Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities

Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities. By Alex J. Bellamy. Polity Press 268pp, Pounds 55.00 and Pounds 16.99. ISBN 9780745643472 and 43489. Published 5 December 2008.

The political concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) addresses the complex issue of a state's responsibility to protect its citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The assumption of this responsibility by the international community in the event of a state's failure is a controversial and passionately debated aspect of this political project and a main area of concern of Alex Bellamy's Responsibility to Protect: The Global Effort to End Mass Atrocities.

The R2P was conceived as a report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The document attempted to distance itself from the problematic notion of "humanitarian intervention" and instead focused on proposing a three-stage agenda for reaction to genocide and mass atrocity: the responsibility to prevent, respond and rebuild. The commission discussed each of the report's components and suggested reforms...