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The (D)evolution of a Norm: R2P, the Bosnia Generation and Humanitarian Intervention in Libya

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Libya, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention

Abstract

The March 2011 NATO intervention in Libya has been widely touted as evidence of a new international norm that has come about as a result of advocacy of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle (Ban 2011; Gerber, 2011; Adams, 2011). Likewise, the Libya intervention has been characterized as an ‘unprecedented moment’ that is indicative of a new commitment and consensus by states that they have an obligation — indeed, a responsibility — to protect people who are being grossly abused by their own government (Williams 2011: 249). In contrast to the position that the Libya intervention is somehow groundbreaking or indicates the emergence of a new norm of humanitarian intervention that has been empowered by R2P advocacy, we argue that what enabled the Libya intervention is essentially an international normative environment that was brought about by precedents set during humanitarian interventions in the 1990s, while its proximate causes were the unique political and empirical circumstances that surrounded the Libya crisis. What supplemented this similarity in normative environments and confluence of political factors was a generation of policy analysts, advocates and practitioners who used the failures of the 1990s as a set of formative experiences that provided shortcut comparisons to springboard the Libya intervention.

The authors would like to thank Helen Kerwin for her extremely helpful research and editorial assistance for this chapter.

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  1. Eric A. Heinze
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  2. Brent J. Steele
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Westminster, UK

    Aidan Hehir

  2. University of Alberta, Canada

    Robert Murray

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© 2013 Eric A. Heinze and Brent J. Steele

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Heinze, E.A., Steele, B.J. (2013). The (D)evolution of a Norm: R2P, the Bosnia Generation and Humanitarian Intervention in Libya. In: Hehir, A., Murray, R. (eds) Libya, the Responsibility to Protect and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137273956_7

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