Abstract

Since the end of the Cold War, the norms of sovereignty and non-intervention enshrined in the UN Charter have been subject to significant challenge by practices of "humanitarian intervention" in civil conflicts and humanitarian crises involving massive human rights violations. Since 2001, the "responsibility to protect" has been considered by some to be an "emerging norm" in international society which seeks to redefine the sovereignty of nation-states in terms of their responsibility to protect their populations from massive human rights abuses and to establish a responsibility of the international community as a whole to intervene, including through military force in extreme cases, where states are unwilling or unable to fulfill their sovereign responsibilities. This thesis examines the role of developing countries in the emergence and evolution of the "responsibility to protect" and attempts to develop a theory to explain the ability of developing countries to influence the direction of change in international norms of sovereignty and intervention. It does so by conducting a plausibility probe of several hypotheses derived from Stephen Krasner's theory of "international regime change" and applying these to a case-study of international debates around "humanitarian intervention" and the "responsibility to protect" between 1999 and 2005.