A responsibility to support civilian resistance movements? Atrocity prevention in the context of repressions and coups - Dr Eglantine Staunton (ANU)
- Date
- Monday 7 November 2022, 4pm UK
- Location
- Roger Stevens LT13 (10.13)
The Centre for Global Security Challenges and the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect are pleased to announce a co-hosted research presentation by Dr Eglantine Staunton (Australian National University):
A responsibility to support civilian resistance movements? Atrocity prevention in the context of repressions and coups
Eglantine Staunton and Cecilia Jacob (ANU)
Abstract
In recent years, there has been an upsurge in the number of civilian resistance movements (CRMs) within states to counter government repression and coups d’état through which civilians are on the frontlines of state brutality and mass atrocities. This article considers the implications of CRMs for atrocity prevention, and the associated norm of the Responsibility to Protect by asking: should the international community support CRMs as part of its wider commitment to ending mass atrocities? In this article, we evaluate both non-military and military support to CRMs. We argue that in the context of coups and government repression, providing military support to CRMs will often make things worse in terms of atrocity prevention. We however explain that the provision of non-military support by the international community to CRMs through capacity-building, accountability and political recognition can yield positive results. We illustrate this argument through the case of Myanmar.
Keywords
Civilian resistance; atrocity prevention; responsibility to protect; political recognition; capacity building; accountability; just war tradition; Syria; Myanmar.
Biography
Eglantine is a Senior Lecturer (Fellow) in the Department of International Relations (Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs). She is also an Honorary Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (University of Queensland).
Her work focuses on human protection (in particular, atrocity prevention and the Responsibility to Protect), norm diffusion, and France's foreign policy. She is also interested in the UN Security Council and the EU’s foreign policy.
Her book France, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect was published by Manchester University Press in 2020. It brings together human protection, France’s foreign policy, and norm diffusion by reshaping our understanding of key principles and norms of human protection, correcting prevailing assumptions on France’s foreign policy, while making a wider contribution to the literature on how domestic and international norms interact.
Her research has also been published in journals such as the European Journal of International Relations, Third World Quarterly, International Relations, Global Responsibility to Protect, Modern and Contemporary France, and in edited volumes.
Eglantine is committed to making a significant impact on society and policy. As a consequence, she has provided recommendations to the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect and evidence to a number of Select Committee inquiries in the UK on issues of human protection. She also contributes to The Conversation and The Interpreter.
Before joining the ANU in 2019, Eglantine was a Research Fellow at the University of Leeds, where she was also part of the executive team of the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect from 2017 to 2019. She completed her PhD at the University of Queensland.
Eglantine is visiting Leeds and CGSC as part of her and Jack Holland's research project on France-Anglosphere relations. Funded by an Asia-Pacific Innovation Partnership award, this research explores cooperation in a changing liberal international order, with a focus on the fallout from and future of AUKUS.