The responsibility to protect: from promise to practice

In 2005, the international community made a landmark commitment to prevent mass atrocities by unanimously adopting the UN's 'Responsibility to Protect' (R2P) principle.

As often as not, however, R2P has failed to translate into decisive action.

Why does this gap persist between the world's normative pledges to R2P and its ability to make it a daily lived reality?

In this book, leading global authorities on humanitarian protection Alex Bellamy and Edward Luck offer a probing and in-depth response to this fundamental question, calling for a more comprehensive approach to the practice of R2P - one that moves beyond states and the UN to include the full range of actors that play a role in protecting vulnerable populations.