Conceptualising Responsibility Comprehensively to Facilitate Internal Resolution – twail Perspectives to an icj-Routed r2p

Abstract twail scholarship has been highly critical of the Responsibility to Protect ( r2p ) norm, citing the unfairness in its ahistorical and decontextualised allocation of responsibility for contemporary ethnic strife. Alongside the norm’s inability to capture the complex, historical creation of contemporary ethnic violence – much of which involved the Western world – state interventions in r2p ’s pursuance have been unsuccessful in protecting populations. This has prompted the exploration of alternatives to humanitarian interventions, with one such alternative being an ‘ icj -routed r2p ’: a mode of moving the Court to obtain its findings pointing to a state’s commission of genocidal and other prohibited acts. This mode of obtaining judicial findings of r2p -prohibited acts is, I propose, compatible with the principles and ideas endorsed in twail thinking, for it is capable of (a) undertaking a genuine, historicised assessment of responsibility in the emergence of ethnic strife; (b) avoiding r2p ’s colonial connotations by accepting an intervention’s normative impermissibility, instead entrenching the international community’s role as solely facilitating a state’s internal resolution of violence; and (c) pursuing a sustainable cessation of violence alongside other Pillar Two strategies.