Responsibility to Protect

With a focus on the tragedy that is—and has been for so long—Africa, this article from the Wall Street Journal examines the reasons why an international responsibility to protect might apply in that continent most of all, yet most politicians shy away from it.

It is at the heart of the Bush Doctrine, undergirding our invasion—and changing of regimes—in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is a founding concept articulated by the United Nations, in the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, and the 2001 United Nations report, The Responsibility to Protect, and commented on by Pope Benedict in his speech to the general Assembly during his visit to America earlier this year.

Here is an excerpt from his speech:

“The principle of “responsibility to protect” was considered by the ancient ius gentium as the foundation of every action taken by those in government with regard to the governed: at the time when the concept of national sovereign States was first developing, the Dominican Friar Francisco de Vitoria, rightly considered as a precursor of the idea of the United Nations, described this responsibility as an aspect of natural reason shared by all nations, and the result of an international order whose task it was to regulate relations between peoples.”