Evaluating the Legality of Application of Responsibility to Protect in Africa: The Libya Experience

The international community gathered in 2005 and adopted responsibility to protect in paragraph 138 and 139 of the World Summit Outcome Document. Few years after this adoption, the international community through the UN Security Council applied the concept of responsibility to protect in the 2011 Libyan intervention. The Resolution 1973 was adopted as a result of Gaddafi’s manifest intention to exterminate the Libyan population. It authorised the member nations and regional organizations to use all necessary measures to protect civilians in Libya. Thereafter, the coalition of states went to Libya under the pretext of responsibility to protect and protection of civilians, and as a result the Libyan leader was killed. The killing of Gaddafi generated wide controversy as a result of the manner in which the intervening forces implemented Resolution 1973. It was against this background that this research work set to evaluate the application of responsibility to protect in Africa using the Libyan intervention as a text case. In so doing, the study examines the historical development and content of responsibility to protect, which was introduced in 2001 as a result of the Security Council’s failure to authorize intervention for humanitarian purposes in Rwanda, Bosnia and Kosovo. The study aims to investigate whether or not the intervention in Libya was in line with responsibility to protect, and in so doing, the study analyses Resolution 1973 to ascertain whether or not the interveners went beyond mandate.  The responsibility to protect is central to the discussion of this research work because Resolution 1973 in its preamble reminded the Libyan authorities of their responsibility to protect civilian populations. The study in analysing Resolution 1973, argues that it would be impossible to enforce civilian protection with Gaddafi in power, and even if some scholars posited that the interveners went beyond mandate in Resolution 1973, the interveners saved many lives which would have been killed by Gaddafi.