Hi Brett,

You've raised an extremely important question about why R2P, and not serious socio-economic issues like extreme poverty or deadly diseases like HIV/AIDS, drew so much global attention and quickly turned itself into a global norm. A few points comes to my mind, and you may ponder over them. Firstly, R2P, I think, did never achieve or could ever claim the "most favored norm" status. Rather, it generated raging controversies after the NATO-led intervention in Libya, which was overtly and covertly premised on R2P spirit. However, the excesses in Libya, such as regime change, open Western support for the anti-Gaddafi rebels etc., in addition to conflicting geopolitical interests of the great powers, soon led to a breakdown in the emerging global consensus on R2P. The subsequent lack of R2P actions in Syria clearly demonstrates that. Secondly, as we know, hard political and strategic issues have historically dominated the global agenda pushing soft social and economic issues to the global margin - a point often raised by the feminists and the protagonists of human security but to no avail. The UN Security Council, charged with the responsibility to ensure global peace and security, has never devoted a single session on human security - the lack of which breeds structural violence, as Johan Galtung reminded us many times, and endangers global peace and security.The UNDP-promoted concept of human security has achieved a paradigmatic status in the academe but with little practical application.

Last but not least, big social and economic issues are organically linked to the pattern of global capitalist development, a Marxist interpretation or not. Dealing with issues like extreme poverty requires, at a minimum, some meaningful reforms, if not a complete overhaul, in the prevalent mantra of free market economy led by free individual entrepreneurs. After all, capitalism never hides but spawns inequalities.

These are my preliminary thoughts and I hope others would contribute to broaden our understanding on the important issue you've raised.          

I will send you my article due to be published in the special issue of the Journal of Human rights next month. It raises the same issues about R2P

Dear Brett - Great question.  Let me try to add a twig to the smallest branch of the tree of understanding on this one.

R2P was the liberal interventionist howl of protest that emerged from the Balkans-Rwanda guilt complex of the 1990s.  It wants to be a norm, but has some struggles.  First, only power-laden hubris can hope to actually apply this.  As I have argued elsewhere with Prunier and others, it seems really simple until you actually try to do it.  As Elizabeth I once famously said, the only problem with war is that one can so rarely predict their outcomes.  So too with peace, whether of the making, keeping or enforcing flavours.  Some think the "R" stands for "Right" which seems even more expansive than the "Responsibility."  Thus my first point would be to concur with Mohammed that is it s norm wanting to be, rather than a norm in being (have that with your morning cup of Heidegger!)   

Second, R2P offers the tantalizing option to stop the killing.  It is a desert chimera of course, in that just because you no longer detect (or detect, but do not report) a level of killing above a certain arbitrarily constructed threshold does not mean that the killing has really stopped.  But - Peace(X) where X equals whichever flavour you intend - or find yourself devolved into - does offer a visible negative premise:  if I can't see (or social media, al Jazeera and TV 24 do not report) "mass" killing as part of either an extermination program (genocide) or mass killings (crimes against humanity) than it must not be happening.  The second part of the chimera is that you can suppress the rationale + capability + willingness to kill for now, but that does not mean that you have eradicated it.  

Yet, as hard as this level of burden of proof and policy is, is pales in comparative difficulty  to the challenges of poverty and disease eradication.  What is the breakeven point between "sufficient" and "impoverished"?  Regardless of religion, there are no major strains of belief that advocate giving everything to the poor. Yes Christianity, for example, encourages to you to give away your earthly belongings that you make take up your cross, but also reminds that the poor will always be with you.  How much would you take from one group to give to another?  That is simply a very hard route to follow, and even harder to sustain.

With disease, you can put policies in place to go after river blindness and guinea worm (See: Carter Foundation) or polio and malaria fairly easily.  Going after HIV/AIDS is harder for two reasons.  First, it takes a very long time to actually kill someone.  I once had someone tell me in Central Africa that "Malaria will kill dozens, perhaps hundreds of us, this year.  HIV/AIDS may kill a few in ten years - but look at all of the other things from LRA to pneumonia that can kill us long before that."  Second, rightly or wrongly it is perceived as a disease (primarily) of choice. Governments are simply less incentivized to help those who suffer from HIV/AIDS.

Thus, I think your question is brilliant because it is "cross-disciplinary" for all of the humanities and policy makers. Thank you for posting this and giving others a chance to reflect on your question, and attempt to add some depth to your research.  

My sincere apologies to those who took the time to offer such insightful responses to my query! I took a long break from social media, including researchgate, so again I’m sorry I missed these replies. I intend to get back to this question and the responses here are illuminating. I broached this issue in the introduction to an edited volume I published on Routledge, but only tangentially. Thieme and Nuruzzaman both give me excellent starting points to relaunch my research. Thanks so veray much!