FROM HUMAN SECURITY TO THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT: THE CO-OPTION OF DISSENT?

In this article I argue that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has sanitized much of the revolutionary potential of human security. While R2P has not subsumed human security—the latter arguably involves a broader array of issues and themes which continue to be discussed—it has come to dominate the debate on the protection of human rights and, specifically, preventing and responding to mass atrocities. Whereas human security, in its early inception, constituted a challenge to the state-centric nature of the international system, R2P maintains the systemic status quo and treats states—and the state-based nature of the United Nations (UN)—as unalterable constants. While R2P is propelled largely by non-states actors, the strategic calculus focuses on altering the behaviour of states—a strategy I consider naïve and/or hubristic—rather than reforming the state-based system in a way which coheres with the original human security approach of empowering individuals at the expense of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]