the first time in its history.

Language standardization ‘from above’ occurs in situations in which language authorities seek to disseminate a standardized variety across a speech and writing community. Hence, the crucial aspect of language standardization ‘from above’ is implementation, in Haugen’s terminology. In the history of many European languages, standardization ‘from above’ is a Late Modern phenomenon, closely tied to the rise of standard language ideology in the eighteenth century. In this chapter, we first define language standardization ‘from above’, situating it in the sociohistorical context of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Arguing that the sociolinguistic situation at the time can be described as diaglossic, we claim that language standardization ‘from above’ is a top-down effort to reorganize the sociolinguistic condition in terms of standard and non-standard. We then discuss various instruments of implementation, encompassing both private and official language planning activities such as usage guides, language academies, professorships in ‘national’ languages, language laws and educational reforms. Finally, we zoom in on the effects of implementation, distinguishing between discursive and linguistic effects (i.e. changing patterns of language use under the influence of standardization ‘from above’). Our examples are mainly taken from the Dutch situation, while also incorporating examples from English, German, French and Spanish.

Peacebuilding and statebuilding were integral parts of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) when the principle was first articulated in 2001. But since 2005 they have developed quite separately, creating a gap between the theories and practices of protection and peacebuilding. The effects of this gap are not just theoretical but practical too. The UN’s failure to properly follow through with rebuilding support in Libya contributed to that country’s descent into chaos and civil war, especially after 2013. Likewise a failure to incorporate atrocity-prevention concerns into ongoing peacebuilding efforts in places like Sri Lanka and the Central African Republic meant that the UN’s field presences did not do all they could to prevent atrocities or protect vulnerable populations. This chapter examines the relationship between peacebuilding and R2P in the UN context. It shows how the two were conceived as being mutually supporting activities but were separated during the UN’s wider deliberations on reform. It describes the effects of this gap between peacebuilding and protection before arguing that the two agendas are closely aligned and should be integrated. And it points to practical work to ensure that atrocity prevention is mainstreamed into peacebuilding efforts, and vice versa.

Miliary intervention remains a controversial part of human protection. Indispensable in some circumstances, military intervention confronts significant structural challenges which means that it is used only rarely and has the propensity for causing unintended negative consequences. In this essay, we examine the place of humanitarian intervention within the human protection regime. Focusing on the case of Libya, we argue that the UN Security Council has now accepted that the use force, even against a sovereign state, is a sometimes legitimate response to mass atrocities. But the Libya experience also raised three major challenges – challenges of regime change, accountability, and selectivity – that will have be addressed if military intervention is ever to become a legitimate part of international society’s anti-atrocities arsenal. First, we show how increased international activism after the Cold War helped put downwards pressure on the incidence of mass atrocities worldwide. Second, we explain why armed intervention remained a controversial and rarely employed instrument of human protection. Third, we argue that the UN Security Council’s decision to authorise armed intervention in Libya represented a significant development in the place of armed intervention as a tool of human protection. Finally, we examine the political consequences of the intervention and argue that these will need to be addressed in order to rebuild sufficient trust to allow future considerations of the use of force for humanitarian purposes.

Sir,I am writing this letter at the invitation of Taylor and Francis to correct a misrepresentation of my views and a misleading conclusion with respect to my published work (Bellamy, 2015) on an a...

The international standard ISO 14224 provides key guidance on how to achieve quality information about equipment failures for decision-making in the oil and gas industry, including specific guidance on data collection concepts and how to record and categorize failure causes. The third edition, issued in September 2016, is still focusing mainly on equipment failures, but has a higher focus on human errors than previously. It provides a ‘human error’ definition, currently the only one in an ISO standard, and a link to several types of error used in failure cause classification. In this article, the authors study the value of this added focus on human errors by assessing the definition and effect on failure cause classification, discussing the benefits and challenges. It is concluded that the standard has provided a clear distinction between the terms ‘error’ and ‘human error’ while being consistent in the use of the term ‘error’. However, it gives limited guidance on how to separate and collect different types of human error, such as mistakes, slips and lapses, making this largely an interpretation issue. Nevertheless, applying ISO 14224 will provide data for learning about the role of human error in equipment failure on a sound expandable basis.

A decade ago, we launched Global Responsibility to Protect with the aim of supporting the publication of cutting edge research on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle, its development as a new norm in global politics, its operationalisation through the work of governments, international and regional organisations and NGOS, and its relationship and applicability to past and present cases of genocide and mass atrocities including the global response to those cases.

This chapter examines the role of humanitarian intervention in world politics. It considers how we should resolve tensions when valued principles such as order, sovereignty, and self-determination come into conflict with human rights; and how international thought and practice has evolved with respect to humanitarian intervention. The chapter discusses the case for and against humanitarian intervention and looks at humanitarian activism during the 1990s. It also analyses the responsibility to protect principle and the use of force to achieve its protection goals in Libya in 2011. Two case studies are presented, one dealing with humanitarian intervention in Darfur and the other with the role of Middle Eastern governments in Operation Unified Protector in Libya in 2011. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether the West should intervene in Syria to protect people there from the Islamic State (ISIS).

Simple tools that can be used to support safety decision making under uncertainty are being developed by the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) that will help with incorporating resilience into safety programs. This paper provides the scientific background to the development of these tools and provides a brief introduction to their content and use. The tools are for use in uncertain and surprise situations where the classic normative management approach to safety using rules, standards and controls cannot be applied. The idea is to support users in going through an uncertainty reducing process in order to increase the chance of successful recovery from situations which could otherwise have severe safety consequences.