The U.N.’s “Responsibility to Protect”

By Alexandra Galus

Ali Galus is a 2023 Albany Law School graduate. She grew up in Buffalo, NY, and received Bachelor's degrees in Political Science and International Studies from SUNY Cortland.

While in law school, Ali was a member of the Government Law Review, serving as their Managing Editor for Research and Writing in her 3L year. She was also heavily involved in the Moot Court program and served as the Domenick L. Gabrielli Appellate Advocacy Competition Chair in her 3L year as well.

Ali has done several internships within the New York State government, including at the New York State Department of Health, the Office of the Attorney General, and the New York State Assembly. She will be pursuing a career in civil litigation, starting at Napierski, Vandenburgh, Napierski, and O’Connor this fall.

The official purpose of the United Nations is “[t]o maintain international peace and security; to achieve international cooperation in solving economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems and in promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; [and] to be a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in attaining these common ends.”  The United Nations (“UN”) places a strong focus on international peace and security, as the catalyst to the development of the UN was an international conflict.

However, despite that being one of the UN's basic principles, the organization hasn't always been successful in achieving that goal. In the seventy-seven years since the UN was founded, there have been several armed conflicts, wars, and genocides that have occurred on its watch. The UN has fundamentally restructured how to approach sustaining international peace and security as a result of some startling failures. Some of these failures were not the organization's fault directly. But they were still perceived as contributing to the catastrophes in some way.

What was the UN’s response to the disastrous failures? The introduction of the “Responsibility to Protect” Doctrine. To determine whether the "Responsibility to Protect" Doctrine was the correct response to address the UN’s earlier failures, this paper will examine the UN's most significant errors in carrying out its previous missions, as well as the adoption of the doctrine and its overall success.

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To read the paper, open HERE.

Perspectives on the Responsibility to Protect

By Ryan Hayes

Ryan Hayes is a 2017 cum laude graduate of SUNY Geneseo, where he studied International Relations. Following college, he served as a member of the United States Secret Service until he enrolled at Albany  Law School.

Ryan earned his Juris Doctor and graduated manga cum laude in May 2022. He currently practices law in Canandaigua, New York.

Humanitarian intervention remains a hotly contested, and arguably unsettled, area of international law. One of the most divisive legal theories in the realm of humanitarian intervention is the responsibility to protect (R2P), which has sparked intense debate among the international community since its inception.

The responsibility to protect stemmed from the international community’s failure to respond to genocides of the 1990s. However, the international community continues to grapple with the apparent conflict between R2P and the U.N. Charter’s protection of state sovereignty.

Analyzing R2P’s history, its contested status as law or politics, and its use in Iraq, Libya, and Syria help to demonstrate the apparent tension between the doctrine and the U.N. Charter. This tension poses serious concerns for practitioners, scholars, and for international security at large. 

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To read the paper, open HERE.

The Responsibility to Protect from Human Trafficking

By Kerry Costello
Kerry Costello graduated from Albany Law School in 2012 and recently passed the New York State bar exam.  At Albany Law School, Kerry was a Senior Editor of the Albany Law Government Law Review and interned at the New York State Workers’ Compensation Board.  She is a graduate of SUNY Cortland with a Political Science degree, and she was a member of Pi Sigma Alpha.
Kerry prepared this paper for Prof. Halewood's International Human Rights course.

The Responsibility to Protect is an emerging norm in the international law. It requires that countries bear responsibility to protect their citizens from atrocity crimes.

Human Trafficking fits under the umbrella of the Responsibility to Protect as an atrocity crime against humanity. The Responsibility to Protect does not currently, however, encompass human trafficking. It should be expanded to do so.

This paper argues that the Responsibility to Protect should and must include human trafficking.  Placing human trafficking under the Responsibility to Protect will place an affirmative duty on countries to protect their citizens from this atrocity. States should be required to enact and enforce laws against it.
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To read the paper, open HERE.