iR2P

This blog recently referred readers to a speech by Gareth Evans on R2P, calling it ‘probably best available detailed introduction to the concept, including its origins, significance and current challenges’. Now Gareth’s book on The Responsibility to Protect is about to be launched, with events in New York (today), London (22 September), Brussels (7 October) and Washington (28 October).

The book clarifies misunderstandings about the new norm’s scope and limits and spells out the steps needed to make R2P work in practice, with plenty of reference to past and present real-world examples. All of which is most timely, given that R2P has recently been cited by observers and protagonists in controversial situations as diverse as Kenya’s post-election violence, Zimbabwe’s ongoing political crisis, Cyclone Nargis in Burma, Russia’s clash with Georgia over South Ossetia, Somalia, eastern Congo and of course Darfur. Furthermore, Ban ki-Moon and his Special Advisor on R2P will be presenting a report on R2P to the UN General Assembly before the end of the year, no doubt with plenty of advance consultation behind the scenes. Jan Egeland (who you may remember for his successful appeals for more attention to multiple humanitarian crises from 2003 to 2006) has called the book “a tour de force“.

Louise Arbour (UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2004–08, and chief prosecutor of the
Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda Tribunals from 1996–99) has called the Responsibility to Protect:

“The most important and imaginative doctrine to emerge on the international scene for decades. No one is better placed than Gareth Evans to lead the debate about its scope and application to contemporary crises… And no one could have done it better than in this comprehensive and sophisticated book.”

The book will shortly be available in hardcover from Brookings (quote code KGE8 for a discount, say ICG), Amazon UK and Amazon US.

In the interests of full disclosure, we are proud to say that Gareth Evans is a patron of iR2P. (This plug, however, is entirely at our own initiative.) Gareth Evans is President and CEO of the International Crisis Group. Before joining ICG in 2000, he served eight years as Australia’s Foreign Minister. Evans co-chaired the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that initiated the Responsibility to Protect idea in 2001, and he was a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Threats, Opportunity and Changethat in 2004 proposed R2P’s adoption by the World Summit.