A Queer Response to ‘the Moral Untouchability of the Responsibility to Protect'

Christopher Hobson argues that research on and politicking around the United Nations’ Responsibility to Protect (R2P) has to date been too focused on ‘the successful consolidation of R2P as a norm’ (2022, 368). As such, Hobson argues, scholars and practitioners have become so preoccupied with the doctrine of R2P and its status as a norm that they fail to engage with the atrocity acts it was designed to eliminate as well as the material effects and lived experiences of those atrocities. We were invited by this journal’s editors to consider Hobson’s argument and engage with it from a queer perspective given our recent collaborative publications ‘Queering Atrocity Prevention’ (Gifkins et al., 2022) and ‘Queering the Responsibility to Protect’ (Gifkins and Cooper-Cunningham 2023). While our pieces are critical of R2P and wider atrocity prevention scholarship and practice for overlooking queer experiences of and insights on atrocity, they are written in the feminist spirit of critical friendship (Holvikivi 2019, 137). That is to say that we share the central normative goal of R2P – eradicating mass atrocities – but challenge some of the assumptions baked into it; for us, this was cisheteronormativity.¹

Our work is also written with a queer political commitment to a perpetual interrogation of all relations to power, which includes questioning norms and the exclusion, violence, silencing, and invisibilisation they enable (Cohen 1997, 2023). This queer commitment is important for us to emphasise because Hobson’s text starts from an engagement with two important questions. First, who and what we place at the centre of our scholarly analyses and policy practices about R2P. In our reading, Hobson identifies this as doctrine and norm status versus acts of atrocity. Second, how morals and ethics function in international politics. Beate Jahn argues that critical analyses and interventions constitute issues ‘in new ways … pave the way for new practices’ and thus ‘contribute to improvements for particular groups within society’ (2021, 1286). This is something we have kept in mind when thinking about the potential of queering atrocity prevention and in engaging with Hobson’s article. Hobson’s intervention is indeed criticism but it falls short of being critical, which is a more systematic and theoretically-informed exploration.

We see at least three significant issues with Hobson’s argument: it advances unsubstantiated claims, namely that the literature on R2P has an ‘obsessive’ concern with R2P’s status as a norm; it does the same thing it criticises, principally ignoring non-western experience and not focusing on lived experiences; and it fails to offer any new solutions or ways of understanding atrocity prevention that can be built upon to either replace or improve R2P specifically and atrocity prevention more broadly. We elaborate on this and address some of the central claims of Hobson’s critique below.

Our core critique of Hobson’s article is to question his central assumption that there is ‘an almost obsessive concern with tracking the status of R2P as a norm’ within literature on R2P, a point that he footnotes in relation to the Global Responsibility to Protect (GR2P) journal (2022, 374). While Hobson asks us to take this claim on faith, we decided to test the dominance of a normative focus in literature on R2P, using GR2P. The GR2P journal is well respected and is the premier journal for research on the responsibility to protect and can therefore be thought of as representative of the evolution of research on R2P and change in interests over time. To assess Hobson’s claim, we created a dataset containing details of articles published online in GR2P (2009–22) and used ChatGPT Data Analyst (DA) to code those articles as being about ‘norms’ or not using the article’s abstract.² ChatGPT has been shown to reliably code texts in far more complicated ways than we used it (Gilardi, Alizadeh, and Kubli 2023). To code the articles, we uploaded our dataset to ChatGPT DA and instructed it to code each abstract in a binary of positive (returning a ‘1’) or negative (returning a ‘0’) for 65 terms about norms.³ Only 21 of those terms returned at least one positive. We intentionally used an overly broad range of terms in order to capture the largest possible number of articles that simply mention ‘norm’ or related terms. All these terms would have been captured had we simply chosen ‘norm’, ‘norms’, and ‘normative’ as codes, but our chosen strategy also facilitates identification of specific, narrower, themes in the literature. We chose such a low bar for identifying an article as focusing on norms because mere mention of one of these terms in an article’s abstract is the loosest possible sense in which one could interpret these texts as ‘focusing’ on the normative status of R2P. To be clear, we do not believe that the mere mention of any of the terms elaborated in footnote 2 indicate an article’s focus is on the status of R2P as a norm; simply that there is some level of engagement with norms. Thus, the actual number of articles focusing solely on R2P’s status as a norm will likely be far lower than the number we identify here since our search threshold was deliberately low to pick up the broadest number of responses.

