Responsibility to Protect (R2P)

During and after the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the international community was faced with its own powerlessness during a major crisis. Despite a UN peacekeeping force, the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), being in the field, it did not have the means to stop the killings. In the few days following the beginning of the genocide, after 10 Belgian soldiers had been killed, the UN requested the withdrawal of the mission, and the number of soldiers eventually dropped from 2,500 to 270. Major nations were unwilling to take the necessary steps to stop the genocide, which claimed approximately 800,000 lives in 100 days. After such a failure, the UN started to consider what went wrong and what could be changed about the way ...