BEYOND THE LIBYA INTERVENTION NARRATIVE: (HOW) DOES R2P STILL MATTER TO AFRICA?

The 2011 R2P-inspired intervention in Libya remains pivotal in the ‘humanitarian’ intervention narrative in Africa. Perceived diminution of African roles in the lead up to the intervention, along with post-intervention morbid symptoms, to R2P skeptics, symbolized pyrrhic victory and failed normative test. Drawing on process tracing, this paper speaks to alternative explanations regarding the Libya case. It acknowledges the dilemmas of the intervention but argues against wielding them as inculpatory evidence to pronounce a guilty verdict to justify the Africa Union’s ‘soft’ or ‘hard’, disengagement from R2P. Rather, the intervention should be construed as a dialectical process of an embryonic norm to stimulate institutional complementarity. The extent to which United Nations-African Union cross-cultural consensus is fostered the implementation of R2P’s coercive components, along with its preventive dimensions, will be crucial in determining the norm’s place in Africa’s atrocity prevention agenda for the foreseeable future.