How Did We Get Here? - No World Order: 1. The Responsibility to Protect

Download No World Order: 1. The Responsibility to Protect

Tristan Redman is joined by Lindsey Hilsum, international editor of Channel 4 News, and Allan Little, former BBC correspondent in Moscow and Africa, to look back at the decade after the Cold War in which the question of international intervention was repeatedly tested.

They discuss Nelson Mandela's release in February 1990, the United States' retreat from Somalia after American soldiers were killed in Mogadishu in 1993, and the international community's failure to act during the Rwandan genocide the following year.

They discuss Srebrenica, where UN peacekeepers were present but around 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in 1995, and Nato's intervention in Kosovo in 1999, which went ahead without UN Security Council authorisation.

The episode traces how these events fed into debates around the principle that became known as the Responsibility to Protect, and ends on 31st December 1999, as Boris Yeltsin resigns and Vladimir Putin becomes acting president of Russia.

'How Did We Get Here: No World Order' is a BBC News Long Form Audio production

Presenter: Tristan Redman
Producers: Keiligh Baker and Nik Sindle
Sound engineers: Neil Churchill, Gareth Jones and Michael Regaard
Production co-ordinators: Sophie Hill and Katie Morrison
Editor: Matt Willis
Radio 4 commissioners: Daniel Clarke and Hugh Levinson

Published on Monday, 27th July 2026.

Available Podcasts from How Did We Get Here?

Subscribe to How Did We Get Here?

We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the How Did We Get Here? webpage.