Based on this wide analysis and broad understanding of ‘focusing’ on R2P’s status as a norm, in only five out of fourteen years do the majority of articles focus on norms (Figure 1). Our findings challenge Hobson’s central point that R2P research is overwhelmingly focused or ‘obsessed’ with the normative development of R2P and the status of R2P as a norm since even when considering norms in the broadest possible terms, across fourteen years of scholarship, less than half of articles focus on R2P’s normative development. Most of the articles published in GR2P between its inception in 2009 and 2022 do not focus on the normative standing of R2P. We also found that literature focussing on R2P as a norm has steadily declined over the period 2009–22, even when using an expansive interpretation of what constitutes a normatively oriented article.

Figure 1. Percentage of articles coded as focusing on norms for years 2009 through 2022 in Global Responsibility to Protect Journal.

The fundamental critique posed by Hobson is that R2P research should focus less on norm development and more on atrocities and activities intended to prevent atrocities. He further suggests that a focus on the mechanism for atrocity elimination – the ‘doctrine’ of R2P – is a distraction from actual lived reality and material effects of acts of atrocity. The premise underlying the critique set out by Hobson is that norm development and acts of atrocity are mutually exclusive or not related. However, in an anarchic international order there are limited tools for holding states to their commitments and norms are one of the (few) mechanisms that encourage states to act in a particular way. Research on R2P as a norm helps to, for example, understand how China’s rhetorical support for atrocity prevention belies its conceptual and behavioural contestation of the liberal model of prevention, and its preference for development-oriented prevention, which is useful for furthering engagement on these topics with China in the UN Security Council (Zhang 2024). Earlier work on R2P and norms has demonstrated how the misapplication of R2P to the case of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar helped to clarify the boundaries of what R2P is and is not (Badescu and Weiss 2010). These projects – and others on R2P as a norm – have helped to refine our collective understanding of what R2P is and how best to engage states on R2P.

Pushing this further, and turning to the epistemological and ontological level, it is not particularly clear where the author pitches their tent in these regards. If one adopts a poststructuralist or constructivist epistemology and ontology – as many scholars of norms do (see Finnemore and Sikkink 1998) – where language has what Lene Hansen (2006) calls a ‘discursive causality’ – i.e. it establishes conditions of possibility and room for manoeuvre (Doty 1993) – then it follows that the persistent (re)articulation of R2P as a norm is in fact necessary and positive. As Neumann reminds us, in diplomacy and foreign policy ‘the policy had to be repeated, if not it would be weakened’ (2007). Language about atrocities – and by extension R2P’s status as a norm – becomes as important to study as acts of atrocity because it cements or challenges an anti-atrocity position in international politics as hegemonic (Laclau and Mouffe 1985). To study norms, normative development, and discourses of various actors in international politics about R2P, then, is as fundamentally critical to atrocity prevention as studying the persecution of atrocity acts. Neither is scholastically or morally above the other, both are fundamental to developing policies that eliminate atrocity; for what use is knowledge of how atrocities are perpetrated or experiences of them if there is little international buy-in on their elimination?

There are two further areas where Hobson’s article does not go far enough to live up to its own critiques: that R2P discourse is missing non-Western experiences and that R2P does not focus enough on lived experiences. First, the narrative given by Hobson on the evolution of R2P prioritises Western leadership and the role of the UN, while downplaying key contributions from Global South scholars and institutions (2022, 369–371). Hobson outlines the standard narrative of R2P development, with its origin in a report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001, uptake at the 2005 World Summit, reframing into three pillars in 2009 by the United Nations (UN) Secretary General, and key leadership from the UN’s Special Advisors on R2P. This narrative however excludes the well-documented and significant contributions and leadership that came from the Global South in the development of R2P, especially Sudanese scholar Francis Deng, and his colleagues, on ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ and Article 4(h) of the African Union Charter which has similarities with, but predates, the 2005 agreement on R2P (Hindawi 2022). Hobson’s narrative also excludes periods of leadership from Brazil and China on ‘Responsibility while Protecting' and ‘Responsible Protection' respectively. In explaining the origin story of R2P, Hobson has offered a very ‘New York’ focused version for an article that argues ‘assessments of the importance of R2P should be centred more on Tripoli and Benghazi than New York’ (2022, 379). Second, Hobson is critical that ‘A voluminous scholarly literature has developed that is overwhelmingly concerned with UNSC [United Nations Security Council] debates and international law, abstracted from the lived experience underpinning these cases’ (2022, 368). Yet the material on the post-intervention lived experiences in Libya – which he argues is a key dimension missing from debates – only features in the last paragraph of his case study. While we appreciate that not every article can cover everything, lived experiences could have been given more priority, given the nature of the argument and the stated importance of lived experiences.

