Responsibility to Protect - en norm?

This essay looks at the concept of The Responsibility to Protect as a principle and examines under what circumstances and by whom the R2P can be transferred into a transnational norm. Focus in this essay lies on the work of three regional organizations; The African Union, The European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, who have embraced the principles of R2P. The essay further examines how these organizations can be instruments which enable R2P to be adopted as an international norm. In order to determine how R2P can be established as a norm the essay considers the transactions which take place whereby an idea becomes a norm. It examines under what conditions such a transaction can take place and when and how one can ascertain that an idea has become a norm i.e. that the idea of R2P gains a normative status