The 2011 intervention in Libya was the first operational use of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine to authorize military action.

Before Libya, the Responsibility to Protect—or R2P—was mostly a noble idea. It lived in political speeches. But the threat of a massacre in Benghazi changed everything. By invoking R2P to justify military action, the UN Security Council turned a moral concept into a concrete legal precedent. It proved that the international community could, and would, intervene when a state failed its primary duty to protect its own people.