Libya

The human rights law, which evolved over the years has necessitated adrift in international law towards humanitarian intervention. Hence in the Post-Cold war era, increasing global consciousness of human rights relations has come to the front burner of the international community as never before. Therefore, the issue of intervention in another state for humanitarian protection purposes has been very contentious.Consequently, humanitarian intervention has been transformed accordingly. The doctrine of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is the aftermath of many years of diplomatic bargaining on how and under what situation or circumstances the international community can intervene in another sovereign state to protect the lives of citizens. The doctrine of R2P was advanced by Kofi Annan, the then UN Secretary General and propagated by states in the international community, NGO’s prominent individuals to address the issue of mass atrocity crimes occasioned by intrastate conflicts usually perpetuated by dictatorial governments. It emphasised the sanctity and the immunity of sovereign human rights, as well as the moral obligations of the international community to intervene in extreme cases of convulsions that boggled human existence, conscience and reasoning and consequently altered the general understanding of sovereignty by giving a novel redefinition of the concept as ‘responsibility to humanity’. Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is a three major pillared consensus paper that was created and authorised at the New York World Summit meeting in 2005 by all member states of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) to act as a structure, standardized operational framework, mechanism or guideline for preventing the occurrence or commitment of mass atrocity crimes by state leaders against their own people. The research problem under investigation is focused on the accomplishment of the application of the third pillar of R2P principles which is that “United Nations Security Council (UNSC) are legally permitted to use military force as a last resort to prevent atrocity crimes globally”. Unanimity was achieved for a forceful military intervention in Libya. Contrarily, fragmentations due to core national strategic interest of the permanent five UNSC members states has hampered the collective execution/implementation of the third pillar of R2P belief in Syria. Utilizing political realism, game theory and chicken game as a framework to operationalize the literature; the main aim of this qualitative and quantitative case study is to investigate the instrumentalities of R2P in enforcing peaceful resolution of crises in Syria since the civil war started in 2011. The research question of this study evaluated the enforcement of R2P third pillar principles in Libya and Syria since 2011-2024 to prevent atrocity crimes. This research study used both primary and secondary qualitative structure to source, collect, examine and analyse vital information on R2P principles. Descriptive coding design was used to code the data and similar words, phrases and philosophical values or perspectives were analysed and created into patterns and themes for a proper analysis. The research outcomes reveals that the complications and disparities of implementing the third pillar of R2P doctrines in Libya and its non-enforcement in Syria notwithstanding the humanitarian crisis particularly meted on the vulnerable civilian casualties and mass displacement of the population has resulted in the non-intervention in Syria to save the civilian populations and lack of will to implement international relations policy objectives between states to unanimously resolve crises in the UNSC floor which is a failure of the doctrine and what the future holds for R2P is now questionable. It is therefore recommended that there is need for the R2P doctrine to be fine-tuned and restructured and should in case the UNSC is hamstrunged to acts where action is required to perform its duties as in the case of Syria, imposition of arms embargo on major warring parties and actors as an alternative international bodies, groups or regional organisations shall be considered, accommodated and empowered enough to be effective to enforce the tenets of R2P third pillar in order to safeguard and protect
mass civilian population lives against mass atrocity crimes and for the overall maintenance of international peace and security according to the UN Charter.