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“Bypass the UN”: Diplomatic Practices and Change in Multilateral Settings
Author(s) -
BélangerVincent Ariane
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
polar: political and legal anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.529
H-Index - 27
eISSN - 1555-2934
pISSN - 1081-6976
DOI - 10.1111/plar.12340
Subject(s) - responsibility to protect , summit , political science , normative , humanitarian intervention , negotiation , intervention (counseling) , convention , politics , law , general assembly , public administration , international law , law and economics , sociology , medicine , physical geography , psychiatry , geography
This article highlights diplomatic practices that contributed to the wide approval of the polemical issue of humanitarian intervention, reframed into the term Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The expression was coined in 2001. It is now reported that R2P was unanimously agreed upon by 155 heads of states and governments during the 2005 World Summit held at the United Nations (UN) General Assembly. The conditions under which such an issue can reach a swift consensus are complex and manifold. Here, I focus on a diplomatic strategy employed by a handful of actors who carefully bypassed UN headquarters rather than promote the idea within the organization, as the official narratives on R2P suggest. I show that this strategy was inspired by a previous experience that led to another important change in global politics—the entry into force of the Anti‐Personnel Mine Ban Convention in 1999. The actors involved contributed to a normative change on humanitarian intervention by creating new forums of negotiations and using new kinds of networks that avoid multilateral arenas such as the UN. This article exposes concealed and informal aspects of diplomatic practices.