opinion

A Palestinian woman reacts as the bodies of people killed in Israeli strikes on Gaza City are brought for a funeral procession at the Al-Shifa hospital on Sept. 4.

Lloyd Axworthy is chair of the World Refugee and Migration Council and a former Canadian foreign minister. Allan Rock has served as minister of justice and attorney-general of Canada and Canadian ambassador to the United Nations.

Twenty years ago, Canada gave the world a new principle. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P), crafted through a Canadian-led international commission and endorsed unanimously at the United Nations in 2005, reframed sovereignty not simply as a bundle of rights and privileges conferred upon a state, but as a responsibility.

The most fundamental state responsibility is to protect its own ci

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