The Right to Protect, not the Responsibility to Protect, in Africa

Studies on the use of force have subsumed the right of intervention under Article 4(h) of the Constitutive Act of the African Union (AU) under the responsibility to protect (R2P). The approach reflects a commitment to the international security concept of global multilateralism. The puzzle is that the approach does not account for official AU policy objecting to R2P, as revealed in the Ezulwini Consensus, presentations by AU officials, and AU communiqués rejecting the UN Security Council-authorized use of force in Libya. This study embraces the international security concept of regional multilateralism and conceptualizes Article 4(h) as the right to protect concept: the distinct Africa-engineered security model of using force to prevent genocide and atrocity crimes. Official records show the right to protect conveys a unique African rationale: a bold legal structure sustaining African primacy on the use of force for genocide and atrocity crimes prevention in the international system.