The year 2021 marks the twentieth anniversary of The Responsibility to Protect report, issued by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) in 2001. September 2020 marked exactly twenty years since the government of Canada set up the ICISS, the ad hoc commission that produced the report. This initiative points to Canada as one of the first RtoP norm entrepreneurs. Thanks to the sustained efforts of a variety of norm entrepreneurs—ranging from individuals to states—RtoP was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in the “2005 World Summit Outcome” document (WSOD). As such, 2020 marked a second major RtoP anniversary, namely fifteen years since its institutionalization at the United Nations (UN). In the twenty years since its emergence in the 2001 Responsibility to Protect report, RtoP has become part of the global diplomatic language invoked by states, NGOs, and international and regional organizations, and it is now an established international norm. These anniversaries present an occasion to assess the success of RtoP norm entrepreneurship efforts over the last two decades, as well as to compare early norm entrepreneurship efforts to more recent ones.
This contribution starts by examining some of the key norm entrepreneurs who dedicated significant resources to advancing the RtoP framework in its early years, including individual leaders and state champions. Some early examples of indispensable norm entrepreneurs with enough drive and motivation to advance the RtoP agenda at the international level include Western middle powers, such as Canada and some European Union member states. The subsequent sections will discuss whether these initial RtoP champions have continued to invest resources and moral leadership into transforming RtoP into a sustainable prevention agenda or if a new set of norm entrepreneurs emerged in the changing global order. In the course of addressing such questions, we must consider the challenges posed by the political, military, and economic transformations that have occurred since RtoP's adoption at the UN sixteen years ago. Those challenges include the global financial crisis; instability related to the Arab Spring and the military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya; the significant displacement and refugee crisis; the economic and political rise of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS); and an increase in countries subscribing to nationalistic and xenophobic foreign policy agendas rather than liberal ones. These challenges have multiplied during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to increase the vulnerability of the least protected populations around the world and to aggravate the risk of atrocity crimes in those areas where atrocities are still committed with impunity.
The second section of the essay examines contributions to RtoP by both Western and non-Western norm entrepreneurs since the norm's endorsement at the UN in 2005. It also discusses the different ways in which norm entrepreneurship has been used in conjunction with RtoP over the last fifteen years or so. Norm entrepreneurship from the Global South is particularly important in the context of a changing world order, as it challenges the criticism that the RtoP framework and its implementation is a Western concept.
This essay then asks: Who are the norm entrepreneurs with enough drive, moral leadership, and resources to keep RtoP on the international agenda during these trying times? The last section considers this question when discussing two recent and unexpected non-Western norm entrepreneurs, the governments of Qatar and Egypt. Both of these unexpected RtoP champions highlight prevention as the single focus of RtoP, going forward. I argue that the drive and adaptability manifested by these non-Western norm entrepreneurs with regional ambitions increase the legitimacy of the RtoP norm itself.
Who Were the First RtoP Norm Entrepreneurs?
The literature on international agenda setting and normative progress points to specific actors, such as individuals, civil society, and nongovernmental groups, that seize windows of political opportunity to convince states to agree to new standards of behavior.Footnote 1 These actors are known as norm entrepreneurs. Under this definition, Canada can be viewed as an example of state-led norm entrepreneurship through its role in developing and promoting RtoP in its infant years. Canada's efforts in this sense helped advance RtoP toward its current status as an established international norm, despite some lingering controversies surrounding the use of force.
In order to understand how RtoP became an international norm,Footnote 2 one needs to consider first and foremost the role that the ICISS played as a norm entrepreneur. The Canadian government appointed the ICISS “to wrestle with the whole range of questions—legal, moral, operational, and political—rolled up in this [humanitarian intervention] debate, to consult with the widest possible range of opinion around the world, and to bring back a report that would help . . . find some new common ground.”Footnote 3 As a demand-driven commission, the ICISS demonstrated intellectual leadership in reconceptualizing the contentious notion of humanitarian intervention into the RtoP framework. The Canadian government wanted to make sure that the research and ideas in the resulting report would build political momentum to advance the RtoP principle globally by shipping thirty thousand free copies around the world, including it in ministerial speeches, and keeping the issue on the agenda of multilateral and regional fora.Footnote 4 In the ICISS's reconceptualization, RtoP encompassed respect for both state sovereignty and human rights, with the latter reflected in guidelines to prevent and halt atrocities amounting to genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.Footnote 5
Individual norm entrepreneurs can play a critical role when a new norm emerges, and RtoP was no exception. After the release of the Responsibility to Protect report, several individuals, including the co-chairs of the commission, displayed moral leadership in promoting the new RtoP principle in international, regional, and national fora. The two co-chairs, reflective of the balanced composition of the commission, were Mohamed Sahnoun, the late Algerian diplomat representing the Global South, and Gareth Evans, the Australian diplomat representing the Global North. Sahnoun and Evans mobilized a global public to identify the responsibility to protect against mass atrocity crimes as the responsibility of all states, and they articulated this responsibility as central to maintaining international peace and security.
