Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a principle created when leaders at the UN joined together in 2005 to declare that, when national leaders were harming or failing to protect their citizens, the international community had the right and responsibility to step in and do so. But how and when such interventions should take place has always been up for debate. A decade later, and five years into a bloody war in Syria that has spurred the worst refugee crisis since WWII and shows no signs of ending, is R2P guiding political action at all?
This short documentary offers a history of the principle and asks three eminent diplomats, politicians and thinkers (Ghassan Salame, Michael Ignatieff, and Paddy Ashdown) with hands-on experience with humanitarian interventions to share their thoughts and answer the question: does R2P still have meaning?
