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’.

Source: Responsibility to protect: State responsibility and prevention | Report of the Secretary-General | A/67/929–S/2013/399 | 9 July 2013

21 March 2012

From Nicaragua to R2P: Continuity and Change

Cross posted on Opinio Juris

The ICJ’s decision in Nicaragua surely is one of its most cited judgments. It remains the leading authority on attribution of conduct of non-state actors and on (collective) self-defense. It also is a popular point of reference in analyses of the formation of customary law and on the jurisdiction of the Court. In his excellent The Principle of Non-Intervention 25 Years after the Nicaragua Judgment, Marcelo Kohen points out that the Judgment also is a relevant source for understanding the concept of responsibility to protect (R2P), even though that concept only came into existence some twenty years after the judgment. (more…)