The relationship between international law and human security is an important one because legal norms, however derived, are the cornerstones of an ordered, civil and moral society. This chapter provides a discussion on international law and its relevance and relationship to state responsibility. The international community and individual states have obligations and responsibilities according to both formative and substantive law, reflected in the deliberations and rulings of international institutions such as the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and others. Despite the modern progression of international law, some legal positivists will argue that international law is not real law, but they have few answers as to why most in the international community of states actually recognize and abide by such law. We provide some discussion on this point because a common criticism of international law is that it frequently fails to hold states accountable for their behaviour, and therefore is not real law.

The work by the UN International Law Commission (ILC) was pivotal in bridging the gap between international law and substantive international legal norms that attempt to articulate the role of the state and its responsibilities regarding international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL). We argue in this chapter that all these areas of law consist of important and complimentary legal instruments that help to define state responsibility, particularly in the realm of human security. IHL and IHRL are two separate areas of law that have historically evolved quite differently.

The 2005 UN World Summit was a pivotal event in the formal progression of the responsibility to protect (R2P) principles. Paragraphs 138–9 of the summit's outcome document articulated the fundamental responsibilities of states and the wider international community. The R2P approach was directly applied for the first time by the Security Council to the genocide in Darfur and most recently to the international response in Libya during the Arab Spring uprisings in 2011 and 2012. Since the late 1990s, the concept of R2P has evolved into what supporters now claim is a new type of responsive norm regarding how the international community should react to serious and deliberate human rights violations. The 2001 UN International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty co-chaired by Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun articulated in detail the principles of R2P. These principles were then formally endorsed by the majority of states at the 2005 UN General Assembly World Summit in New York.

At the 2005 summit, the international community almost unanimously endorsed the idea that states have a fundamental responsibility to protect their own citizens, and in most cases the citizens from other states, from gross human rights violations and other mass atrocities. However, the progression of R2P from concept to principle to formal ratification in 2005 has been a very difficult one with a great deal of disagreement over the validity of R2P as a substantive or even a developing norm in international affairs.

This chapter introduces the major conceptual developments in the research on security. It addresses the conceptualization of both state and human security in relation to empirical, political changes in the international landscape from post–World War II to contemporary times. The discussion throughout focuses on state versus human security and the bulk of studies made on the content of and links between these two. The overall aim is to contextualize and introduce the discussion of protection and prevention responsibilities in Chapter 3. We begin with an outline of what state-centricity means as a security concept. Traditional views are presented followed by contemporary observations regarding state capacity relative to what has become known as weak, failing and failed states. Empirical data from the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development, Foreign Policy, the Fund for Peace and Transparency International is presented and analysed as to its relevance to state capacity and capability.

The Kosovo crisis and the Rwanda crisis of the 1990s and the current situation in Somalia, Chad and Sudan are critically analysed in this chapter to provide practical examples of what has come to be known as the failed state syndrome. According to the data mentioned above, Somalia, Chad and Sudan are failed states, with up to thirty other states under critical stress. Our intention is to not only demonstrate the multiple levels of failure within such states but also to show how the international community responds to such humanitarian disasters.

The gradual shift of norms in international politics has seen an increase in the number of democracies. This is a positive trend for human security and it opens the way for an active strategy among democracies to encourage political change within dictatorial regimes by the promotion of democratic ideals. Such encouragement includes the need to show leadership by example in the development and support for democratic ideals. Chapter 4 set out the legal grounds for R2P and the state obligations to protect and support human security. This chapter deals with international norms in general and democracy norms in particular. We argue that there has been a gradual shift away from the traditional state sovereignty norm in favour of democracy norms that are more supportive of the human security ethos.

The development of democracy norms embeds a moral duty for the state to represent its people and to promote political and socioeconomic welfare. The notion of moral duty also extends to affluent states that have the capacity to actively promote the political and socioeconomic welfare of the less fortunate, wherever they may be. Notions of state responsibility and state obligation are always contentious, but if one claims that democracy promotion is important and that a civil and moral society exists, then there is a clear moral imperative to act. There are many practical examples of individual states and the international community acting to provide assistance and support to those in need, particularly in the aftermath of natural disasters.

The development of R2P from concept to principle then to formal ratification by the UN in 2005 has been a very difficult process. R2P critics continue to question whether the notion of R2P is anything more than a list of reasonable principles. That is, governments and policy makers may be willing to support the idea of R2P, but when the need for a practical application arises, then procrastination and inaction is the result. Despite these and many other challenges, the UN General Assembly formally endorsed R2P, and all of the five permanent UN Security Council members – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States – supported R2P in Security Council Resolutions 1674 (2006) and 1894 (2009). In Chapter 3, we discussed the first direct application of R2P by the UN in 2007 to the humanitarian disaster in Darfur. We concluded that the international community's response in Darfur was much too slow, poorly implemented, and the outcome resulted in an ongoing humanitarian disaster.

By 2010, some African countries such as Côte d'Ivoire, Lesotho, Senegal, Guinea and Sierra Leone were making positive progress in the areas of popular civic engagement. Democracy promotion was improving in Burma, Bhutan, Mongolia and Tonga in the Asia Pacific region, but regressing in Central and Eastern Europe/Eurasia. People in North Africa and in many places throughout the Middle East struggled to have their governments recognize basic human rights and civil liberties.

This study approached human security by focusing on the development of R2P and we argued that R2P implies legal and moral obligations for the international community to act in the interest of people's safety and welfare. Despite such legal and moral requirements being recognized by an increasing number of political actors, there remains a lack of political will to act. The case study we presented on Libya indicates that there was a general consensus, at least in this instance, on the principles and values of R2P by most of the UN Security Council members. Yet, the practical application of protection is fraught with many challenges, as the ongoing humanitarian disaster in Syria indicates. By late 2012, over 60,000 people have been killed in Syria's vicious civil war, and the international community's response has been limited to expressions of outrage and concern.

There has been a gradual shift towards a more human-centric approach in international relations. The state-centric approach and the sovereignty norm have dominated international relations throughout history, but after World War II, and particularly after the Cold War(s), there has been an evolving debate regarding the moral acceptability and legal validity of intervention into the affairs of a sovereign state. Attention has increasingly been directed towards these issues as the number of failing and failed states has increased. Such states lack the institutional capacity to provide security, prosperity and/or representation by the people, and they are often severely challenged by intrastate and regional tensions, as well as violent internal upheavals between armed fractions and paramilitary groups.

This chapter outlines the development of the R2P ethos from a concept to a principle to what supporters now call a protection and responsibility norm. In September 2000, the Canadian government announced at the UN General Assembly the launch of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS). The ICISS's main goal was to promote ideas about the right of humanitarian intervention and to endeavour to seek an international consensus on how to deal with failing states in future crises. This chapter explores the proposals made by the commission and analyses the international debate within the United Nations and other forums on how to approach what is often perceived as the state versus human security dichotomy. We present the different perspectives that have been played out within the United Nations in part as a reaction to the ICISS report presented in 2001.

The report stressed that each sovereign state has the responsibility to protect its people from harm and that the ultimate sovereignty of the state is derived from its people. If a state fails to uphold law and order and to protect its people, then the international community must react and assume that responsibility. We also attempt to answer the question: what is a responsibility to prevent (R2Prevent)? This is one of the most difficult questions to address; if protection itself is so difficult to pin down, then what hope is there of determining a coherent concept that engages the preventative ethos.