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.