Responsabilitatea de a proteja: delimitări conceptuale
Responsibility to Protect: Conceptual Clarifications

Summary/Abstract: International law rules on the use of force and on various forms ofintervention and/or assistance, including multilateral humanitarianintervention, also called collective security, have evolved separately overtime but, however, connected with the general international relations established by states acting in the international society.In the current emerging design, each individual State bears theresponsibility to protect its population (be those citizens or not) from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This responsibility entails the obligation to prevent, through the necessary andadequate means, such acts, including the incitement to commit such acts.Therefore, the responsibility to protect, in the first place and especially, belongs to sovereign states, because prevention begins within their borders. Moreover, one of the defining attributes of state sovereigntyand statehood is to protect its populations that are living on its the territory. This approach is, by far, not new, but steams from the obligations of States under general international law rules.Thus, responsibility to protect appears as an ally, and not anadversary, of the sovereignty thereof. It rather derives from the positive andaffirmative concept of sovereignty and responsibility, than from the limited idea of humanitarian intervention.The present paper deals with the historical evolution of the concept and with some of the conceptual clarifications related to the responsibility to protect.

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