It has been argued that Britain Yearly Meeting should state its view about the adoption by the United Nations of the responsibility to protect citizens from genocide and ethnic cleansing. I welcome this proposal by Gordon Matthews (‘A responsibility to protect?’, 23 April).
We need to remember that this policy was agreed in 2005 in response to the failure of UN forces to prevent genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda.

It represented a renewed commitment by world leaders to intervene in conflicts within states where the national government was unwilling or unable to prevent such atrocities. It was expected that initial interventions would be diplomatic and humanitarian but if such methods were insufficient the UN Security Council could take ‘enforcement action’.

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