The work of the ICISS built on existing ideas, particularly those from the African continent. This was in no small part the result of previous individual norm entrepreneurship and moral leadership on the part of African diplomats, including Mohamed Sahnoun. As Sahnoun argued, RtoP can be summed up as an African contribution to global human rights.Footnote 6 Conceptually, RtoP also captures another notion coined by the South Sudanese diplomat and scholar Francis Deng, namely the notion of “sovereignty as responsibility.”Footnote 7 This conceptual clarification insists on reframing sovereignty as a form of responsibility toward a state's population and is fundamental to the meaning of the RtoP.
Gareth Evans has also remained one of the most vocal supporters of RtoP since his role as ICISS co-chair concluded. He further promoted RtoP when serving on the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change, convened by then–UN secretary-general Kofi Annan to identify ways in which the UN could respond more efficiently to challenges to international peace and security. At every opportunity, Evans used the UN as an organizational platform for promoting RtoP by employing language that resonated with different constituencies.
Kofi Annan is another example of an effective individual norm entrepreneur and champion of RtoP. As the UN secretary-general, Annan personally supported the ICISS and its findings and proved essential for keeping the RtoP principle on the UN agenda. He was instrumental in advancing RtoP at the UN, and he did so against the opposition of every one of his senior advisors, who recommended moving away from what was regarded as a very contentious agenda. During the difficult negotiations that preceded the 2005 World Summit, the meetings he organized with permanent representatives proved key to keeping RtoP on the agenda and getting it into the WSOD. Annan's early support for RtoP as the UN secretary-general cemented the UN as the primary organizational platform for launching and advancing it further onto its normative track. Annan's successor as UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, also kept RtoP on the UN agenda after his departure. Ban consolidated RtoP within the UN bureaucracy by referring to its implementation as one of his priorities as secretary-general and by making two appointments to “translate” RtoP into practice. First, in May 2007 he appointed Francis Deng as his special adviser for the prevention of genocide and then upgraded his position to under-secretary-general. Then in February 2008 he appointed scholar Edward C. Luck as his special adviser on the Responsibility to Protect, at the level of assistant secretary-general.Footnote 8
In addition to individuals, states can also act as norm entrepreneurs. As noted earlier, Canada acted as a norm entrepreneur when it heeded Kofi Annan's 1999 call to find a compromise on humanitarian intervention. Canada invested time, money, and reputation in the RtoP campaign prior to its 2005 inclusion in the WSOD. The country helped “build” the language of RtoP globally by ensuring that such rhetoric was included in declarations, official documents, and political statements, and placed on the agendas of workshops and conferences on security. Canadian initiatives were directed toward convincing a critical mass of actors to embrace RtoP in the lead up to the 2005 World Summit.Footnote 9 Such efforts included personal phone calls made by then–Canadian prime minister Paul Martin to the five heads of the strongest opponents to RtoP in the UNGA to win their support.Footnote 10
Another important factor that influenced the adoption of RtoP in the WSOD was the support for the principle from key African countries, such as South Africa, Rwanda, and Tanzania. In the General Assembly, Rwanda and South Africa argued that RtoP was not a Western interventionist concept, but one that pertained to protection in general and was thus needed to deal with problems in Africa. To prepare for the first UNGA debate on the topic of the Responsibility to Protect in 2009, a coalition of supportive states created the Group of Friends of the Responsibility to Protect in New York, and Rwanda was one of its initial co-chairs.Footnote 11 The African roots of RtoP carry more weight once we focus on developments at the regional level. The African Union was the first organization to include the right to intervene in a member state where there are mass atrocity situations occurring that are covered by RtoP, in Article 4(h) of the AU's Constitutive Act of 2000, and again in its 2005 Ezulwini Consensus.Footnote 12
Challenges in Championing RtoP in a Changing Global Order
After the UNGA unanimously adopted RtoP in 2005, the following decade only witnessed a handful of notable RtoP leadership initiatives, globally. Were the Western states that had previously acted as indispensable norm entrepreneurs during RtoP's early years of existence still displaying norm entrepreneurship during this time? Or, rather, was it non-Western contributions that further advanced the RtoP agenda? This query is not meant to position the debate over RtoP as a North-South or Western vs. non-Western issue, though as Ramesh Thakur notes, “There are risks of it turning into one if the legitimate concerns of emerging powers are neglected by a declining West.”Footnote 13 Instead, it aims to consider recent developments that point toward what scholars dub the crisis of the Western-dominated liberal international order. This was not anticipated in the early years of RtoP.
