Face to face: Does the UN principle of responsibility to protect oblige Canada and its allies to intervene - militarily or otherwise - in Syria? The photo of the three-year-old Syrian boy, Alan Kurdî, whose body surfaced on the shore of Turkey earlier this fall, galvanized global attention on the seminal humanitarian challenge of our time. Since the outbreak in 2011, the Syrian crisis has seen the death of more than 200,000 people and the displacement of more than 10 million. Gender-based violence, war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in Syria, yet the international community has remained paralyzed. The speed, magnitude and brutality of the Syrian crisis calls for our compassion and our collective responsibility to protect people in peril. The Responsibilit...