The norm of the R2P was borne out of the international community 's failure to respond to tragedies such as the Rwandan Genocide in 1994 and the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 . Kofi Annan , who was Assistant Secretary-General at the UN Department for Peacekeeping Operations during the Rwandan genocide , realized the international community 's failure to respond . In the wake of the Kosovo intervention , 1999 , Annan insisted that traditional notions of sovereignty had been redefined : “ States are now widely understood to be instruments at the service of their peoples ” , he said , while U.S. President Bill Clinton cited human rights concerns in 46 % of the hundreds of remarks that he made justifying intervention in Kosovo . In 2000 , and in his capacity as UN Secretary-General , Annan wrote the report " We the Peoples " on the role of the United Nations in the 21st Century , and in this report he posed the following question : " if humanitarian intervention is , indeed , an unacceptable assault on sovereignty , how should we respond to a Rwanda , to a Srebrenica – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity ? " Many critics of the R2P 's third pillar claim that R2P is a Western concept , but it was the African Union ( AU ) that pioneered the concept that the international community has a responsibility to intervene in crisis situations if a state is failing to protect its population from mass atrocity crimes . In 2000 , the AU incorporated the right to intervene in a member state , as enshrined in Article 4 ( h ) of its Constitutive Act , which declares " t he right of the Union to 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 " . The AU also adopted the Ezulwini Consensus in 2005 , which welcomed R2P as a tool for the prevention of mass atrocities
Srebrenica massacre
Srebrenica massacre
Responsibility to protect