The years following RtoP's 2005 endorsement at the UN appeared promising, with examples of the UN making institutional progress on RtoP, institutional capacity building in regional and subregional fora, and dozens of states across the globe appointing RtoP focal points at national levels. An RtoP focal point is a senior official within a government who facilitates national mechanisms for atrocity prevention and promotes international cooperation by participating in the Global Network of RtoP focal points. By appointing an RtoP focal point at a senior level of government, states signal their commitment to engage with RtoP and its implementation.Footnote 14 The primary focus of these various RtoP efforts was on the prevention of atrocities, as opposed to simply reacting to conflicts and atrocities.Footnote 15 A major test for RtoP came in 2011 with the debates surrounding the NATO-led intervention in Libya. Out of these debates and the ensuing backlash against the implementation of the intervention came one of the most notable examples of norm entrepreneurship on RtoP since 2005, in the form of Brazil's Responsibility while Protecting (RwP) initiative.
Resolution 1973 on Libya passed on March 17, 2011, marking the first time the Security Council approved the use of force against a functioning state using the language of RtoP, under the authority of Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Brazil, an elected UN Security Council member that year, abstained in this vote, expressing concerns over operative paragraph 4 of the resolution, which includes the “all necessary measures” provision.Footnote 16 During the UN General Assembly Informal Interactive Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect on July 12, 2011, Brazil criticized how RtoP's pillar three was implemented in Libya and warned against using such mandates as an excuse for regime change. The Brazilian ambassador to the UN at the time, Maria Luiza Viotti, argued that “caution and moderation are the best advisers” when implementing pillar three of RtoP and that “we must exercise responsibility as we protect.”Footnote 17 In opening the general debate of the UNGA's sixty-sixth session on September 21, 2011, Brazil's then-president, Dilma Rousseff, asked for further discussion of the “responsibility in protecting alongside the responsibility to protect.”Footnote 18
This presidential discourse points to another example of individual norm entrepreneurship that influenced Brazil's drive to engage with RtoP and to clarify its implementation. Ambassador Antonio de Aguiar Patriota, Brazil's former minister of external relations, is the architect of the RwP concept. Among other challenges, he had to overcome resistance in the presidential office. In response to President Rousseff's query as to why she should refer to RtoP in her opening statement at the 66th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, Ambassador Patriota wrote a five-page paper presenting his reasoning behind RwP.Footnote 19 This was subsequently taken up by Ambassador Viotti, Brazil's permanent representative to the UN, during the Security Council open debate on the protection of civilians in armed conflict on November 9, 2011, in a statement delivered on behalf of the foreign minister of Brazil, Patriota.
A concept paper entitled “Responsibility while Protecting: Elements for the Development and Promotion of a Concept,”Footnote 20 which served as the annex to a letter addressed to the UN secretary-general dated November 9, 2011, included all the proposed RwP elements. This paper framed the clarification “while protecting” that would mark Brazil's lasting legacy on RtoP, and implicitly be Ambassador Patriota's normative stamp. Brazil promoted RwP at the UN in following years, especially once the country became a key member of the cross-regional group that worked on a draft UNGA resolution to celebrate RtoP's tenth anniversary. While this resolution did not materialize, it is notable that Brazil was invited to be part of this eight-state cross-regional group because of its leadership and visibility on RwP, as well as for being viewed as representing non-Western constituencies on these issues.
