Humanitarian irresponsibility and the R2P doctrine: a case study of Darfur

In light of past humanitarian crises and devastating UN missteps, this paper explores the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine and its misapplication and subsequent failure to protect the civilians of Darfur against the first genocide of the 21st century. This paper chronicles the evolution of UN peacekeeping, highlighting the 1993 Somalian debacle and humanitarian catastrophes of Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo, provided as a means to showcase how political stalemate and delayed military deployment altered the institutional consciousness of the UN and allowed for unnecessary death and displacement. After outlining the ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ approach, the case of Darfur is presented to demonstrate how a feeble international response and a failure to apply the tenets of responsibility allowed the crisis to stagnate. Although a number of obstacles prevented meaningful political action, the responsibility argument remains sound, with proponents stressing the necessity of correcting conceptual misunderstandings to make the doctrine operational.