The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the International Criminal Court (ICC) were invoked in the international response to Kenya’s electoral violence in 2007 and 2008. The international response to the crisis in Kenya occurred during a high point of Liberal Internationalist confidence in interventionist solutions, and was considered by many to display the ICC’s value as an R2P mechanism to protect vulnerable populations and prevent violence. Yet the ICC’s cases against prominent politicians Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto ultimately collapsed, and the intervention had significant consequences for Kenyan politics and the ICC’s credibility across Africa.

This thesis explores the ideological alignment between R2P and the ICC and their operational divergences, examining how their divergent protection and prosecution objectives in Kenya had costs for the respective projects, domestic political situations, and the development of international criminal law. It interrogates the claim that the R2P and ICC efforts in Kenya presented a successful case study for international crisis intervention, contending that delicate peace outcomes were only thinly attributable to the ICC and R2P norm. Further, it contends that the ICC’s Kenyan cases proved the inherent limits to the Liberal Internationalist aspirations to redefine sovereign responsibility against enduring the power attached to state sovereign authority. These questions provide insights about the relevancy of Liberal Internationalist norms and institutions addressing crimes against humanity in a more contested and “illiberal” period of international politics.