Bridging the Gap in Human Protection: Contesting the Responsibility to Protect through the Protection of Civilians Norm: A Comparative Study of Brazil, China and South Africa

Abstract

Human protection has been a high priority since the international community’s failure in the 1990s to respond adequately to instances of mass atrocities in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. Consequently, two human protection norms were developed: the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P) and the ‘Protection of Civilians in armed conflict’ (POC). Implementation of human protection through R2P is still contested, with non-Western states claiming that the concept has been used by Western states to pursue their own agendas. Non-Western rising and regional powers like Brazil, China and South Africa have taken the lead in raising these concerns. This thesis explores how Brazil, China and South Africa attempt to reconcile questions of legitimacy surrounding the pursuit of human protection through R2P. Based on Antje Wiener’s Theory of Contestation, this thesis analyses discourse of both norms surrounding specific peace operations each country has been involved in and finds that Brazil, China and South Africa contest R2P using normative concepts from POC. Outlining this process builds on the notion that non-Western states have agency in norm contestation of global governance norms, showing that Brazil, China and South Africa strategically shape R2P not only to meet their own normative expectations of human protection, but also the expectations of the global South. Further, their contestation of human protection norms has flow-on effects to the norms of standardised procedures in peace operation mandates and operational components. Show more