(Ottawa Citizen-Canada) Irwin Cotler - At the UN World Summit in 2005, more than 150 heads of state and governments unanimously adopted a declaration on the Responsibility to Protect, authorizing international collective action "to protect [a state's] population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity" if that state is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens, or worse, as in the case of Syria, if that state is the author of such criminality. It now appears that all the conditions for invoking the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine exist in Syria, if they have not already been in place for some time. What is required now is a UN Security Council resolution in order to begin acting on our international legal obligations under the R2P. In particular, what is necessary now is the deployment of an Arab League protective force to stop the killing, the provision of humanitarian assistance and relief, the implementation of no-fly and no-drive zones, and broad-based support for the Syrian National Council. The writer is a former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada.
2011-11-29 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive