Table of Contents - Abstract - Historical Background - Protecting People Before the RtoP - Humanitarian Intervention - A Call for a New Mechanism - The Responsibility to Protect - The Intervention in Libya and the Resolution 1973 (2011) - Conclusion - References Abstract The immanent problem of maintain peace in the international system have changed many times throughout the centuries its way of being developed in relation to the different problems of the time. In the current, with new challenges to face and new threats to deal with the concept of security is thought to be a public good, directly connected with the common people well being. The uprising that started in Libya engaged the whole international community because of its reminding to past tragedies and, because of that, was the first time in which the new principle of the Responsibility to Protect was applied. The discussion on the topic had been various. The paper, starting with a mention how the international security had been addressed in the modern international system, will then move to the RtoP doctrine. After, while dealing with the Libyan crisis, the attention will be focused on the implementation of that norm and how it changed the international community behave from being centralized on state’s sovereignty to common people right to live. Historical background The problem of maintain peace and security among States born together with the modern international system in 1648. The Peace of Westphalia, that ended the Thirty Years War, is said to have dictated a new concept of sovereignty which includes territorial integrity with no intervention of external States in a State’s internal affairs. This system succeeded in maintain the peace, or at least in decrease the number of wars among Nation States, which were thought to have legal equality, since the early XIX century and the outbreak of the World War I. The Great War, with its exacerbated violence, paved the way for international political changes, including revolution in many States. One of the major decision of the Paris Peace Conference that set up the peace terms after the end of the First World War, was to create an intergovernmental organization, the League of Nation, whose principal purposes were to maintain the world peace throughout collective security and disarmament. Even though the League was not able to avoid the aggression by the Axis Powers and the occurrence of the World War II, and, after 27 years of many failures and few successes it was replaced in 1945 by the United Nation. In order to prevent another such a conflict the UN, with a major role of the United States’ President F.D. Roosevelt, launched the UN Charter: a political document and a treaty in which were enlightened the bases of the contemporary international system, included the ideas of a general call for the maintenance of peace and international security and respect for human rights. Of utmost importance for the peace maintenance are the Chapter VI of the document about peaceful settlement of disputes; the Chapter VII dealing with the UN Security Council's powers to maintain peace: it allows the Council to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression"(art. 42) and to take military and non-military action to "restore international peace and security" (art. 51); and Chapter VIII which makes possible for regional organizations to maintain peace in their own region. The UN’s aim to keep the peace worldwide was forthwith put under pressure because of the Cold War and the awkward balance of power between the two superpower US and URSS. This fragile equilibrium brought not little problem in implementing the UN’s objectives of peacekeeping and promotion and protection of human rights, on the grounds that many of the tools thought to be used to develop those objectives were blocked by the permanent fear of the threat of the use of force made by the two major States and their allies. In fact disagreement among the member States of the Security Council are responsible for many failures, as in 1971 with the Bangladesh genocide. During these firsts decades of the UN’s life the Westphalian principle of non-intervention was one of the leading ones in the behave of the international community. For instance the article 2§7 of the UN Charter sais: “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state or shall require the Members to submit such matters to settlement under the present Charter.” Under this statement several resolution were adopted by the Security Council, for example the Resolution n.2131 (1965), which, enumerating the legal instruments in which the principle of non-intervention is proclaimed and does not make any references of the UN Charter, affirms that all forms of intervention, whether direct or indirect,