Replacing the Responsibility to Protect: The Equitable Theory of Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract

In this article, Ciaran J. Burke argues that the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ initiative has failed. Burke presents a series of fundamental flaws, both with the doctrine advanced by the ICISS, and with the subsequent attempts to incorporate it into the international legal framework. Burke opines that equity, as a source of international law, should instead be used to shed fresh light on the debate, keeping the discourse within the law and away from subjective ethics, and drafting a novel framework which he dubs ‘equitable humanitarian intervention’.