R2P

In light of the movements that are taking place in many countries across Northern Africa, there is a lot of information to take in. While the situation in Libya and the threat of civil war is quite different from the situation in Rwanda in 1994, it has still mounted many comparisons between the two. Obviously, the international interest and ties to Libya are vastly different from Rwanda in 1994, but this discussion has brought some attention to key documents and initiatives that have been developed since (and in light of) the Rwandan genocide. While the 1994 genocide in Rwanda demonstrated clearly the lack of will to intervene from the international community, the fact that these initiatives are now recognized and discussed among politicians and in the media demonstrates (hopefully) a change and a step in the right direction. The “Responsibility to Protect”, released by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty in 2001, and more recently the “Will to Intervene” project, initiated jointly by Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire and Frank Chalk of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies are two such examples. It will be interesting to see how useful these reports and documents are in this discussion, and what the next steps are to follow through on these initiatives.
www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/
migs.concordia.ca/W2I/W2I_Project.html