Aidan Hehir: R2P doomed to fail in a state-based international system?
“The history of R2P demonstrates the limits of moral advocacy … [it] has no legal basis, really”
Aidan Hehir (Director of Security and International Relations at the University of Westminster) critically reflects on the R2P, ‘the limits of moral advocacy’, and the limitations of a state-based international legal system. Refering to debates in the United Nations, events in the Arab Spring, and the inaction in the face of mass atrocities, Hehir concludes that the current international system is doomed to fail in important respects.
“I don’t think you can expect states to become moral actors … We need to think about moving towards a world order based on an independent international legal system”
On 2 July 2014, Dr Aidan Hehir was interviewed by Josefine Ulbrich at the conference ‘Transatlantic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)’ hosted by The Hague Institute for Global Justice.
