Panel 20: Protection versus Stabilisation? Addressing Tensions within the Liberal Intervention Paradigm

‘Human security’ and the ‘responsibility to protect’ have been praised as progressive concepts that concentrate on the security of the individual rather than the state, thus contesting and challenging the traditional principle of state sovereignty. This discourse of protection and its emphasis on the moral obligation to act on behalf of insecure populations has enabled new peace, development and security interventions in the global South which in many cases, however, focus on strengthening the state. At the same time, such hegemonic practices have been met by an increasing commitment and claim to autonomy of African actors to address insecurities on the continent.

The panel explores the multidimensional tensions inherent in the current liberal intervention paradigm guided by (civilian) protection on the one hand and (state) stabilisation on the other. Papers are invited to discuss rationales, challenges and effects of power in these interventions and to particularly enquire on whose terms the security engagements are defined and carried out. They may focus on:

· new actors, alliances and partnerships (whole-of-government approaches, the entanglement of millitary and civilian engagement);

· the genesis of current norms and policy-guiding concepts (e.g. legitimisation of and challenges to human security, stabilisation, counterinsurgency);

· possibilities and limits of African agency (ownership, challenges to hegemonic logics and practices and their possible transformation in order to have partnerships work for their own objectives);

· social and spatial effects that challenge common analytical categories for the study of North-South relations (state/non-state or transnational dynamics).