The world's responsibility to protect Libyans

http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2011/0222/The-world-s-responsibility-to-protect-Libyans

The gross atrocities committed by the Qaddafi regime against protesters in Libya are of a kind demanding outside intervention. The Arab revolt for democracy now also needs protection from war crimes.

The brutal killing of hundreds of protesters in Libya has shifted the debate about the democracy movement in the Middle East. Muammar Qaddafi reacted far more harshly than his counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt did to the popular Arab demands for liberty. He unleashed fighter jets and machine guns against his opponents. It was an excessive use of violence leading to the kind of mass slaughter seen in 1975 Cambodia, 1989 China, 1994 Rwanda, 1995 Bosnia, 1999 Kosovo, and 2003 Darfur.

More than democracy is at stake. The world must also act against crimes against humanity. And words of condemnation are not enough. ... In 2005, the UN General Assembly endorsed the idea of an international “responsibility to protect” innocent people from great harm within a sovereign country. That principle was elevated by the UN in large part because of its failure to intervene in the Rwanda genocide.

Failure to protect Libyan protesters, or any peaceful uprising in the Middle East, would only prove that the international community has yet to learn from past mistakes in not upholding international human rights laws, such as the Genocide Convention.