Arguably, what is needed to advance the RtoP norm globally is greater non-Western engagement with this agenda. Brazil led this engagement by example through its involvement in this cross-regional group tasked with producing a General Assembly resolution on RtoP.Footnote 21 Prior to that, in another example of non-Western entrepreneurial leadership, Guatemala introduced the first UNGA resolution on RtoP, cosponsored by sixty-seven states and adopted twelve years ago, on September 14, 2009.Footnote 22 Guatemala has subsequently displayed leadership on other issues related to international peace and security at the UN, as when chairing the secretary-general's Advisory Group of Experts (AGE) on the 2015 Review of the UN peacebuilding architecture. This important review exercise informed subsequent UN policy, including the 2020 report “Peacebuilding and Sustaining Peace” by the current UN secretary-general, António Guterres. The AGE's report for the 2015 review of the UN peacebuilding architecture, entitled “The Challenge of Sustaining Peace,” suggested that “sustaining peace” must run through the complete cycle of UN engagement, from preventive action, to deployment, to subsequent drawdown of peace operations, and beyond to post-conflict reconstruction.
Norm entrepreneurship can also take forms other than developing, advancing, and sponsoring norms, such as leading, and encouraging, efforts toward criminal accountability for mass atrocities.Footnote 23 For instance, the Gambia filed a case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice alleging that Myanmar had carried out mass murder, rape, and destruction of communities in Rakhine State. The Gambia, a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, drafted the claim against Myanmar in order to “send a clear message to Myanmar and to the rest of the international community that the world must not stand by and do nothing in the face of terrible atrocities that are occurring around us.”Footnote 24 The Gambia's vice president described her state as “a small country with a big voice on matters of human rights on the continent and beyond.”Footnote 25
These examples point to some of the new RtoP champions that have emerged since its endorsement at the UN in 2005, as new loci of entrepreneurial agency on RtoP, different from the very active Western norm entrepreneurs who had initially displayed strong leadership on RtoP, as had been the case with Canada. In recent years, many of the initial norm champions have not identified RtoP or atrocity prevention as one of their foreign policy priorities. Indeed, European countries have shown greater commitment to conflict and atrocity prevention through development assistance and mediation. Some of the more recent norm entrepreneurs prioritize preventive strategies that focus on addressing the root causes of conflict, preventive diplomacy, and conflict management and resolution, without necessarily referencing RtoP per se.
Unlike Canada, some European countries that had promoted RtoP before 2005 continued their work as Western norm entrepreneurs. One example of a collective European commitment to RtoP came in 2013, when the European Parliament produced the most substantive European statement on RtoP to date, which called for consensus and coordination on RtoP across the European Union. The EU has been the only regional organization to contribute to each of the annual UNGA interactive dialogues on RtoP to date, since the first one in 2009. The EU was also the first regional organization—and the only one in the world until 2019Footnote 26—to appoint an RtoP focal point, at a very senior level in the organization. Indeed, Christian Leffler, who acted as the EU's RtoP focal point from when the position was first created at the EU level in 2016 up until his retirement in March 2020, was the deputy secretary-general of the European External Action Service (EEAS). This marked an important display of collective endorsement of the RtoP norm. In addition to the organization's RtoP main focal point, the EU also has a very active group of RtoP focal points in its individual member states. As Gareth Evans argued, there is great potential for the EU to implement RtoP both because of the union's standing as a model for conflict prevention across Europe and because of the large set of practical instruments and policies on prevention and rebuilding that it possesses.Footnote 27 In January 2019, the EEAS launched the “Atrocity Prevention Toolkit,” the most comprehensive policy document to reference RtoP, which was designed to support EU practitioners through specific hands-on knowledge of how they can contribute to atrocity prevention.Footnote 28
The intervention in Libya demonstrated that it is desirable, for legitimacy reasons, to engage the emerging and regional powers in redefining the conduct of RtoP interventions, for the benefit of both the emerging powers and their regional interests alongside Western RtoP supporters. However, action in Libya was followed by inaction and failures to protect in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, South Sudan, and elsewhere. Scholars and practitioners have dubbed the failure of the international community to stop atrocities and ameliorate the complex humanitarian emergency in Syria as an instance of the disintegrating liberal world order.Footnote 29 Non-Western norm entrepreneurship becomes particularly important in the context of the changing world order, as it responds to the criticism that the RtoP framework and its implementation is Western.
