Is Responsibility to Protect a Bane or Boon?: The Case of the Russia-Ukraine War

The legal dilemma surrounding humanitarian intervention is never-ending. The concept, even though has gathered moral and philosophical ramifications but failed to be justified on legal grounds and hence never gained prominence in the international field. The prevention of the use of force, as well as respect for sovereignty of the member states as laid down in the UN Charter, championed all the causes that could permit intervention on humanitarian grounds. However, for Annan, there was no dilemma; for him, the concern for the abuse of human rights should precede the fact that the UN Charter prohibits the use of force as he affirms: ‘the world cannot stand aside when gross and systematic violations of Human Rights are taking place. Intervention must be based on legitimate and universal principles. Annans seek for a response from the world community was eventually answered via a report named “Responsibility to protect”. In September 2000, the Government of Canada along with a group of major foundations announced the establishment of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which was entrusted with the responsibility of establishing acceptance criteria for the purpose of humanitarian intervention. Since 2005, R2P has been applied in crises of the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Libya, and Mali and in more than 80 UN Security Council resolutions. But they have been abused too. The US was the first country to manipulate the report to justify its invasion of Iraq. Similarly, we see Russia distort g the language of the report to legalise its military aggression in Ukraine. The paper show that these two distortions are setting a trend that would be taken up by the powerful states in the future to establish their power over the smaller states in the pretext of re[possibility emanating from the report.