HUMANISING INTERSTATE AFFAIRS: REDEFINING SOVEREIGNTY FOR THE POST-MODERN ERA

Résumé 0

"As emerging norms such as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) take hold among international institutions and actors such as the United Nations, the formerly static constructs of statehood and state sovereignty must confront the transformative nature of implications for sovereignty in the 21st century. Due to coinciding intersectionalities between human rights and humanitarian norms, multipolar alignment of power, authority and legitimacy, and the increasing influence of non-state actors, sovereignty has taken on characteristics previously unimagined, and is likely to align with continuing developments in human rights and democratic governance. In applying a genealogically investigative approach, the analysis of emerging notions of post-national sovereignty will be reviewed with particular reference to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm. The effects of interdependency on sovereignty will be examined, in addition to the changing nature of the relationship between state and non-state actors, and the relationship between the Global North and South. Ultimately, this paper seeks to examine why R2P has redefined sovereignty for the 21st century? With the state of modern conflicts taking on increasingly irregular, asymmetric, and intra-state characteristics, states have now recognised the need for overriding international human rights and humanitarian norms as applied to current structures of absolute authority and monopolies on state violence. Since its emergence on the international stage, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), conceived as a liberal compromise between absolute mutual non-interference and the international society’s obligation to protect civilians from mass atrocities, has played and will continue to play a monumental role."