FBSHApost@15 December 2016: Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

Kofi Annan was haunted during his tenure as SGUN that he asked the question in his Millineum Report to UN, "If humanitarian intervention is indeed an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica, to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?" 

The International Commission on Intervention & State Sovereignty answered the SG by introducing the concept of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). In 2005 World Summit (at that time I was still a FM of Malaysia), 150 Heads of State & Government adopted unanimously the RtoP. 

This principle requires each state to have the responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This means the international community, through the UN can use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means to help protect populations. (Book by Jared Genser & Irwin Cotler) by collective action in a timely and decisive manner if the national government fails to do so. In the case of the Rohingya population in the Northern Rakhine State the Myanmar authorities have failed to take appropriate steps to protect its population. 

The condition for the UN to take action has come notwithstanding the denial of Myanmar to the atrocities they committed, UN must exercise its legal and moral responsibility to act, which we expect them to do. The Treaty of Westphalia 1648 is no longer applicable in its entirety since the acceptance of RtoP.

FBSHApost@15 December 2016