13 August 2013
Fifth Secretary-General Report on the Responsibility to Protect: State responsibility and prevention
The UN Secretary-General published his fifth report on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) entitled ‘Responsibility to protect: State responsibility and prevention’. The term state responsibility refers to primary legal and moral obligations, including both national efforts and international efforts to assist other states.
The report offers an overview of risk factors and considers how states can increase their capacity to prevent by offering different policy options, such as the establishment of partnerships for prevention. In the conclusion, the Secretary-General refers to the ‘collective failure to prevent atrocity crimes in the Syrian Arab Republic’ and the moral burden this places on the UN and member states, ‘in particular those who have primary responsibility for international peace and security’.