Good International Citizenship and Special Responsibilities to Protect Refugees

Good international citizenship is generally seen, either implicitly or explicitly, as being a matter of fulfilling general duties in the realm of foreign policy. In this article, I challenge this prevailing view, by arguing that good international citizenship frequently involves discharging special responsibilities to protect, which in turn involves grants of asylum to refugees. While arguing that asylum should be seen as an important element of good international citizenship as a matter of course, it assumes an even more central role in this citizenship in two scenarios. The first is where humanitarian intervention is either imprudent or politically impossible without violating the procedural norms of international society. The second is when intervention – whether pursued for humanitarian or other reasons – creates refugees, and intervening states may thereby acquire special responsibilities to protect those refugees.