Responsibility to Protect

Never Again!

The world came together to say "never again" in the aftermath of World War II, the Holocaust and the use of nuclear weapons by devising and affirming the UDHR. Yet in the past six decades, we have witnessed mass atrocities all around the globe. All of us share a responsibility to do whatever we can to help prevent and protect others from such violence.

We call this the Responsibility to Protect, or R2P

The concept of R2P was launched with the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect, in 2001.

The world's heads of state and government unanimously adopted the principle of R2P in the UN World Summit Outcome Document in September 2005.

Whose responsibility to protect?

For individual states, R2P means the responsibility to protect their own citizens, and to help other states build their capacity to do so.

For international organizations, including the United Nations, R2P means the responsibility to warn, to generate effective prevention strategies, and when necessary to mobilise effective reaction.

For civil society groups and individuals, R2P means the responsibility to focus the attention of policy-makers on what needs to be done, by whom and when.

It may be that our neighbor's home is under siege, that a rebel group is advancing towards innocent people or that a government, corporation or organisation is lending support or indeed perpetrating crimes against humanity.

What can we do?

One place to start is with prevention: through measures aimed in particular at building state capacity, remedying grievances, and ensuring the rule of law.

But if prevention fails, R2P requires whatever measures - economic, political, diplomatic, legal, security or in the last resort military - become necessary to stop mass atrocity crimes occurring.

Now is the time to think creatively about what individuals, states, corporations or organisations can do to speak out and act against further assault against others.

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