The irony of R2P is that the concept was fathered by an African, a foundational role that has often been erased from history. South Sudanese scholar-diplomat Francis Deng crafted the doctrine of “sovereignty as responsibility” in 1996.

Many of its tenets were included ― without acknowledgement ― in R2P, particularly its emphasis on the need to build state capacity to protect populations in peril.

“Sovereignty as responsibility’s” three pillars ― the responsibility of the state, the state requesting assistance and international intervention to protect populations as a last resort ― were also replicated in R2P. Deng is thus widely acknowledged, in knowledgeable circles, as the “intellectual father of R2P”.

He was born in British-ruled Sudan in 1938. His 1971 book on tradition and modernisation among his ethnic Dinka won the most prestigious prize in African Studies in the US. His 1986 biography of his father, Deng Majok, the paramount chief of the Ngok Dinka between 1943 and 1969, was a magisterial study covering indigenous methods of conflict resolution and the constructive management of diversity in the country’s North-South border region of Abyei. This area symbolised Sudan’s north-south and Muslim-Christian divide.

Deng had thus been born into what he described as a “racial and cultural crossroads and a microcosm of the Afro-Arab Sudan”. The young Francis learnt at his father’s feet in the royal court where he had engaged in mediating communal disputes.

After obtaining his doctorate in law from Yale University in the US, Deng worked as a UN human rights officer before serving as Sudan’s minister of state for foreign affairs under the military regime of Gen Gaafar el-Nimeiri. In this role, he engaged in mediation efforts between Dinka and Arab groups.