R2P & Cyberspace: Sovereignty as a Responsibility

The Responsibility to Protect, commonly referred to as R2P or RtoP, is an emerging norm in international relations which states that when a state or government fails to protect its people from mass atrocity crimes, the international community has the responsibility to do so. First coined in 2001 and later adopted by 150 heads of state and government at the 2005 World Summit, R2P has been hailed as the most important turning point for the notion of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’. Yet, to date, no proper attention has been given to understanding how the technological changes in cyberspace affect the prevention and response to R2P crimes at the national, regional and international levels. This paper explores how evolving cyber capabilities relate to the facilitation, commission and prevention of mass atrocity crimes, specifically war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and ethnic cleansing, under the Responsibility to Protect framework in order to (A) demonstrate that such capabilities should be examined and incorporated into the R2P discourse and (B) recommend measures to bolster the efficacy of this incorporation. It begins by discussing the historical significance of R2P, exploring its current conceptual framework and making a case for why prevention efforts deserve consideration. It then proceeds to examine three broad categories in the cyber domain (material sabotage, information collection and social influence) which may be relevant to prevention efforts of R2P. The article concludes with recommendations for more effective integration of cyber capabilities to prevention efforts and ultimately argues that a greater attention must be given to the relationship between R2P and the cyber domain.