Vol 3 No 1

Dear readers,

Diversity and heterogeneity of academic debate is critical to our journal. Our efforts are focused towards creating a virtual academic platform that allows a plurality of young voices to speak about important subjects such as responses to mass violence and international criminal justice. In doing so, we are continuously extending the scope of the journal to cover and engage with critical perspectives on tangential subjects such as human rights and gender. The diversity of our publications is proof that this journal’s scope goes beyond its name. This is not a journal that advocates for or against R2P, but an inclusive intellectual space that allows young voices to critically engage, unpack and make their contribution to some of the most pressing debates in the field of responses to gross human rights violations. 

Such a project would not be possible without interrogating the very nature of human rights. This issue opens with a paper on human rights by Matthew Moore, who argues that the emancipatory potential of human rights is undermined by their liberalism, because enforcing bourgeois, economic rights reproduces coercive relations of production, thus exacerbating structural issues rather than emancipating individuals from them.

Several of the articles in this issue concentrate on the contentious issue of the International Criminal Court’s role in Africa, through critical investigations of the al-Bashir case. Oliver Cotton examines the African Union’s (AU) relationship with the ICC by focusing on the investigation in Sudan. He criticises African governments’ vexation towards the ICC for pursuing cases despite AU opposition based on the AU’s failure to expound the necessity of deferrals in the interest of peace, and some African states’ incompatible and flawed belief that incumbent heads of state should enjoy impunity, given that the ICC was set up to end immunity for mass violence of all individuals under its jurisdiction and remit. 

Margot Tudor and Zeinab Drabu’s articles give two different perspectives on the al-Bashir case and of the charge of racism and imperialism the ICC repeatedly has been faced with. Drabu’s article argues that frustrations often articulated by African states towards the ICC are juridically unjustified, because they stand in opposition to structural limitations imposed by the Court’s jurisdiction as outlined in the Rome Statute. She subsequently argues that existing frustrations are politically motivated, meant to delegitimise the ICC in order to serve the political interests and objectives of the concerned African states. 

In contrast, Tudor’s article sheds light on how colonial continuities within the operations and ideologies of the international justice system have present implications. She argues that there indeed is an anti-African bias and neocolonialism in the structures of the ICC. Additionally, she argues that the historical roots of these imperial legacies and their contemporary double standards have given political weight to those attempting to evade international law, and that current transitional justice processes exclude victims from the production of justice through legalistic and technocratic approaches which present Western approaches to justice as superior, thus divorcing victims from their access to the judicial process.

Lastly, two papers focus on the military intervention in Libya. Heena Makhija uses the Libya crisis as a case study to analyse India’s approach to the principle of ‘Responsibility to Protect’, especially with regard to where it stands in the UN Security Council discussions. Jamal Nabulsi examines the military intervention in Libya too in relation to the future of the R2P. He argues that the R2P is not dead, but that in light of the 2011 intervention “one of its limbs is gangrenous and in dire need of amputation to save the body from infection”, which will strengthen the consensus on and normative force of the doctrine in future atrocities.

We hope that you will enjoy reading the articles we selected for the Journal’s fifth issue.

Georgiana Epure and Kristin Smette Gulbrandsen

Co-Editors-in-Chief

This issue was originally published under our previous title, the Responsibility to Protect Student Journal.

Articles

• The human right to be enslaved: how human rights’ coercive liberalism was masked as emancipatory
  By Matthew Moore Matthew Moore is a postgraduate student at London School of Economics and Political Science. Human rights are portrayed in legislation as universal, inalienable and apolitical, which diverts intellectual discourse from the discussion of its theoretical, normative principles and the bearing this holds on the human rights corpus’ emancipatory potential. Liberalism is defined by itsContinue reading “The human right to be enslaved: how human rights’ coercive liberalism was masked as emancipatory”
• African states’ frustrations with the ICC: justifiable or misdirected and overstated?
  By Oliver Cotton Oliver Cotton is a law conversion course student. He graduated with a BA degree in International Relations from the University of Leeds in 2017, with a particular interest in terrorism, R2P and humanitarian law.  Despite the significant role that African states have had in both the creation of the ICC and itsContinue reading “African states’ frustrations with the ICC: justifiable or misdirected and overstated?”
• Torn between political interests and upholding legal responsibilities? A critical examination of African states’ frustrations with the International Criminal Court
  By Zeinab Drabu Zeinab Drabu is a recent graduate from the University of Leeds, where she achieved a First Class Honours in her BA degree in German and International Relations. Her academic and research interests include international politics, international law and international ethics. The International Criminal Court is currently facing its most serious reputational crisisContinue reading “Torn between political interests and upholding legal responsibilities? A critical examination of African states’ frustrations with the International Criminal Court”
• ‘This delicate mosaic may be shattered at any time’: The ICC, technocracy and the liberal West’s moral imperialism
  By Margot Tudor  Margot is an ESRC-funded PhD candidate in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response with the HCRI at the University of Manchester. Her main research areas of interest are peacekeeping, global governance, colonial continuities and the history of humanitarianism. This article argues that the colonial continuities present in the operations and ideologies within the structuresContinue reading “‘This delicate mosaic may be shattered at any time’: The ICC, technocracy and the liberal West’s moral imperialism”
• India’s stand on the Responsibility to Protect: The UN Security Council and the Libya crisis
  By Heena Makhija  Heena Makhija is a student at Centre for International Politics, Organizations and Disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi, undertaking an MPhil in International Organizations. Jawaharlal Nehru’s idealism and commitment to the maintenance of international peace and security has remarkably influenced India’s response towards international conflicts. In the Security Council, in itsContinue reading “India’s stand on the Responsibility to Protect: The UN Security Council and the Libya crisis”
• To sever or salvage? Disaggregating the coercive military component of the R2P
  By Jamal Nabulsi  Jamal Nabulsi is a Master of International Relations (Advanced) student at the Australian National University. He is interested primarily in the ethics of war and normative International Relations theory. His Master’s thesis is on the ethical theory around preemptive and preventive wars. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine is not dead, butContinue reading “To sever or salvage? Disaggregating the coercive military component of the R2P”