International Law and the Application of the Third Pillar Approach

The traumatic experiences of Rwanda, Srebrenica, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Somalia, among others, in the 1990s and 2000s underlined the need for an effective international response to mass atrocities. This has led to the creation of international criminal tribunals with jurisdiction to try specific individuals for “atrocity crimes” (Scheffer, 2012). The crisis and eventual military intervention in Kosovo at the end of the 20th century further underlined an apparent discrepancy between the international legality of an intervention not sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and its legitimacy, arguably stemming from it being indispensable to stop grave human rights violations (see Independent International Commission on Kosovo, 2000: p. 4). Within the framework of this debate, the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) was proposed as a comprehensive agenda delineating the collective responsibilities of states and the international community1 to prevent and, if necessary, intervene effectively and in a timely manner in order to stop mass atrocities (ICISS Report, 2001). Of particular interest for the analysis here is the third pillar of the RtoP, whereas the other two pillars are also revisited to the extent necessary to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the international legal status of the RtoP.