The Responsibility to Protect (RtoP or R2P) is a United Nations mandate agreed to in 2005 that is based on three justifications. First, states have a primary role to play in shielding their populations from genocide. Second, if the state abdicates this role, the "international community" should provide additional resources from mediation to political structures. Finally, if the genocide still threatens, the larger community must use diplomatic and even military action – via NATO – to ensure that civilians are safe.
R2P has been cleverly frame by the Anglo-American elite (which likely stands behind all such globalist measures) as a standard rather than a law. Various NGOs and numerous international agencies (more of them all the time) can help with the R2P framework. But the hammer – military intervention – can only be mandated by the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly.
The Rwandan genocide was ostensibly the trigger for R2P. In fact, when one examines what is evolving around the world it is clear that the powers-that-be are using the UN as a kind of globalist battering ram, knocking down the walls between nation-states and generating increasingly aggressive internationalist interferences. The entire idea of what constitutes a sovereign nation-state has been stood on its head. A sovereign state was one that had control of its borders and provided a legal framework for its citizens. If another state attempted to interfere, this was tantamount to a declaration of war.
With the advent of R2P, the nation-state has an affirmative obligation to provide safety to its citizens. This means that if it does not other states must, according to the R2P standard, interfere. A nation-state thus has no sovereignty anymore, only affirmative obligations that can be enforced by the United Nations.
It was, of course, the African Union (AU) that led the way toward additional UN interference by making the public announcement that the AU would adopt R2P as a guiding principal. African nations affirmed that the Union should "intervene in a Member State pursuant to a decision of the Assembly in respect of grave circumstances, namely war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity."
Africa is often used as a testing ground for globalism because African leaders are too-often pliable and corrupt and the nation-states themselves are colonial transplants that lack republican roots and the sense of civil rights that Western countries have accrued over time.
The Libyan war is an example of R2P in practice and caused considerable concern even among members of the UN Security Council who began to express reservations about R2P shortly after the West began its Libyan bombing runs. As with every globalist initiative that corrupt national leaders endorse, R2P shall also no doubt usher in a new and more controversial era of activism on the part of the United Nations. It will not be a fairer one, or more just, but it will bring the globe closer to a one world order.