When responsibility to protect ‘hits home’: the refugee crisis and the EU response

While the Syrian refugee crisis unravels at the EU’s doorstep and as the death toll in the Mediterranean continues unabated, questions about the international community’s duty to act on behalf of the afflicted people inevitably arise, thereby fuelling convoluted debates about Responsibility to Protect (R2P). In light of the international community’s inertia and of the EU’s incapacity to adequately manage the worst humanitarian crisis of recent times, this article argues that time is ripe to explore other ways to implement R2P. There is a ‘missing’ link between R2P and refugee protection and the duty to protect refugees can be framed within the R2P discourse. Building on the idea that asylum is central to the implementation of R2P, we suggest that the acknowledgment of the linkage between R2P and refugee protection is helpful not only to improve the EU management of the current crisis, but also to uphold R2P when the international community is at a stalemate.