The Responsibility to Protect, known to many as the R2P, is a concept which argues that states do not have a right to be independent and without foreign intervention if they cannot take care of their own citizens. It argues that state sovereignty – which means that states have the absolute power over their own land – entails a responsibility to protect their own citizens from things such as genocides, wars and famine. It has three key parts; first, each state in the world has a responsibility to protect their own citizens. Second, the international community, which means other states and international organizations such as the United Nations, have a responsibility to help each state take care of its citizens. Third, and last, the international community has a responsibility to intervene if the state fails to take care of its citizens.
The R2P was written down in a document in 2001 and accepted by the United Nations in 2005 as a working principle, meaning they have to base their actions on the R2P. The concept was very relevant in this time as the 1990s had been filled with many humanitarian crises, including some horrible incidents where the international community could have helped and did not. The R2P is very controversial because the international world is usually understood as many different states (193 to be exact) that are independent and sovereign. The R2P challenges this and says that the individual people living within states are more important than the states themselves.
Although the R2P was accepted by the United Nations 10 years ago, it has only been used once: in the 2011 humanitarian intervention in Libya. In Libya, the leader of the country, Muammar Qaddafi, had asked his supporters to kill all those who were against him. After the United Nations had tried to remind Qaddafi of his responsibility to protect his people, including those who disagreed with him, an intervention was approved and Qaddafi was removed as leader of Libya. This is usually celebrated as a good example of how the R2P can help citizens without causing widespread war.
There is a lot of debate about whether or not the R2P is a principle that works. Those who believe in it argue that we are all equal to each other and it does not matter if we have British or Libyan passports – this means that we all deserve to be protected from horrible things like genocide. This principle is called cosmopolitanism and is a growing idea. Others argue that the R2P can easily be used as an excuse to heavily influence the politics of another state by pretending that one is trying to help the citizens. But one thing is sure for most – there were too many horrible things that happened in the 1990s and in a world as globalized as ours, we are all working together in one way or another – why should we not also be protected together? As more conflicts erupt all over the world, especially in the Middle East, the debate about possible interventions based on the R2P are becoming more common.
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