Over a year since the Syrian uprising - and the UN fails its own Mandate on the Responsibilty to Protect

It has now been well over a year, since the Syrian people began their uprising against the Assad Dictatorship. Over a year and still the free world does nothing.

Tonight on our Television news, we see more horrific pictures of the Syrian army murdering citizens - through city after city

The excuse for non-intervention is that there is no mandate from the United Nations. Yet the UN is flouting its own conventions. Under the UN Responsibility to Protect (RtoP), (introduced in 2005, agreed by the Security Council in 2006 and General Assembly in 2009), the UN has a duty to intervene to stop genocide.

RtoP was brought into being primarily because of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and has three core principles:

1. A state has a responsibility to protect its population from mass atrocities,
2. The international community has a responsibility to assist the state if it is unable to protect its population on its own.
3. If the state fails to protect its citizens from mass atrocities and peaceful measures have failed, the international community has the responsibility to intervene through coercive measures such as economic sanctions. Military intervention is considered the last resort.
(Courtesy of Wikipaedia)

If the UN refuses to act under its own laws of RtoP, then leading UN nations - like the United States - should step up to the plate and take responsibility. This means a no fly zone, and armed support to the opposition movements to Assad.

If the free world does nothing, then no doubt, once it is all over, and the extent of the Assad genocide is revealed, the world will wring its hands and say "never again". Will President Obama be remembered in a different way? "We did nothing".

You can read more about the UN 'Responsibility to Protect', here: http://responsibilitytoprotect.org/index.php/about-coalition/our-understanding-of-rtop and here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect