International Authority and the Responsibility to Protect

The idea that states and the international community have a responsibility to protect populations at risk has framed internationalist debates about conflict prevention, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping and territorial administration since 2001. Anne Orford situates the ‘responsibility to protect' concept in a wider historical and jurisprudential context, demonstrating that the appeal to protection as the basis for de facto authority has emerged at times of civil war or revolution – the protes...