With the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the international community faced a rise in intra-state violence. Through the depiction of events in Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Kosovo, this paper highlights the inadequacy of the then-existing mechanisms for the protection of human rights. Humanitarian intervention, aimed at protecting human rights, encountered resistance due to the general prohibition of the use of force and the principle of state sovereignty. The international community's lack of an appropriate response to serious human rights violations occurring in the context of intra-state violence, necessitated a reinterpretation of the concepts of sovereignty and intervention for the purpose of human rights protection. The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) presented a report titled "Responsibility to Protect" (R2P). The paper will explain the concept of "Responsibility to Protect" through three documents: the ICISS report, the UN World Summit Outcome Document, and the UN Secretary-General's report on the implementation of R2P. While presenting the concept of "Responsibility to Protect," the paper highlights the broad spectrum of measures that constitute R2P. These measures reflect the multiple elements of R2P, emphasizing its distinction from the one-dimensional humanitarian intervention. By explaining the concept of R2P, the paper lays the foundation for understanding its legal nature. The paper advocates for the application of a non-positivist approach in qualifying the R2P norm and concludes that the R2P norm can be considered a legal norm. The practical application of R2P occurred in 2011 when the Security Council explicitly invoked R2P in authorizing military intervention in Libya. The practical implementation of R2P in Libya in 2011 was simultaneously declared both a success and a failure. In order to assess the extent to which the theory of R2P, in terms of military intervention, was realized in its practical application, the paper will examine the intervention in Libya through the five criteria for military intervention outlined in the ICISS report. After Libya, military intervention dominated the discourse on R2P, leading to the perception of R2P as synonymous with humanitarian intervention. The purpose of this paper is to provide a general structure of R2P and to highlight the differences between the theory and doctrine of R2P and its practical application. The paper seeks to achieve this purpose by presenting the historical context of its emergence, explaining the concept of R2P (through the three aforementioned documents), and examining the military intervention in Libya.