What if R2P Was—Truly—Everyone’s Business? Exploring the Individual Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

Echoing the call recently made by Ed and Dana Luck and building on a research project triggered several years ago by Siba Grovogui’s postcolonial critique of the concept of responsibility to protect (R2P), this article explores the significance of what may be labeled individual R2P. It argues that acknowledging individual R2P as part of the doctrine not only highlights the role that a heretofore underappreciated layer of actors can and does play to protect individuals from some of the worst crimes. At the theoretical level, it also has the potential to mitigate some of the R2P doctrine’s main ambiguities, while in real life, acknowledging individual R2P does, without exonerating institutional actors from their obvious responsibilities, recognize at the very least the right of people of conscience, worldwide, to take matters in their own hands even in the worst cases of international paralysis.