Resumen de Brazilian Transnational Normative Entrepreneurship on RWP and welcoming of Venezuelan Refugees

Estela Cristina Vieira de Siqueira, Cícero Krupp da Luz

• The present study aims to analyze the gap between the position of the International Relations of the Federative Republic of Brazil towards the conceptual enlargement of the institute of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) to Responsibility while Protecting (RwP), practiced while addressing the case of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya, towards the current situation of Venezuelan refugees on Brazilian borders and the judicial decision on closing borders, appreciated at appeal level by the regional section of Federal Justice in Brazil. Brazilian Foreign Relations, in an exercise of normative entrepreneurship, presented Responsibility while Protecting as an alternative to R2P, in the sense that, as humanitarian intervention shall be taken as ultima ratio, measures to reestablish peace and development in affected States must be a priority of action on an international level, deviating from the use of force. However, in a moment when a neighboring country goes through a political crisis that attracts the attention of great powers to the possibility of intervening, Brazil fluctuates between positioning itself favorably to the welcoming of refugees and, at the same time, judicially closing borders. Thus, it might be that RwP  can be considered as a mere exercise of political theory an international level. The position the Brazilian State adopts when the responsibility while protecting – an institute of Brazilian initiative – crosses our borders is somewhat different from its discourse towards it.