The UK's reparative responsibility to protect: colonial harm, rectificatory justice, and atrocity prevention

This thesis argues that British colonial injustice grounds a special reparations-based responsibility to protect populations from mass atrocity crimes, especially in its
former colonies. Through an analysis of the enduring economic, political, and social
legacies of British rule, it demonstrates that colonial harm has created structural
precarity in post-colonial states, increasing contemporary atrocity risk and
complicating the legitimacy of norms for preventing and responding to atrocity
crimes, such as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). This argument is advanced
through the novel framework of the Reparative responsibility to protect (R-r2p),
which combines backward-looking liability with forward-looking capacity, recognising
that part of the UK’s protective capacity derives from colonial exploitation. The UK’s
foremost obligations under this framework are to its former colonies, while weaker
reparative obligations extend to other post-colonial states.

This thesis is an exercise in non-ideal normative political theory, informed by
historical analysis. The first part of the thesis establishes the colonial harms
grounding reparative responsibility, while the second examines how that
responsibility should be discharged. Four case studies – Myanmar, Sudan, South
Sudan, and Nigeria – are used throughout to demonstrate the legacies of colonial
rule. The thesis formulates five guiding principles for assessing which measures best
align with the R-r2p: reparative grounding, non-domination, agency, reparative
effectiveness, and sustainability. It then assesses measures of protection,
prevention, and diplomacy, arguing that refugee protection and asylum, humanitarian
assistance, development and capacity-building, and advocacy-based norm-brokering
anchored in reconciliation hold the greatest reparative potential.

This thesis contributes to research on the R2P and its post-colonial critiques
by offering a reparative account of special responsibility within debates on atrocity
prevention and the R2P, guiding principles for allocating and prioritising measures,
and a novel approach to norm diplomacy based in inclusivity. Ultimately, this thesis
identifies how atrocity prevention can be reconfigured in more effective and just
terms.