BIS Undergraduate research projects

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    State sovereignty and responsibility to protect: a case study of the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia
    (Strathmore University, 2023) Wairimu, I. K.
    The goal of this study was to examine the connections between the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine and the State Sovereignty (SS) principle in the context of the Tigray conflict, which lasted from 3 November 2020 to 3 November 2022. The study's three main goals were to discuss how state sovereignty affects responsibility to protect, what circumstances should have spurred R2P in the Tigray conflict case, and who is the best agent to implement R2P measures in Africa, a discussion between the AU and the UN in this study. The two theoretical frameworks that were used were liberal institutionalism, which emphasizes the function of international organizations like the African Union or the United Nations in addressing humanitarian crises through collective action and cooperation, and classical realist theory, which advocates for strict adherence to and respect of a state's autonomous privilege to determine itself within the international system without interference from any external actors. The study used a descriptive research methodology, which combined qualitative and quantitative data gathering and analysis methods to produce the research's findings. In-person interviews with two key informants and an online questionnaire with 12 respondents were used to gather the data. The main conclusions of the study were that respondents believed that SS directly affected R2P, that the humanitarian crisis that followed the conflict should have prompted R2P, and that it is the responsibility of the entire international community to address humanitarian crises regardless of which organization is tasked with doing so. The main takeaways are that states should put their citizens' interests first by making sure that their human rights are respected, and that the international community should continue to be strongly committed to protecting those who are victims of humanitarian crises by strengthening R2P and making it more robust to effectively and efficiently be accepted by states as a solution to solving humanitarian crises and not as a threat to their sovereignty.