Recent Non-Western Championing Efforts: Emphasizing RtoP's Focus on Prevention
In the last decade, scholars such as John Ikenberry have argued that “the old order dominated by the United States and Europe” is being replaced by one that is gradually shared more and more with non-Western rising powers.Footnote 30 As contestation from the Global South has steadily increased, international cooperation around liberal values and norms such as RtoP has been reduced, as shown by Brexit and Donald Trump's presidency. If “the crisis of the liberal order is a crisis of legitimacy and social purpose,”Footnote 31 it becomes paramount to turn our attention to instances where key non-Western states have exhibited strong leadership on issues traditionally regarded as liberal norms, which are often associated—incorrectly, in the case of RtoP—with Western champions.
The following two examples point to the increasing role of non-Western states in global governance and in the promotion of prevention measures to protect the most vulnerable. These examples contain two contextual observations on what might boost the display of leadership in regard to the latter. First, we notice that small states can gather enough drive and financial resources to become champions of RtoP and atrocity prevention for strategic considerations in their region. Second, we see that giving non-Western states a visible regional or international platform allows them to display leadership in reframing prevention. Recent emphasis on atrocity prevention as the key component of RtoP refocuses attention on pillars one and two of the RtoP framework. Pillar one refers to a state's responsibilities to protect its population and derives from existing international legal obligations. This includes a state's responsibility to build national resilience and to address the root causes of atrocity crimes. Pillar two refers to the commitment of the international community, including states, the UN, regional and subregional organizations, and civil society to assist states in meeting their pillar one responsibilities.
Qatar is a notable example of the non-Western efforts to advance atrocity prevention as the key component of RtoP amid a shifting global order. Qatar is currently one of the co-chairs of the Group of Friends of the Responsibility to Protect, a group that includes over fifty states from across the globe and the European Union. The Group of Friends meets regularly both in New York and Geneva to discuss transnational concerns related to RtoP and atrocity prevention. Qatar has displayed entrepreneurial drive in several key initiatives both in New York and Geneva.
Qatar has also recently worked closely with three other non-Western states (Costa Rica, Morocco, and Peru) to consolidate the role of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva in advancing the RtoP framework.Footnote 32 The Human Rights Council adopted its first-ever thematic resolution on the Responsibility to Protect in July 2020 entitled, “Fifteenth Anniversary of the Responsibility to Protect Populations from Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing and Crimes against Humanity, as Enshrined in the World Summit Outcome of 2005.” While this resolution came after fifty country-specific and thematic Human Rights Council resolutions referring to RtoP, including on South Sudan, Syria, and transitional justice, this was the first Human Rights Council thematic resolution on RtoP since the 2009 UNGA resolution. And it was the result of diplomatic efforts and leadership from the core group within the Group of Friends of the Responsibility to Protect, which includes Qatar.
In other international settings, including during the ministerial event organized on the sidelines of the opening of the 75th United Nations General Assembly in New York, Qatar offered its support for “all international efforts to protect civilians in countries facing armed conflict,” while describing RtoP as “the first line of defence for civilians.”Footnote 33 Through its clear commitment to RtoP, Qatar seems intent on sending a message that the international community is committed to civilian protection, to ending atrocity crimes and impunity, and to holding accountable those responsible for atrocity crimes.
Given the increasing rate of atrocity crimes both in terms of numbers and geographic scope, Qatar is investing resources to develop partnerships at the regional and international levels to implement the responsibility to protect. Qatar describes this as “conducive to strengthening regional and international peace and security.”Footnote 34 By actively pursuing diplomatic initiatives within its sphere of influence to address the failure of implementing RtoP to fully prevent atrocity crimes, Qatar is a remarkable example of a small state using strategic considerations in the cause of “overcoming smallness.”Footnote 35 The country increases its impact on the regional system and beyond though its foreign policy committed to championing atrocity prevention and the RtoP framework. As a small state bordering the aspiring regional hegemon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar is pursuing a foreign policy that also safeguards its sovereignty. At the same time, allegations have also emerged that Qatar backs some of the region's most destabilizing forces and that it financially supports international terrorist groups.Footnote 36 Scholars such as Aidan Hehir have further argued that Qatar is engaging in systematic human rights violations domestically, despite expressing its commitment to RtoP.Footnote 37 While such concerns need to be considered in tandem with Qatar's more explicit actions on RtoP, the contributions a small state like Qatar can make to champion the RtoP norm—and to broader international prevention and protection efforts—illustrate the power of agents willing to invest financial and diplomatic resources to secure their regional legitimacy.
