On 6 May, the All-Party Parliamentary Groups on the United Nations, Global Security and Non-Proliferation and on Genocide Prevention were addressed by Jennifer Welsh, UN Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Professor Jason Ralph, University of Leeds.
In the panel discussion, chaired by Lord Hannay, both speakers examined the challenges and opportunities faced by states in putting the principle into practice nationally and internationally. R2P provides a policy guide for preventing and responding to genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Professor Welsh said that as the Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on R2P, her role is to lead the conceptual, political, institutional and operational development of R2P at the UN and to support member states with implementation. She also stressed the importance of the Secretary-General’s new Rights up Front initiative, a follow up to the findings of the Internal Review Panel on the UN’s actions in Sri Lanka, which seeks to put human rights and the protection of populations at the centre of everything the UN does.
Professor Welsh concluded her remarks by stating that the UK could do more on the Security Council to connect the agendas of civilian protection and peacekeeping to R2P and speak up on the current French proposal to introduce a code of conduct on the use of the veto in cases of mass atrocity.
Professor Ralph presented the findings of his UNA-UK report on Mainstreaming R2P in UK strategy, which examines how the UK prepares for and responds to the threat of atrocity crimes. He discussed the differences between conflict prevention and atrocity prevention and suggested ways in which the UK could plug the gaps in its conflict prevention strategy in order to better deploy scarce resources to prevent atrocities.
The presentations were followed by a lively question and answer session which covered the crisis in Syria, as well as the plight of the Hazara and Shia minorities in Pakistan. The event was well attended and participants included members of the Foreign Affairs and Defence Select Committees.
An audio recording of the introductory presentations will available below shortly. The meeting served as a launch for UNA-UK’s second policy briefing on R2P, written by Jason Ralph, as well as a guide for parliamentarians about R2P. Copies of these documents are available below.
For more information on UNA-UK’s R2P Programme, please contact Alexandra Buskie on buskie@una.org.uk or 020 7766 3445.
