The UN General Assembly is not an easy place to find consensus on anything, so it came as a welcome surprise to hear that its member states have agreed to work to further international understanding on effective collective action to prevent and (failing that) to halt mass atrocities. During the debate in July, numerous statements [...]
It’s been far too long. Sorry about that. I can hardly claim there’s been any lack of developments to write about, what with the arrest of Nkunda and subsequent operations against the FDLR in eastern Congo, the sad loss of Alison des Forges, all the recent controversy surrounding the ICC’s indictment of the President of Sudan, and [...]
UN appeals for 3,000 extra peacekeepers for eastern Congo have yet to be answered. A proposal to send European troops was blocked by Britain and Germany, prompting the London Director of Human Rights Watch to denounce what he calls “Britain’s cowardice“:
“In speech after speech, the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, talks up human rights and his [...]
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. [...]
Three years ago, I sat in on a meeting with some of the negotiators at the 2005 World Summit. It was the morning after the Summit outcome document had been approved – something that had looked very unlikely even 36 hours before. All were exhausted.
“It’s not a bad result,” one said. “But we didn’t get [...]
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) [...]
Three years after saying “We accept that responsibility”, the United Nations General Assembly will soon debate how to put ‘the Responsibility to Protect‘ into practice. How do we know this? Because UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon plans to present to the General Assembly some proposals on the subject by the end of 2008.
Forget about UN procedures, complicated politics and differing [...]
Three years ago, at the 2005 World Summit, 150 world leaders resolved “to create a more peaceful, prosperous and democratic world and to undertake concrete measures… to provide multilateral solutions to problems in the four following areas: development, peace and collective security, human rights and the rule of law, and strengthening of the United Nations.”
Under [...]
“For those of us who believe that, whatever the compelling attractions of traditional sovereignty, we cannot simply turn a blind eye to mass atrocity crimes, and that the 2005 cannot be the high water mark from which the tides now recede, there is still a big job ahead. The immediate objective must be to get [...]
Yuri Fedotov, who is the Russian Federation’s Ambassador to the UK, has written to The Guardian to defend his country’s decision to veto Security Council sanctions on Zimbabwean officials responsible for political violence since the elections. In aside, he writes:
“There is an important technical point at stake. UN security council resolutions exist as a mechanism to address [...]