PRISMA 2020 explanation and elaboration : updated guidance and exemplars for reporting systematic reviews

The methods and results of systematic reviews should be reported in sufficient detail to allow users to assess the trustworthiness and applicability of the review findings. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) statement was developed to facilitate transparent and complete reporting of systematic reviews and has been updated (to PRISMA 2020) to reflect recent advances in systematic review methodology and terminology. Here, we present the explanation and elaboration paper for PRISMA 2020, where we explain why reporting of each item is recommended, present bullet points that detail the reporting recommendations, and present examples from published reviews. We hope that changes to the content and structure of PRISMA 2020 will facilitate uptake of the guideline and lead to more transparent, complete, and accurate reporting of systematic reviews

Sharing Responsibility: The History and Future of Protection from Atrocities

The idea that states share a responsibility to shield people everywhere from atrocities is presently under threat. Despite some early twenty-first century successes, including the 2005 United Nations endorsement of the Responsibility to Protect, the project has been placed into jeopardy due to catastrophes in such places as Syria, Myanmar, and Yemen; resurgent nationalism; and growing global antagonism. This book seeks to diagnose the current crisis in international protection by exploring its long and troubled history. With attention to ethics, law, and politics, the book measures what possibilities remain for protecting people wherever they reside from atrocities, despite formidable challenges in the international arena. With a focus on Western natural law and the European society of states, the book shows that the history of the shared responsibility to protect is marked by courageous efforts, as well as troubling ties to Western imperialism, evasion, and abuse. The project of safeguarding vulnerable populations can undoubtedly devolve into blame shifting and hypocrisy, but can also spark effective burden sharing among nations. The book considers how states should support this responsibility, whether it can be coherently codified in law, the extent to which states have embraced their responsibilities, and what might lead them to do so more reliably in the future. The author of the book wrestles with how countries should care for imperiled people and how the ideal of the responsibility to protect might inspire just behavior in an imperfect and troubled world

Sovereignty and Responsibility

The object of this thesis is to consider the relationship between sovereignty and responsibility and to examine how this relationship has developed over time. There is a conventional story told by many scholars of International Relations which holds that sovereignty has ‘traditionally’ entailed the absence of responsibility and accountability. It has meant that states have a right to govern themselves however they choose, free from outside interference. Only in recent years, the tale goes, have the indefeasible rights that sovereigns have long enjoyed been challenged by notions that sovereigns are responsible and accountable for the protection of their populations. Ideas of ‘sovereignty as responsibility’ and ‘the responsibility to protect’ which have emerged since the end of the Cold War are framed as radical departures from the way in which sovereignty has been ‘traditionally’ understood. This thesis challenges this conventional account of the history of sovereignty. It argues that the notion that sovereignty entails responsibilities is not new. Rather, responsibilities have been an enduring feature of the social and historical construction of sovereignty. The thesis demonstrates that sovereignty has been understood to involve varied and evolving responsibilities since it was first articulated in early modern Europe and it traces the historical development of the particular tension between the right of sovereign states to be self-governing and free from outside interference and their responsibility to secure the safety of their populations

Gaddafi and Grotius: Some Historical Roots of the Libyan Intervention

Abstract It is increasingly well understood that concepts of 'humanitarian intervention' and the 'responsibility to protect' enjoy a long and rich history. Nevertheless, it is surprising how plainly the arguments offered by states seeking to justify inte

Special Problems III: The Question of Using Military Force in the Frame of the Responsibility to Protect

This chapter examines the ethics and politics of using military force to protect populations from mass atrocities. I trace the emergence of the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), observing its deep historical roots as well as its rapid development in recent years. I then explore ongoing ethical and political debates concerning R2P and the use of force. I observe that, while virtually all states agree that the suffering of vulnerable populations should be a matter of international concern, some states continue to be reluctant to endorse a right of military intervention for their protection. They do so for both principled and pragmatic reasons. Meanwhile some other states, while accepting that there is such a right, resist suggestions there may be a duty to act to protect the vulnerable when such action does not coincide with their vital interests

Samuel Pufendorf

This chapter introduces one of the seminal figures in the historical development of the just war tradition: Samuel Pufendorf. Before delving into Pufendorf's treatment of the law of war, the chapter explicates his understanding of the fundamental principles of natural jurisprudence upon which he sought to base this law. Pufendorf conceived of his religiously neutral theory of natural law as a contribution to a new science of morality that had been inaugurated by Grotius and developed by Hobbes. When Pufendorf came to formulate his own system of the law of nature, he combined Grotius' emphasis on sociability with Hobbes' emphasis on utility. Some scholars have suggested that Pufendorf's duty of sociability generated cosmopolitan duties of mutual aid and assistance among states. Pufendorf drew from the foundational principle of sociability laws of war that protected the rights and liberties of the territorial sovereign state. Pufendorf did accept that there were some just occasions for war beyond instances of injury to oneself

Armed humanitarian intervention and the problem of abuse after Libya

The idea of armed humanitarian intervention has long been attended with warnings that it will be abused by powerful states seeking to justify wars fought not for humanitarian purposes but for self-interest. This problem of abuse has received renewed attention in the wake of NATO's recent intervention in Libya. This chapter represents an attempt to find a way through this problem of abuse. It concludes by briefly contemplating what options, if any, might be available to the society of states for further limiting the problem of abuse without abandoning the idea of armed humanitarian intervention altogether. Arguments about the problem of abuse became particularly prominent from the early 1990s onwards as skeptical states and commentators sought to restrain the emergence of a right of humanitarian intervention in international discourse and interstate relations