Accountability and Human Protection

In recent years, the world's most pressing conflicts have prompted a series of diverse international legal efforts to advance accountability for mass atrocities. Accountability and Human Protection argues that a transformation in the international accountability landscape is underway. This transformation is shaped both by the humanization of international law in recent decades, and new ways of operationalising international law amid human protection crises. This book describes the consolidation of an International Human Protection Order, in which a diverse global community of practice has propelled new practices and configurations of accountability processes. It shows how these actors, drawing on new practices and learning across conflicts, are activating accountability mechanisms at increasingly early phases of conflict escalation. These are aimed at offering protection for civilians amid real-time crises, challenging traditional notions of post-war accountability in the wake of major conflict. The book offers a novel theorization of the International Human Protection Order, showing the move from international lawmaking to international legal ordering over time. It provides a historical tracing of the convergence of international law aimed at protecting humanity, including the turn to a distinctive emphasis on atrocities over aggression. It shows how the atrocity paradigm has shaped political doctrines of protection, and efforts to reform the Security Council working methods at the turn of the twenty-first century. It then traces the implementation of the IHPO across four conflicts that have catalysed a more radical transformation of accountability practices in recent years: Syria, Myanmar, Ukraine, and Israel/Gaza. The book concludes with a critical reflection on the implications of the IHPO for international justice, and the limits of accountability for protection in a moment of international political turmoil.

Cecilia Jacob is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Associate Dean for Research at The Australian National University. She has published widely on international norms of civilian protection and mass atrocity prevention. She was an Australian Research Council Fellow from 2020-2024 and has held visiting appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, the Institute for Ethics, Law, and Armed Conflict at the University of Oxford, and the Ralph Bunch Institute, City University of New York. She advises governments and has consulted for UN and humanitarian agencies on atrocity and conflict-related policy.