Responsibility to Protect (R2P) (Budapest)

The School of Public Policy cordially invites you to a public lecture:

Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC
Responding to Mass Atrocity Crimes: The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) After Libya and Syria?
Wednesday, Oct 24, Protected content , 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m., CEU Auditorium
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The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) concept was initiated in a Protected content of an international commission co-chaired by Gareth Evans and endorsed unanimously by the UN General Assembly - sitting at head of state and government level - at the Protected content Summit. The adoption of R2P by the UN was an affirmation that sovereignty was not a license to kill. No state can abdicate the responsibility to protect its own people from atrocity crimes, let alone justify perpetrating such crimes itself. When a state manifestly fails in that protection, it is the responsibility of the wider international community to provide it by taking “collective, timely, and decisive” action through the Security Council.

In Protected content , the UN Security Council invoked R2P, paving the way for a forceful international response to address the conflict in Libya. Today, as Syria’s crisis goes from bad to worse, the same Council is paralyzed by a backlash against NATO’s perceived overreach of its civilian-protection mandate in Libya. Is the gridlock over Syria a temporary setback for efforts to prevent atrocity crimes or are we staring at a return to the bad old days of Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo?

Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC is Chancellor of the Australian National University and President Emeritus of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, which he led from Protected content 2009. He previously spent 21 years in Australian politics, thirteen of them as a Cabinet Minister. As Foreign Minister ( Protected content ) he was best known for his roles in developing the UN peace plan for Cambodia, concluding the Chemical Weapons Convention, and initiating new Asia Pacific regional economic and security architecture. He has written or edited nine books - most recently The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All - and has published over Protected content articles and chapters on foreign relations, human rights and legal and constitutional reform.

He has co-chaired two major International Commissions, on Intervention and State Sovereignty ( Protected content ), and Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament ( Protected content ). He was a member of the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change Protected content , the Blix Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction Protected content , the Zedillo Commission of Eminent Persons on The Role of the IAEA to Protected content Beyond Protected content the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention. He is Co-Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

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