R2P Ten Years on: Unresolved Justice Conflicts and Contestation

The norm set known as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) remains contested. This contestation is not only driven by intentions to challenge a western-dominated international order. Rather, it has its root in an underlying conflict of justice conceptions, in which an understanding of justice as based on entitlements of individuals collides with an understanding based on the entitlements of states. The chapter develops this argument, bringing together theoretical arguments from different strands of research. Recent constructivist scholarship on norm contestation points to pre-existent norms and normative beliefs as determining actors’ perception of the legitimacy of new international norms. The English School and empirical justice research, similarly, point to collectively held ideas of justice as motives for norm contestation. Against this background and based on process tracing, qualitative content analysis, and expert interviews, the chapter analyzes the negotiations on R2P in 2005 and compares the results with the further development of R2P within the UN General Assembly. It thus illustrates that conflicts over individual vis-a-vis statist entitlements and over procedural justice remained unresolved during the emergence of R2P in 2005 and are now hampering the further evolution and implementation of the norm.