THE CONCEPT OF RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT, AND SOLVING THE CRISIS IN LIBYA

GRIZOLD Anton (PhD, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), anton.grizold@fdv.uni-lj.si
PRAŠNIKAR Bernardka (MA, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia), bernardka.prasnikar@gmail.com

This article addresses the issue of maintaining international order, peace and security in the changed international security environment, particularly since 2001, when a new concept called the responsibility to protect has taken shape in the international community. The concept of the responsibility to protect stems from criticism of humanitarian intervention that, especially in the 1990s, represented the international community’s mechanism for intervening in grave internal conflicts of states with the aim of protecting civilian populations. In the new security environment, the international community is seeking to achieve the same aim through the concept of the responsibility to protect, which is on its way to become a new norm of international common customary law. The central research question to which this article has answered is: is the military intervention in Libya in 2011 under the responsibility to protect (R2P) an example of good practice the international community will also be able to use in the future when reacting to the most serious crimes? The analysis has shown that since the R2P concept was used in Libya, the international community has been facing a new challenge, namely to ensure a moral and political support for the adoption of a more integrated definition of the R2P concept that can provide the international community’s timely and efficient response including the responsibility to protect, react and rebuild.

Keywords: international peace and security, international community, system of collective security, humanitarian intervention, concept of the responsibility to protect