The responsibility to protect, the use of force and a permanent United Nations peace service

The United Nations (UN) has come a long way in a short space of time towards notionally affirming its commitment to civilians caught up in humanitarian crises. In 2005 the responsibility to protect (R2P) doctrine was unanimously endorsed by member states at the World Summit hosted by the UN. World leaders agreed that all states had the responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and committed to take ‘timely and decisive action’ in cases where governments ‘manifestly failed to protect their populations’ from such atrocities.1