Responsibility to Protect: Implementing a Global Norm towards Peace and Security - An Interview with Dr Simon Adams; Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect

• Author: Tomas Königs, Junko Nozawa, Erica Teeuwen
• Position: LLM; Junko Nozawa, JD/LLB, External Affairs Editors
• Pages: 109-112

Responsibility to Protect: Implementing a Global Norm towards

Peace and Security

An Interview with Dr Simon Adams; Global Centre for the Responsibility to

Protect

Tomas Königs, Junko Nozawa and Erica Teeuwen*

In September 2000, as a result of growing critique and scepticism towards humanitarian intervention, UN Secretary-General

Ko Annan posed the following question to the international community: ‘If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an

unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica - to gross and systematic violations

of human rights that oend every precept of our common humanity?’

In response to this challenge, the newly founded International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (‘ICISS’),

introduced a new approach towards humanitarian intervention in its nal report: the Responsibility to Protect (‘R2P’).

Concisely, the R2P principle holds that the responsibility to protect people in a state from severe human rights violations

shifts to the international community when that respective state fails to live up to said responsibility.

Although the R2P principle has received general acceptance by the international community, it is not just individual states

that play a role in ensuring the implementation of doctrine. Various international organisations have established themselves

as authoritative bodies that contribute to the advancement and institutionalisation of the R2P norm through international

advocacy and extensive research.

In this interview, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect Dr Simon Adams shares his views

on the development of the R2P principle in light of recent human rights atrocities.

Merkourios 2013 – Volume 29/Issue 76, Interview, pp. 109-112.

URN:NBN:NL:UI:10-1-112868

ISSN: 0927-460X

URL: www.merkourios.org

Publisher: Igitur Publishing

Copyright: this work has been licensed by the Creative Commons Attribution License (3.0)

Interview

* Tomas Königs, BA (honours), LLM; Junko Nozawa, JD; and

Erica Teeuwen, BA (honours), LLB, External Aairs Editors,

Merkourios, Utrecht Journal of International and European

Law 2012-2013.

Merkourios - International and European Law: General Issue 2013 - Vol. 29/76 109