The ongoing humanitarian crisis in Syria poses major challenges to doctrines, legal frameworks, and institutional norms about the moral imperative to intervene on behalf of afflicted populations. At the heart of this challenge presented by Syria is the debate surrounding the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P, doctrine. Since its initial publication in 2001, R2P has been heralded by some as a triumph of human security over outdated conceptions of state or national security, and has significantly contributed to humanitarian protection by altering core components of the international political system, most notably state sovereignty. On the other hand, R2P’s successes have been intensely scrutinized by observers based on instances of selective enforcement, contested meanings of R2P’s core values, and questions surrounding whether there is, in fact, a responsibility to protect at all. This e-volume brings together voices on R2P and humanitarian intervention to examine the doctrine’s validity in the context of Syria’s civil war and humanitarian emergency.
