PLEASE NOTE: This seminar has been postponed

The 21st Century has witnessed both a deepening of scholarly and policy interest in norms associated with human protection, as well as the creation of a number of global, mostly UN-associated, institutions designed to enhance protective capacity. Academic appraisal of actions intended to promote humanitarian outcomes has mushroomed. Debate and discussion of topics such as the protection of civilians in armed conflict, the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), or modes of accountability for mass atrocity crimes appear regularly on UN agendas. The UN Security Council debates these protections in the context of its primary mandate to respond to threats to international peace and security.

Beijing’s recently enhanced material power, together with its steadily increasing willingness to provide global public goods, makes it essential to study its approaches to these issues. China’s leadership has determined it has a role to play in reshaping and revising aspects of global governance. It has chosen the United Nations as a primary site for exercising that influence, with the issue of human protection as one of the areas of particular concern to it. This research project examines how a more powerful China satisfies its desire to shape global norms relating to human protection in ways that reflect its ideological beliefs, and bolster its image as a responsible great power. These twin goals represent a particular challenge for Beijing to satisfy because human protection involves normative contestation of a particularly fundamental kind for a state that privileges the security of the state and regime above that of the security of the individual.