Description
We spoke with Professor Kyle Grayson regarding the preferred date of June 19th and are hoping the organising committee can accommodate this request.
Abstract
Twenty years ago, Wheeler’s seminal text, Saving Strangers, set out to examine how far humanitarian intervention had become a legitimate practice in the society of states. In so doing, it argued a new consensus emerged in the 1990s on the legitimacy of UN authorised humanitarian intervention. Two decades on, the emergence of the Responsibility to Protect norm has seen advocates identify its consensual support as one of its key successes whilst highlighting the need to deepen and extend this further. This consensus-building, in part, has arisen because the RtoP has broadened the debate beyond humanitarian intervention to focus on prevention, assistance, and alternatives to war and also gone beyond the UN Security Council to incorporate the role of other actors such as Regional Organisations, the UN Human Rights Council, and RtoP networks including Focal Points and Group of Friends. Despite this, many of the fundamental questions, concerns, and challenges laid bare in the 1990s remain ever present in cases such as China, the Central African Republic, Syria, Myanmar, and South Sudan to name a few. In addition, the RtoP was born in a so-called liberal era, yet as we enter a period of shifting power balances new questions, concerns, and challenges arise over the future of the RtoP in a post-Liberal World Order. Against this backdrop, the roundtable reflects on the ever present issue of Saving Strangers amidst a crisis of liberalism.
