Responsibilty to protect - Innebörden av R2P och dess implementering av FN:s säkerhetsråd.

Sammanfattning: Responsibility to protect is a principle developed in order to try to protect citizens from atrocious and systematic crimes when a host state does not want to or does not have the possibility to do so themselves, and was first mentioned by the International Commission for Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001. R2P is based on the idea that each individual state has a responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, but if a state fails to do so, the international community, through the UN, has a secondary responsibility to protect those citizens. This responsibility is to primarily be enforced with peaceful means but, in extreme cases - if the UN decided that these means are inadequate - are also to be enforced by military interventions, without the state’s consent. However, creating a common understanding of the R2P principle and its meaning has proven to be a difficult task for the UN, its member states and research experts. The R2P is based on moral law and is subjected to political plays by different member states as well as the individual opinions of states. Resolutions and reports on the principle are often full of compromises with wording that bare no real power. The purpose of this thesis is to try and clarify what R2P actually means and how it has been implemented by the UN, especially by the UN’s Security Council with its exclusive right to authorize military operations in regards to R2P-crimes. The thesis focuses on extreme cases where military means have been a necessity in order to enforce the R2P in a state as an effort to protect its citizens - cases which are extremely intricate due to the lack of guidelines in regard to the R2P principle. The thesis provides an in-depth analysis on the authority of the Security Council and if and how R2P has been implemented in their work to ensure international peace and safety. The Syrian and Libyan crises are used as examples to demonstrate how R2P has been put into use by the international community. The thesis also provides an analysis on the five permanent member states’ right to veto and the issues it causes. The thesis concludes that international discussion has pivoted. There is no longer a discussion if R2P should be implemented but instead how it should be implemented and used in the daily works of the UN. With that said, there are still issues that need to be resolved, such as the five permanent member states’ right to veto and the difficult task of trying to unify dozens of states with different political, social, moral and economic standpoints. It is clear that R2P still has a long way to go, but it is also important to remember how far it has come. It has proven its importance and with human security now being a main focus of the UN, R2P has all the potential to improve further and develop clear, useful and uncompromisable guidelines that will help protect the citizens of the world.