Responsibility to Protect

Where does the humanitarian community sit in relation to continuing debates about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)? The third pillar of R2P is often seen as the practical manifestation of an older idea of humanitarian intervention, given much attention after the Rwandan genocide and Srebrenica. Many humanitarians have long been reticent about the idea of so-called humanitarian intervention and, thus, of R2P. This article examines the logic behind this reticence and explores the practical relationship between R2P and humanitarian action. In particular, it focuses on three major crises during Holmes’s time as Emergency Relief Coordination – Darfur, Sri Lanka and Myanmar – and goes on to consider briefly how and why R2P has been invoked, or not, in the more recent crises of Libya and Syria. It concludes with reflections about the implications for the future.