Message from the Executive Director
The memorial at Dachau Concentration Camp in Germany declares “Never Again!” in five different languages. And yet, in the seventy years since the Holocaust, millions of people have died in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and elsewhere as a result of mass atrocity crimes. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) was formed by five of the world’s leading international non-governmental organizations to be a catalyst for moving R2P from principle to practice and to uphold the promise of “Never Again!”
Following its official launch in 2008, UN Security-General Ban Ki Moon commented that the birth of the Global Centre, “holds great promise in supporting the endeavours of the international community to take the principle of the responsibility to protect from concept to actuality, from word to deed”. As the recently appointed Executive Director of the Global Centre, I am impressed by how much has been achieved since then. Including:
• Co-hosting four annual ministerial meetings on R2P. This has now become an established and important part of foreign ministers’ agendas at the annual opening of the UN General Assembly;
• Establishing the international R2P Focal Points initiative. The first meeting in May 2011 was attended by almost 30 governments from around the world, several of whom have subsequently appointed a R2P “focal point”;
• Publishing briefings, research documents and public statements on R2P risk situations (Most recently on Libya, Cote d’ Ivoire, South Kordofan (Sudan) and Syria);
• Working closely with the UN Joint Office for the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect; • Carrying out high-level advocacy on specific R2P risk situations with the UN Secretariat and various UN Missions, including UN Security Council members.
In all of this the Global Centre has relied not only upon the goodwill of the 11 governments and several foundations who have helped fund it, and the NGOs who played an important role in its formation (Human Rights Watch, Refugees International, Oxfam International, World Federalist Movement, International Crisis Group), but on a growing number of supportive scholars, diplomats and human rights activists.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon has placed the “mainstreaming” of R2P near the top of his agenda for his second term. In keeping with this aspiration, the Global Centre will continue to expand its research and advocacy work, while also expanding its efforts to assist in creating improved capacity to operationalize R2P. The Global Centre will maintain its independent voice, while also continuing to work alongside major policy-makers. In this sense, the Global Centre’s role remains unique and invaluable.
Simon Adams, Executive Director.
sadams@gc.cuny.edu
Ph: +1 212 817 1941
S.Adams on CNN:
Sudan, South Sudan to Pull Troops From Disputed Region
S.Adams R2P Op-eds:
'Our Responsibility' to Protect Syria's People, The West Australian
Never Again Let us Fail our Responsibility to Protect, The Canberra Times
About S.Adams:
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