Evans, who was “one of the original architects” of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, points out “that it is not about human security generally, or protecting people from the impact of natural disasters” but “about protecting vulnerable populations from “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity,” and is concerned that if “R2P, and in particular the sharp military end of the doctrine, is capable of being invoked in anything other than a context of mass atrocity crimes, then such consensus as there is in favour of the new norm will simply evaporate in the global South.” But he now believes that if “what the generals are now doing, in effectively denying relief to hundreds of thousands of people at real and immediate risk of death, can itself be characterised as a crime against humanity, then the responsibility to protect principle does indeed cut in.”

Obviously, getting aid to people against the resistance of a government is not possible unless it is accompanied by military intervention. I am not averse to such a move if it is well thought-through, and I have to say I am happy that European politicians are for once taking the initiative. But I am sceptical as to how to carry this through. I guess the U.S. intervention in Somalia in 1993 was a similar initiative, and it failed. Today the international climate is much more hostile to such interventions than it was then.