Hobson argues that ‘the fates of people’s careers become intertwined with that of R2P’ which has created ‘a feedback loop that incentivises supporting its continuation’. This, he argues, ‘primarily applies to proponents’ of R2P (2022, 374). The argument suggests that those of us who (continue to) support R2P do so for career gain, rather than due to a commitment to the prevention of mass atrocity crimes; an argument for which he does not provide evidence, merely suggesting that there would be ‘consequences and costs’ to careers if R2P was relegated (2022, 374). As Illingworth notes, this argument could equally be applied to those who routinely critique R2P; however, like Illingworth, we work from the assumption that career self-interest does not form the foundation of either of these positions (2024). Indeed, what Hobson’s argument misses is why (some) academics support R2P. For us and perhaps for others it is because states signed up to R2P in 2005, and repeatedly in annual dialogues, which means that there is an entry point to policy and advocacy on the prevention of atrocity crimes via this concept. We are not wedded to R2P in the way that Hobson suggests but see it as a pragmatic tool – in some situations – with which to engage states and international organisations in discussion on the prevention of atrocity crimes and other forms of identity-based violence. Indeed, in an era of anti-rights agendas, R2P and atrocity risk framing may be able to convince states of the necessity of protecting marginalised communities such as the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA+) community.

Another challenge with Hobson’s argument that academics focus too much on R2P as a norm and not enough on lived experiences of atrocity crimes is that is assumes academics are myopic, rather than focused on different issues in different projects. Jess Gifkins’ work, for example, is included in Hobson’s critique for her research on the evolution of language on R2P within UN Security Council resolutions, research on Security Council negotiations on Syria, and research on the Libyan intervention (Dunne and Gifkins 2011; Gifkins 2012; 2016). However, in other work Gifkins, Cooper-Cunningham and collaborators have highlighted the lack of engagement with persecution of queer communities and queer resistance in research and policy on R2P (Gifkins et al. 2022; Gifkins and Cooper-Cunningham 2023). Our queering atrocity prevention project goes someway to meeting Hobson’s critique because in this work we have taken seriously the lived experiences – and persecution – of queer people with analysis across countries including Ukraine, Afghanistan, Hungary, and the United Kingdom, among other cases (Cooper-Cunningham and Kremer Forthcoming; Gifkins et al. 2022; Gifkins and Cooper-Cunningham 2023).

Both our report and journal article on queering atrocity prevention already addresses Hobson’s criticisms in three ways (Gifkins et al. 2022; Gifkins and Cooper-Cunningham 2023). First, the framing of our report on Queering Atrocity Prevention encompasses but goes beyond R2P to a much broader analysis of atrocity prevention, with discussion on the absence of queer inclusion in responding to displaced people and humanitarian crises, and analysis of national and international atrocity prevention frameworks (Gifkins et al. 2022). In doing so, we demonstrate that we draw on the framework of R2P where it is useful to highlight aspects of state framings of atrocity prevention but are not wedded to it, in the way Hobson suggests, and move beyond it where appropriate as well. Second, we highlight the lived experiences and challenges facing queer individuals and communities in Sudan, Egypt, Chechnya, and Poland, to name a few cases (Gifkins et al. 2022; see also Cooper-Cunningham and Kremer Forthcoming). This example highlights our focus on the lived experiences and the very real impacts of atrocity crimes – and their incitement – for LGBTQIA+ people. Third, our journal article on Queering the Responsibility to Protect includes analysis of the UN and how queer persecution has been largely ignored in policy and practice on R2P, and yet it also includes analysis of domestic politics in the United Kingdom and Hungary and the ways that domestic politics have enabled a rapid escalation in hate crimes and hate speech against queer people and communities (Gifkins and Cooper-Cunningham 2023). While we do include sections in the article on the politics of R2P in New York this is not to the exclusion of how violence and persecution can escalate on the ground. The engagement agenda of this project is central – in partnership with advocacy organisation Protection Approaches – and we have a Sector Statement which has been signed up to by over 50 organisations and individuals and our research has been discussed in an open meeting of the UN Security Council (Protection Approaches 2022; United Nations Security Council 2023). We have called for people working on R2P to remove the cisheteronormative blindfold and to recognise that queer people always were part of the communities targeted in mass atrocity crimes (Gifkins et al. 2022; Gifkins and Cooper-Cunningham 2023). But we do so, to reiterate, as critical friends who are committed to challenging the norms baked into powerful mechanisms like R2P.

