Introduction The Responsibility to Protect

Abstract

If reason and conscience ruled the world, extreme forms of violence would not so frequently be the means to an end. The twentieth century and its share of mass atrocities are painful reminders that despite all the decent people who inhabit this planet, mankind too easily resorts to the most destructive patterns to achieve political, economic, or religious gains. On the other hand, drastic improvements have been witnessed in nearly every type of human activity during the last hundred years. Scientific discoveries, technological advances, economic development, as well as social and political changes attest to the ingenuity of mankind. As a result, virtually every aspect of our lives has been affected, often in a positive way. Man has stepped onto the moon. The number of liberal democracies stands at an all-time high. Slavery, a long-time practice, has been abolished. Mortality has dramatically declined, and smallpox has been eradicated. And while all this progress was achieved, too many parts of our world were plunged into the abysses of hell and mass murders. Obviously, such carnage has not been confined to the past hundred years, but this last century has proved extremely deadly in comparison, with hundreds of millions of individuals lost to war or victims of mass atrocities.

Richard H. Cooper is the convenor of the R2P Coalition in Oak Brook, Illinois. Juliette VoInov Kohler is senior program officer at the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva, Switzerland.