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Responsibility to Protect

What is the 'Responsibility to Protect'?
The UN World Summit in September 2005 (link) adopted the principle of the 'responsibility to protect' (R2P) - arguably one of the most significant developments in international humanitarian law since the founding of the UN, with the potential to prevent tyrants from using state sovereignty as a shield for their human rights abuses or humanitarian neglect.

A development of the long-debated concept of 'humanitarian intervention', R2P offers a legal and ethical basis for the international community to intervene when states fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The World Summit Outcome Document (the relevant paragraphs of which are included, in full, below) endorses the need to take "collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the Security Council, in accordance with the Charter, including Chapter VII, on a case-by-case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means [of resolving grave humanitarian situations] be inadequate".

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Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide

At the 2004 Stockholm International Forum on Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities, the Secretary-General proposed creating a Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide (SAPG) who would be “supported by the High Commissioner for Human Rights but would report directly to the Security Council--making clear the link, which is often ignored until too late, between massive and systematic violations of human rights and threats to international peace and security.” The position of Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide is partly an effort to try to learn from past instances of collective failure to prevent massive violations of human rights and international humanitarian law with an ethnic, racial, religions or national character.

In July 2004, the Secretary-General appointed Juan Mendez, Argentinian human rights lawyer and Executive Director of the International Center for Transitional Justice to the post. His mandate has to be seen in the wider context of UN efforts to create a culture of prevention and efforts to prevent massive violations of human rights and humanitarian law.

Genocide occupies a special place within the range of crimes that humankind has shown itself capable of perpetrating. It not only contains all the elements of a crime against humanity by definition but includes the aggravating element of the intent to destroy a group “in whole or in part” for characteristics that are intrinsic to its members' being, such as their race, ethnicity, religion or national origin.

Genocide was defined as a crime under international law through the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and Prevention of the Crime of Genocide. Massive atrocities, including some committed during the last decade, have taken place despite the provisions to prevent contained in the Convention. In particular, the 1993 genocide in Rwanda and the killings in the Balkans underscored the collective failures of the international community to make a reality of the international obligation to prevent genocide.

The Office of the Special Adviser takes up situations on a case-by-case basis. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide orients the focus of the Special Adviser's work. This means that there needs to be a national, ethnic, racial or religious group at risk. There must also be violations of human rights or humanitarian law, which may become massive or serious. Additional factors affecting the assessment of the possible threat of genocide derive from developing international case law as well as the findings of academic research.