iR2P

Avaaz (a bold new campaigning organisation with over 3 million members worldwide) is collecting a million messages of congratulation to display on a wall in the heart of Washington DC, in the hope that the site will become a focus for US media reporting on global reactions to Obama’s election success. Add your own voice here. Here is my tuppence-worth:

Eastern Congo and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’

On this tremendous occasion, I feel as much relief as excitement and hope that a more United States offers good prospects for a more United Nations.

On that note, I trust you and your team will consider what needs to be done to implement the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ doctrine that world leaders signed up to at the 2005 World Summit.

Most people across the world are appalled by mass atrocities - too often in retrospect - and wish to help prevent them in the future. We urgently need a credible mechanism to clearly voice, reinforce and realise those convictions in time to save lives.

The individual Responsibility to Protect initiative (iR2P) engages individuals as agents of change, transforming popular concern into tangible action. By joining the dots across geographical, social and institutional barriers, and by re-imagining activism to include policy ‘insiders’, the iR2P network fosters stronger connections between those with most influence, those immediately affected by crises such as those ongoing in Darfur and eastern Congo, and those who ask, “What can I do?”

The US government is already actively engaged in diplomatic efforts to help stabilize and resolve the situation in eastern Congo. A huge test of international resolve to support democracy and peace where these fundamentals are all too elusive, it is hard to overstate the significance of the outcome for Africa as a whole, and the people of the Great Lakes region in particular. We have collected analysis and 10 policy recommendations on the iR2P website.

In continued hope, and with heartfelt congratulations,

Fred (on behalf of all who have signed the iR2P Pledge)

Update from Avaaz: “In just 24 hours, over 150,000 people from 189 countries have signed and sent a message for Barack Obama to our huge global wall in the centre of Washington DC, and it has been covered on CNN, BBC, Al Jazeera and in the US on front pages of two of the biggest newspapers and on the evening news.”