In these concluding observations we identify the leading threads that run through the contributions to this book, with a view to assessing the current status and role of the responsibility to protect (RtoP) and its future potential. We have grouped the relevant themes as they emerge from this book under four headings: 1) autonomy of RtoP; 2) legalisation of RtoP; 3) balancing of responsibilities between territorial states and the international community; and 4) sharing of responsibilities within the international community. The latter two headings are of particular importance for the dominant challenge that emerges from this book, and indeed for the development of RtoP as such: that is, how states and the international community can and should cooperate to give meaning, substance and effect to the responsibility to protect. For each category, under the heading ‘developments’, we first identify and comment on the relevant developments that the contributors to this book have identified, and then, under the heading ‘implications for research’, we identify those questions that remain open and that deserve further thought and research.

Autonomy

Developments

A critical claim of the RtoP doctrine is that both the state where mass atrocities are committed and the international community (a term that we use here as shorthand for states and international organisations) have a responsibility to prevent such atrocities. This claim raises the preliminary question as to what extent RtoP in fact plays an independent role in defining such responsibilities.

Many of the contributions in this book have consequently raised the existential question of whether the principle of RtoP has any real autonomy or identity, in light of the many principles and procedures that are already in place for responding to mass atrocities. Luck notes in this context: ‘[t]he responsibility to protect is an important innovation, not a radical departure. It is based on the existing body of law, not on novel theories’. There is a well-established body of law, as well as a range of more political principles, strategies and institutions that have aspired largely to the same aims as RtoP, such as, for example, existing approaches to conflict prevention.