Responsibility to Protect (R2P): The ICISS Commission Fifteen Years On (SWP 54)

Canada played a crucial role in the birth of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm, endorsed by the UN General Assembly in 2005, and can remain proud of its achievement in generating a new international consensus about how to respond to genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. Good progress has been made against the four relevant benchmarks – R2P’s role as a normative force, institutional catalyst, effective preventive framework and effective reactive framework. Despite the breakdown of Security Council consensus over Libya in 2011, and the failure since then of R2P to stop mass atrocity crimes in Syria, there are grounds for optimism about its more effective implementation in the future.(This paper was adapted from a seminar given by the author in his capacity as the 2016–17 Simons Visiting Chair in International Law and Human Security, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, 16 September 2016.)