Atrocity Prevention and Response: Challenges for R2P

Abstract While longstanding critiques of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) as a Western interventionist doctrine are well known, this intervention argues that a new form of backlash politics to the R2P is emerging from key Western states that have long been its strongest advocates and supporters. This intervention argues that this trend is disconcerting in that it risks returning to an international politics of complacency whereby states are no longer willing to acknowledge or accept responsibility to assist populations from mass atrocities occurring within the borders of a foreign state. Two strategies are advocated to counter this trend among governments. First, is to emphasise the successes as well as acknowledge the failures of R2P. Second, to clearly articulate how it is in every country’s own national interest to respond decently to conscience-shocking atrocity crimes occurring elsewhere.