The morally correct political response given by the international community in the face of the commission of atrocious crimes rises a debate on the use of force as a reaction strategy against humanitarian calamities. The authorization on the part of the UN Security Council for the deployment of peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda and Kosovo, while it obeyed the legal and political dynamics pertaining the post-cold war period, called into question the humanitarian dimension of these armed interventions and gave way to the need of unifying their mandate from a political compromise establishing the course of action of the Security Council. Under such requirement it is set up in 2001 the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which issues a report titled “Responsibility to Protect”, thus giving origin to a doctrine that delineates the study of military interventions with purposes of protection comprehending three key elements: prevention, reaction and reconstruction. In this regard, it is pertinent to inquire into the evolution that this doctrine has had as well as into its normative content starting from its legal and political scope.