The new international norms of “human security” and “responsibility to protect” suffered serious blows following their (widely perceived) misapplication in the Libyan conflict of 2011, leaving the international community once again hamstrung and in great consternation as to how to react to mass atrocity crimes and the threat of such crimes. This paper will assess the arguments pro and con regarding the application of R2P in Libya based on interviews and discussions in New York, Washington, Brussels, Tripoli, Benghazi, and elsewhere with many of the stakeholders directly involved in the decision making process that led to its application, along with and assessment of expert opinion on both sides of the very partisan debate with regards to the first time R2P was applied internationally. In addition to common geopolitical and academic/historical arguments within the debate are considerations of how deliberately targeted populations, both at the center of conflict and on its periphery, fare in national- and international-level assessments and in international military actions designed to protect civilians. From forgotten massacred youth protesters in Zuwara and Tripoli to internationally mediatized rape victims in Misrata, from the revolutionary widows and children of the prison massacre at Abu Salim in Benghazi to the both victimized and victimizing civilians involved in communal conflict in Twergha and among the Tebu and Twareg, various subaltern groups fared differently in the Libyan conflict when it came to the un-evenhanded application of R2P. Data will be presented based on fieldwork in Libya among these different populations, populations that continue to skirmish and mistrust each other in an evolving insecurity that impacts Libya’s neighbors as well. Debates over R2P’s application in the Libya case also caused deep discord at the United Nations and the African Union and within other international organizations that have yet to be adequately resolved and which have hampered humanitarian interventions in Syria and esewhere. The lessons of R2P in Libya have yet to be learned, and a proper assessment of these lessons with recommendations on how to improve R2P in its application will be necessary before it can take its place as a viable international norm. One of these lessons is a proper assessment of the degree to which national and regional stability and security depend on the human security of subaltern groups, and a careful re-assessment of who is responsible for that security and of how to ensure it.