Department of Conflict Resolution Studies Theses and Dissertations

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Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Dissertation - NSU Access Only

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences – Department of Conflict Resolution Studies

First Advisor

Elena P. Bastidas

Second Advisor

Neil H. Katz

Third Advisor

Judith McKay

Keywords

Anglophone crisis, Cameroon, China, responsibility to protect (R2P), Russian Federation, UN Security Council

Abstract

A single-case holistic design was employed in this qualitative explanatory case study to generate an understanding of the challenges to invoke and uphold the principle of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) by bringing the case of the neglected armed conflict in English-speaking regions of Cameroon to bear on the debate. Given that the available literature relative to the ways in which the Russian and Chinese responses to the Anglophone Crisis of Cameroon reveal the challenges to R2P is shallow, this study provided new insights into understanding the UN Security Council’s limited response to such internal conflicts especially given the many civilian casualties. This study attempted to test the theoretical proposition that the Russian and Chinese responses to the Anglophone crisis of Cameroon reveal the challenges of invoking and upholding R2P since both nations will likely circumvent R2P-related issues connected with the conflict and block any UN Security Council resolution designed to protect civilians in the country’s Anglophone regions if they perceived either: 1) a major influence of Western strategic interests, 2) a hidden agenda to destabilize Cameroon’s governing regime, 3) the absence of consent from Cameroon’s governing regime about external involvement in Cameroon’s internal conflict, and 4) a threat to their vested interests in Cameroon. Framing the challenges in upholding the principle of R2P as a Conflict Resolution (CR) phenomenon is a valuable contribution to the field of CR, opening numerous opportunities for knowledge and theory building by confirming the theoretical proposition.

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