The Responsibility to Prevent: Could the UN Have Prevented the Atrocities in East Timor or Kosovo?
Responsibility to Protect and Sovereignty (Ashgate, 2013) 105-125, Charles Sampford and Ramesh Thakur (eds)
18 Pages Posted: 3 Aug 2010 Last revised: 4 Dec 2014
Date Written: 2009
Abstract
The concept of the responsibility to protect, as agreed upon by world leaders in 2005, is too restrictive and qualifies their commitment to the responsibility to prevent. It is dubious whether the intensity and the character of the violence in East Timor and Kosovo in 1999 would have been enough to shift the responsibility to protect to the international community. This paper will address this conceptual gap, emphasising the need for finding a closer operational link between the responsibility to prevent and the responsibility to react and a normative link between the responsibility to protect and principles of international law.
Keywords: Responsibility to Prevent; Responsibility to Protect; UN Security Council; Kosovo; East Timor; self-determination
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation