My Take | It’s time to invoke ‘responsibility to protect’ over Palestinian crisis
- Unless world wants to cede moral authority of R2P to Iran, Hezbollah and Houthis, it must act to stop the carnage inflicted by Israel and US
As a doctrine and practice, the “responsibility to protect” (R2P) is considered “an international norm”, according to the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at City University of New York.
“R2P seeks to ensure that the international community never again fails to halt the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity,” it said.
The concept emerged in response to the failure of the international community to adequately respond to mass atrocities committed in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s.
The reason why it is an international norm is because R2P was unanimously adopted by member states in 2005 at the United Nations World Summit, the largest gathering of heads of state in history.
During the 1990s, R2P was most fervently championed by the leading Western democracies, especially Britain and the United States, presumably on the assumption that they would always be the ones to decide when and against whom to invoke the doctrine.