In the above, we critically examine Christopher Hobson's argument that the focus of scholarship on the UN’s Responsibility to Protect is overly concentrated on its normative status, neglecting the acts of atrocity it aims to address. We approached Hobson’s critique of R2P scholarship with a queer and ‘critical friends’ approach. However, we find several fundamental issues with the piece. We challenge Hobson's claim of an ‘obsessive’ normative focus in R2P literature, using a dataset and advanced data analysis to demonstrate that less than half of the articles published in the Global Responsibility to Protect journal over fourteen years primarily focus on norms, using the lowest possible threshold for inclusion. Additionally, we demonstrate that Hobson falls victim to his own critique: he does not sufficiently address non-Western experiences and lived realities of atrocities, nor does he offer any new solutions for understanding or doing atrocity prevention. We agree on the importance of including lived experiences in atrocity-focused scholarship. Indeed, we have shown how detrimental the exclusion of queer perspectives and experience in R2P has been, arguing for a more inclusive approach that goes beyond normative frameworks to effectively prevent atrocities and protect marginalised communities, including LGBTQIA+ people. Yet, we also show that language about and the normative status of atrocity prevention is not to be sublimated to experiences of acts of atrocity; neither type of knowledge should have epistemological or moral superiority.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jess Gifkins

Jess Gifkins is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney and a Queering Atrocity Prevention Research Fellow at Protection Approaches in London.

Dean Cooper-Cunningham

Dean Cooper-Cunningham is an Assistant Professor at the University of Copenhagen.

Notes

1 The term heteronormativity has long been used to describe ‘the institutions, structures of understanding, and practical orientations that make heterosexuality seem not only coherent – that is, organised as a sexuality – but also privileged’ (Berlant and Warner 1998, 548). Here we have added ‘cis’ to this term to highlight the privilege and normalcy afforded to people who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.

2 Our dataset contains the following information for 268 texts: URL, Title, Abstract, Author(s), Publication Date, Volume, Issue. We excluded some texts from the dataset: book reviews or issues centred on books (e.g. Vol 3, no.1), an interview with Mohamed Sahnoun, which was partly about norms, Kofi Annan’s conclusion to Vol 3, no. 4, and all errata. For articles with no abstract, we coded the first paragraph. We coded articles using their abstracts because these are the main indication of an article’s focus and are what most readers will use to determine whether the text is about norms and should be included in their literature review or not.

3 Norm, Norms, Norm Development, Norm Health, As a Norm, Normative, Normative Support, Normative Development, Normative Preference, R2P as a Norm, R2P Norm, Norm Evolution, Norm Violation, Implementation, Words into Deeds, Emerging Norm, Normative Framework, Normative Change, Normative Progress, Norm Establishment, Normative Dynamics, Normative Shifts, Normative Transformation, Norm Adoption, Normative Consensus, Norm Diffusion, Norm Enforcement, Norm Compliance, Normative Influence, Normative Principles, Normative Guidelines, Normative Theory, Normative Challenges, Normative Impact, Normative Considerations, Normative Evolution, Normative Debate, Normative Practice, Normative Discourse, Normative Action, Normative Strategy, Normative Response, Normative Role, Normative Commitment, Normative Alignment, Normative Responsibility, Normative Effectiveness, Normative Boundaries, Normative Critique, Normative Responsibility, Preventive Norms, Normative Legitimacy, Normative Authority, Normative Power, Normative Compliance, Normative Effectiveness, Normative Frameworks, Normative Mechanisms, Normative Challenges, Normative Instruments, Normative Conflict, Normative Agreement, Normative Standards, Normative Consensus.