R2P Ten Years on

The norm set known as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) remains contested. This contestation is, from a normative perspective, not only driven by intentions to challenge a western-dominated international order. Recent constructivist scholarship on norm contestation points to pre-existent norms and normative beliefs as determining actors’ perception of the legitimacy of new international norms. The English School and empirical justice research point in a similar vein to collectively held ideas of justice as motives for norm contestation. Drawing on process tracing, qualitative content analysis, and expert interviews, this article analyses the negotiations on R2P in 2005 and compares the results with the further development of R2P within the UN General Assembly. The article thereby illustrates that conflicts over individual vis-à-vis statist entitlements and over procedural justice remained unresolved during the emergence of R2P in 2005 and are now hampering the further evolution and implementation of the norm.