Columbia International Affairs Online: Policy Briefs

CIAO DATE: 03/2012

Background Briefing: R2P After Libya and Cote d'Ivoire

November 2011

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

R2P, like all norms, is bound to see its capacity to deliver on its intended goals tested by real experience. Ever since R2P was endorsed by member states at the United Nations General Assembly in 2005, a number of cases have helped define the boundaries of its application. Well before Libya, R2P had already made a discrete difference in a number of cases: from the most cited example of the political and diplomatic response to the outbreak of ethnic violence in Kenya in early 2008; to the patchy response to signs of ethnic cleansing in Kyrgyzstan in the summer of 2010; to the more forceful regional and international efforts in Guinea at the end of that year.