The Responsibility to Protect and the current Syrian crisis
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Date
2017-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), an international norm established in 2005 by
the United Nations, stipulates conditions under which the United Nations should
intervene in defense of victims of mass atrocities in a member state. R2P’s goal is to
define the best attitude to adopt when the world is confronted to grave humanitarian
crises. Within R2P, each state carries the primary responsibility to protect its
citizens. The international society carries a collective duty to solve a humanitarian
crisis when a state has failed to fulfil this responsibility. The concept R2P implies a
series of conditions whose purpose is to grant legitimacy and effectiveness to an
international intervention aimed at solving a humanitarian crisis.
The Syrian conflict constitutes an evident case where the international society failed
to fulfil its responsibility to protect. The people in Syria are suffering from mass
atrocities and their consequences are left on their own, because the international
society is being unable to respond collectively. These thesis examines how the
conditions towards R2P were addressed in the cases of Syria and how those actions
should be incorporated in the eyes of international law to stop the violence against
the Syrian people.
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current Syrian crisis