The Responsibility to Protect and Libya Intervention

The nature of armed conflict changed dramatically in the 1990s. Interstate wars were replaced by violent intrastate conflicts, which caused the casualties and death of many civilians. Due to the proliferation of internal conflicts which resulted in humanitarian crises, the international community has increasingly recognized the significance of international negotiation or intervention for crisis prevention and response. United Nations peace keeping and humanitarian missions are the major tools used for coping with these kinds of problems. International intervention that involves military action, has increased concerns about violations of the sovereignty of states. The responsibility to protect (R2P) was implemented in order to emphasize the relationship between the terms of state sovereignty and individual human rights. It has not been decided yet whether human rights and humanitarian issues are the subjects of security problems or not. However, some international organizations have been trying to develop new rulesof protection to prevent atrocities and genocides like those in Rwanda and Bosnia. The responsibility to protect the set of principles which defines sovereignty as a responsbility indicates that a state has the responsibility to protect its population from the “four R2P crimes”: genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. It generated some controversies when the United Nations Security Council authorized the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to use military intervention in Libya in 2011, an intervention based on R2P. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the development of the concept of the R2P and try to explain the limitations and controversies related to the notions and practices of the R2P. Second, the possibility of applying R2P both internationally endorsed R2P crimes and “non-R2P” crimes will be examined in cases concerning Libya and Syria.