The Responsibility to Protect: Another Aspect to Consider When Defining the Crime of Aggression?

Abstract

This paper introduces the question if and how far the evolving concept of the ‘responsibility to protect’ in international law impacts on the definition of ‘aggression’. The introduction in the first part illustrates the situation in question with the aid of a fictional example. Part II provides background information on the current state of the work of the Special Working Group on the Crime of Aggression of the States Parties to the Rome Statute. Their work concluded with an official proposal of amendments to Article 5 and others of the Rome Statute and with the adoption of a definition of the crime of aggression. Part III starts with examining the law of humanitarian intervention by analysing the Kosovo intervention and posing the hypothetic question if interveners would have been held liable if the ICC would have existed at that time. Subsequently, this part elucidates the key issues of the ‘responsibility to protect’ namely its origins, content and legal status due to its acceptance among the international community. Part IV analyses existing correlations between the concept of the responsibility to protect and the definition of aggression and discusses different proposals of dealing with the use of force for humanitarian purposes in the context of aggression.