Abstract
This introduction chapter provides the rationale for continuing in-depth discussions about the Responsibility to Protect as a major international norm to prevent mass atrocities. After introducing the main steps in the institutional and political evolution of the R2P, major debates and controversies around the R2P are summarised. These debates centre on the character and substance of the R2P, the dangers of being misused by states, and about norm contestation and its effects and consequences. Finally, against this background, the remainder of this introduction emphasises how each of the chapters in this volume contribute to these controversies on different institutional, practical, or normative levels.
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Notes
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Bringing this volume and the single chapters together has been no small task, but an intellectual pleasure. We offer our thanks to all EWIS workshop participants, also to those who did not publish their paper in this volume due to alternative publication offers, for inspiring and helpful comments and suggestions, in particular Lothar Brock for his suggestion to frame the debate around the question Challenged or Confirmed?. We are grateful to the authors—Johanna Polle, Sassan Gholiagha and Ole Frahm have joined us later on our request—contributing to this volume for the intellectual inspirations, and all the patience they demonstrated during the lengthy preparation process of the manuscript. And we thank the publisher Springer, in particular International Relations publishing editor Johannes Gläser and his international team, for the professional interest in the volume from the very beginning. Finally, we also thank the anonymous reviewers of our manuscript.
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The R2P Special Advisors so far have been Edward Luck, Jennifer Welsh, Ivan Šimonović, Karen Smith, and George Okoth-Obbo (since 2021).
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Hansel, M., Reichwein, A. (2023). Introduction: The Responsibility to Protect—Challenged or Confirmed?. In: Reichwein, A., Hansel, M. (eds) Rethinking the Responsibility to Protect. Contributions to International Relations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27412-1_1
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