Responsibility to protect Palestinian refugees when international authorities fail (Article published by Badil, in an NGO journal "Al Majdal" based in Bethlehem)

This article explore the principle of the Responsibility to Protect in the context of protecting Palestinian refugee rights. Violations of human rights and humanitarian law, particularly when systematically carried out with no regard to their consequences, demand that other states and international organisations not simply take notice, but take action. The legal basis for proportionate and “effective” responses to such violations are gaining momentum through an emerging international legal principle of the responsibility to protect, which forms part and parcel of state responsibility. The responsibility to protect is firstly a duty to ensure that mechanisms are in place to prevent violations from taking place and secondly a duty of states, acting in their individual or – ideally – collective capacities, to intervene in order to protect civilians from potential or further violations.