“It is a depravity that has been repeated many times since the “peace and dignity” march in Deraa in March 2011 – the largest single-day massacre with 400 murdered in one day in Darayya alone – while the killing continues in Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib and other Syrian cities, with the magnitude of Syrian mass atrocities as yet unknown.

In Libya, the international community intervened when there was a threat of impending mass atrocity; in Syria, the international community has yet to intervene, despite the recurring mass atrocities, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In Libya, the UN Security Council authorized intervention to protect the threatened civilian community; in Syria, the Security Council has yet to adopt one resolution – even to implement the UN-Annan plan – despite the 18 months of killing fields, where more than 20,000 Syrians have now been murdered.

In Libya, the Security Council invoked the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine – the international law principle authorizing international collective action “to protect [a state’s] population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” if the state where these crimes are being committed is unable or unwilling to protect its citizens – or worse, as in the case of Syria, it is the author of such crimes. In Syria, it is as if this principle had never been adopted by the international community, let alone the obligation to implement it.

I have been writing for over a year now of the need to affirm and implement the Responsibility to Protect doctrine to help save Syrian civilians being massacred by the Assad regime, or to initiate the requisite protection action, even without invoking the R2P doctrine. Yet, the riposte to these calls – by myself and others – for a more proactive, protective and interventionist approach has been to warn of “civil war”; of enhanced sectarian strife; of an influx of jihadists; of incessant killings – all of which have happened.

Indeed, everything that was predicted would happen as a result of international action has in fact resulted – but from international inaction.”