When countries from the Global South are given a visible platform, at either the international or regional level, as was the case when Brazil had a seat at the UN Security Council table in 2011, they are given the space to display leadership and show initiative. As mentioned above, Brazil used this international platform to create a more constructive dialogue about prevention within the noncoercive pillars of the RtoP. Similarly, when Egypt held the presidency of the African Union in 2019, it used this as an opportunity to put forward its proposal to approach prevention not as a threat to state sovereignty but rather as a “sovereignty enhancer.”Footnote 38 And Egypt introduced its proposal for African states to “own the prevention agenda” at the inaugural meeting of the Aswan Forum under the theme “An Agenda for Sustainable Peace, Security and Development in Africa,” which took place in Aswan, Egypt, in December 2019. Acting as the chairman of the African Union, while holding the regional body's presidency, provided Egypt the platform to showcase this proposal. Egypt argued that the prevention agenda, when nationally owned, “becomes a sovereignty enhancer,” and that acting preventively entails fostering systems that create incentives for peaceful and cooperative behavior.Footnote 39
Approaching prevention from the angle proposed by Egypt could diminish the interventionist impulse still in the minds of some RtoP supporters, an impulse that has been detrimental to the credibility of RtoP in the African region. This Egyptian proposal clarifies how responsibilities for atrocity prevention and protection provide value for both vulnerable populations and state sovereignty. Although the document that emerged from the Aswan Forum is not a consensus declaration, it is nonetheless a summary provided by the host country that details the advantages of subscribing to Egypt's idea of prevention as a sovereignty enhancer in the African context.
In line with individual leadership and champions of RtoP mentioned earlier, the Egyptian initiative was led by an individual norm entrepreneur, Ambassador Ihab Awad, who was Egypt's deputy assistant foreign minister for UN affairs at the time. Awad had previously been exposed to the UN's “sustaining peace”Footnote 40 initiative and the need to prioritize atrocity prevention while working at the UN Secretariat in New York for eight years. This included his work with Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, the current assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support, in the UN Peacebuilding Support Office. Such exposure informed his position that prevention should be approached as something that enhances a state's own sovereignty and capacity to deal early on with tensions, before they threaten to degenerate into open conflict or atrocities committed against certain groups, rather than as an entry point for outside interference into a state's internal affairs. While Egypt needs to invest further resources to convince developing states from areas of the world subject to instability that prevention is a sovereignty enhancer, it displayed leadership in putting forward this proposal in a regional setting.
Qatar and Egypt are two recent examples that show how non-Western states can, and do, enhance their regional leadership and legitimacy by finding solutions to one of the most serious global problems of our time, namely the prevention of mass atrocities. States from regions of the world where addressing conflict is paramount can invest financial and diplomatic resources to champion human rights protection norms, such as RtoP. As the cases in this essay have shown, when a state assumes a higher and more visible position either internationally (as was the case with Brazil while on the UN Security Council) or regionally (as was the case with Egypt while acting as chairman of the African Union), that state has room to display initiative and drive to champion the preventive elements of RtoP. The adaptability and mobilization efforts of these unexpected, non-Western RtoP norm entrepreneurs can only increase the legitimacy of the RtoP norm itself. This is because their contributions carry the highest potential to address the legitimacy deficit of norms such as RtoP. We know that norms spread faster if the responsibility for their creation and promotion is more broadly shared, and if their tenets are reflective of both Western and non-Western perspectives and interests. When non-Western states such as Brazil, Qatar, and Egypt are able to claim agency in developing and championing prevention and protection norms such as RtoP, they can acquire a strong voice in a realm that was, until recently, perceived as the exclusive domain of Western powers.
