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1 Global Resp. Protect 442 (2009)
Responsibility to Protect: A Framework for Prevention

handle is hein.journals/gloresp1 and id is 456 raw text is: MARTINUS
NIJHOFF
P U B L I S H E R s  Global Responsibility to Protect 1 (2009) 442-477  brill.nl/gr2p
Responsibility to Protect: A Framework
for Prevention
Sheri P. Rosenberg*
Clinical Professor of Law Director, Human Rights and
Genocide Clinic & Program, Holocaust and Human Rights Studies,
Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York, USA
sprosenb@yu.edu
Received 27 June 2009; Accepted 9 July 2009
Abstract
Most agree that prevention is the most important aspect of the Responsibility to Protect. The
best way, after all, to protect populations from mass atrocities is to ensure that they do not occur
in the first instance. Nonetheless, Since the adoption of the R2P Doctrine at the World Summit,
academic and policy debate concerning the legal and normative content of R2P, continue to
neglect its preventative dimension. This paper begins to fill that lacunae in policy and scholar-
ship by examining seeks to develop the preventative dimension of R2P by examining the rela-
tionship between evolving international human rights law on prevention and R2P, with two
objectives. The first objective is to bring a much needed focus to the law on prevention, and the
second objective is to mediate the debate between those who claim R2P it is a major departure
from existing law and those who claim it adds nothing new to the existing body of law. The paper
argues that, resting upon international human rights principles, R2P provides, under certain
circumstances, for an obligation of due diligence requiring states to take such reasonable mea-
sures of prevention as could be expected of states in a similar position. R2P's strength is that
harnesses the disparate body of law on the duty to prevent and provides a modicum of concep-
tual clarity and discipline to its application to mass atrocities.
Keywords
prevention, 2005 World Summit Outcome Document, international human rights, duty to
protect/prevent, due diligence, positive obligations in international human rights law, interna-
tional law, Bosnia v. Serbia judgment
* This article was originally presented at the R2P: The Responsibility to Protect: A Framework
for Confronting Identity-based Atrocities Conference, presented by The Program in Holocaust
and Human Rights Studies, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and The Department of
Political Science, Yeshiva University, 10-11 March 2008 in New York City. The author is grateful
to Professor Bryan Daves and Chris Chapman for their helpful comments and suggestions and
Kyra Hild for her superior research assistance.

DOI 10.1163/187598509X12505800144837

@ Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2009

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