Expanding R2P: Why the Responsibility to Protect must cover Terrorist Atrocities.

Briefly being publicly stated in 2001, the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was actually the result of decades of international efforts to address the major atrocity crimes and rethink the boundaries of state sovereignty (Anon, 2021). Even before the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) released its seminal report, post-war international organisations that struggled to address serious violations such as following - systematic discrimination, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and genocide (Nations, 2024). 

The Genocide Convention was adopted in 1947 as a result of the world's determination to stop the similar atrocities from happening, which was greatly influenced by the Holocaust, which is frequently considered a moral tragedy of the modern period. However, the murders in the Balkans, the genocide in Rwanda, and the crimes of the 1990s that revealed the shortcomings of the current frameworks and compelled a reassessment of international norms as well. (Annan, 2000).  

By the end of the decade, the need for a new conceptualisation of sovereignty had become unavoidable. In his 1999 address to the UN General Assembly, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Member States to reconcile the tension between state sovereignty and the defence of human dignity (Annan, 1999). He challenged governments to imagine how the world ought to respond “to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica” if humanitarian intervention was dismissed as illegitimate (Annan, 1999). These questions laid the intellectual groundwork for R2P, which reframed the sovereignty not as a shield from scrutiny but also as an important responsibility to safeguard populations from the gravest forms of violence. 

Initially, the framework was originally developed to address the mass atrocity crimes committed by the states or in situations of state collapse. R2P does not explicitly anticipate the rise of transnational terrorist organisations capable of perpetrating atrocities at a similar scale. Contemporary terrorism – whether it is in South Asia, the Middle East, Africa or Europe – involves non-state actors whose actions closely resemble the very crimes R2P seeks to prevent; that is, systematic attack on civilians, ethnic targeting, and widespread terrorisation of populations (Chilmeran and Hedström, 2022).

The states and international organisations might handle terrorism as an organised mass violence that poses serious challenges to both world peace and human dignity by viewing it through the lens of the R2P, rather than defining it as solely ideological or even as security-driven. This change would put long-term counterterrorism, prevention, and even  the  civilian protection first respectively.

Consequently, there is also a compelling case for using R2P to fight terrorism. The three pillars of the norm, state accountability, international solidarity, and swift collective response, are immediately applicable when the extreme organisations commit crimes that meet the criteria for genocide, war crimes, or ethnic cleansing (Šimonović, 2016). However, the political discourse often misdiagnoses terrorism as a religious or cultural issue rather than viewing it as a kind of organised violence that directly threatens international peace and public safety (Schmid, 2023). By reinterpreting terrorism through an R2P perspective, all of them which are - states and international organisations might focus on responsibility, civilian protection, and prevention rather than opposing ideologies or groups.

It is crucial to understand this perspective, as the consequences of terrorism disrupt peace, which is one big reason for human beings to sustain themselves on the earth. Contemporary governance challenges such as rising corruption, institutional fragility, and expanding extremist networks have heightened the global insecurity. The international community cannot ignore the ways when the terrorist groups undermine not only the individual states but also the entire regional security structures.

Questions about all the terrorist financing, arms supply, cross-border recruitment and even the targeting of vulnerable populations illustrates the scale of the challenge. So, for instance, the recent Pahalgam attack that happened actually shows how the terrorist violence destabilises the regional internal security structures and underscores the need for a coordinated international response, and then even a collective response on this as well. (Sharma, 2025) R2P must evolve to address not only state-based atrocities but also address contemporary transnational threats respectively.

One famous example is the 9/11 issue that occurred in the World Trade Centre in New York, which is a major example of terrorist attacks on civilians (Anon, 2016). The assault destroyed the buildings, and approximately 1,977 victims were killed (Naval History and Heritage Command, 2021). The casualties included a large number of civilians as well as many first responders. The scale, coordination and horrendous human cost of the 9/11 attacks mark it as the deadliest terrorist event in contemporary history, and its deliberate targeting of the civilian infrastructure and mass casualties definitely mirror the patterns of atrocity that doctrines such as responsibility to protect are designed to actually confront. 

A significant concern was  raised by the scholars from the Global South: that R2P has historically been applied selectively, often reflecting the power asymmetries. This creates hesitation when expanding R2P to terrorism, as the counter-terror narratives are sometimes,  somehow misused by the powerful states mostly to justify intervention or even suppress political dissent. Any expansion must avoid securitizing the humanitarian norms or giving states pretext for even politically motivated interventions. Addressing these concerns also requires ensuring that any R2P-terrorism integration is anchored in civilian protection, not geopolitical interests, thus importantly safeguarding the norm’s legitimacy.

One challenge that stands as a barrier to the application of R2P to terrorism lies in the framework’s origins and operational biases. Scholars from the global south have criticised R2P for being too Eurocentric as a framework, applying heavily to humanitarian intervention, security and state legitimacy. The critiques of R2P argue that the norm, being too state-centric, limits its applicability when the mass atrocities are by non-state actors who operate across borders. Terrorism, shockingly, is often mischaracterised through religious or cultural lenses, which rather obscures its nature as an international atrocity crime, which is a very important aspect we cannot ignore. 

Nonetheless, recent research has made an effort to close the gap between counterterrorism and R2P architectures. According to Shannon Zimmerman, the foundation of both R2P and the UN Global Counter-Terrorism Strategy GCTS is the notion that nations must assume primary responsibility for preventing harm to civilians since they are the first line of defence for their citizens (Zimmerman, 2022). This conceptual overlap suggests that a convergence between R2P and counter-terrorism could be both normative and practical.

Terrorism flourishes where institutions are fragile, and governments are complicit in extremist crimes. Looking back at the issues about terrorism, the R2P-state protection policy has proved to be a failure in the community (Zimmerman, 2022). It is important that R2P should start focusing more on internationally eradicating terrorism and its risks. If international actors take this responsibility seriously, they could focus not only on military counter-terrorism but also on strengthening institutions, addressing radicalisation drivers, and protecting civilian spaces. However, R2P emerged as a moral and political response to the world's most devastating failure. There is a strong resonance in its rooted history, revolving around the Holocaust, post-Cold War conflicts, and sovereignty, in its approach. But the nature of mass atrocity has changed for the worse. 

In contemporary notions, terrorism has become one of the most destabilising threats to both civilian life and international order. This reality must change, and R2P crucially must evolve to focus on the threat that terrorism poses. Adapting the norm to twenty-first-century concerns requires acknowledging the role of the state failure, resolving Eurocentric limits, and even integrating counterterrorism inside the R2P framework.

If the moral force of R2P is to remain relevant in the twenty-first century, it must evolve to address the mass-violence threats that are posed not only by the states but also by the transnational terrorist actors.