Events & Activities

Past Events

2012

17 January 2012
Atrocity Reporting and the Responsibility to Protect
The Global Centre for The Responsibility to Protect and The Stanley Foundation co-hosted a half-day journalism seminar at the Australian Mission to the United Nations. Atrocity Reporting and The Responsibility to Protect brought together security experts and journalists for an afternoon of panel discussions about the challenges of atrocity reporting and the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the UN doctrine adopted 10 years ago. Approximately 20 journalists, who specialize in or have an interest in reporting on human protection issues, from the US and abroad attended the seminar.The agenda examined the challenges of reporting on atrocities and raising the public profile of potential atrocities, as well as the media’s role in prevention. Former Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans delivered a luncheon keynote to begin the event. Additional panelists included: Indian AmbassadorHardeep Singh Puri, Michael Ignatieff, James Traub, Rebecca Hamilton, Jean-Paul Marthoz, Jon Sawyer and Heather Sonner. The event ended with a keynote closing address by ICC Prosecutor-Elect, Fatou Bensouda.

To view Gareth Evans' opening keynote address and Fatou Bensouda's closing keynote address visit the Stanley Foundation's YouTube Page.

Panel One Fatou Bensouda keynote

Event Panel One Fatou Bensouda

Panel Two

Event Panel Two

10 January 2012
Panel Discussion: R2P After Libya
The NATO-led operation to prevent Muammar Qaddafi’s forces from inflicting mass atrocities on Libyan civilians was the first United Nations-authorized military intervention which explicitly invoked the “responsibility to protect” principle as grounds for action. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights Foundation hosted a discussion on what the Libyan intervention means for future international efforts to protect civilians, particularly in light of the ongoing challenges in Syria and beyond. Panelists Genser and Cotler are co-editors of the new book The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Times (Oxford University Press 2011). For more information on the event, please see the following flier: R2P After Libya.

2011

5 December 2011
Book Launch: Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives in the Global South
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) and the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies (RBIIS) co-hosted a book launch and discussion for Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives in the Global South, by Rama Mani and Thomas G. Weiss on 5 December 2011. Simon Adams, executive director of GCR2P, moderated a discussion of the book featuring the two authors and a discussant, Abiodun Williams of the United States Peace Institute. More information can be found in the book launch announcement.

28 November 2011
Panel Discussion: The Media in Srebrenica
Srebrenica, Bosnia, one of the first United Nations’ Safe Areas, was the first case of genocide in Europe since the Holocaust. In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army rolled into the town, past the lightly-armed UN peacekeepers based there. Over the next week, the Bosnian Serb soldiers rounded up Muslim families, separated men from women and systematically murdered more than 7,000 men and boys in fields, schools, and warehouses. What drove the Bosnian Serb military commander to order Europe's deadliest massacre since World War II? Could the international community have acted to prevent a modern-day genocide? Now that Mladic and other Balkan fugitives are facing justice in the Hague, will it deter future atrocities? A panel of journalists who covered the massacre in Srebrenica, including Emma Daly, David Rohde, Laura Silber, and Elizabeth Rudin, reflected on one of the most infamous mass atrocity cases in the post-war era. GCR2P Executive Director, Simon Adams, moderated the discussion.

20 - 21 October 2011, Montreal, Canada
The Promise of Media in Halting Mass Atrocities: A Conference to Mark the 10th Anniversary of the Responsibility to Protect
The Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (MIGS) hosted an event, with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect as a promotional partner, to discuss how the evolving media and social media landscape has changed the way in which the international community responds to mass atrocities. The event provided a public forum where senior politicians, journalists, social media experts, and NGO leaders exchanged ideas and posed questions about the importance of the media in alerting the public and political leaders to situations of grave human rights abuses. Speakers included GCR2P Patron Roméo Dallaire. Event information can be found on the MIGS R2P Conference website and videos of the conference can be found at the following link: MIGS Video.

23 September 2011
Fourth Annual Ministerial Meeting - Upholding the Responsibility to Protect: Responding to future threats of mass atrocities
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, in collaboration with the Foreign Ministries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Republic of Guatemala, co-hosted its fourth annual ministerial meeting on R2P on 23 September 2011, during the opening of the 66th United Nations General Assembly. The meeting was attended by a cross-regional group of Foreign Ministers who shared ideas and discussed how the international community can deepen our understanding on more effective international responses towards imminent threats of mass atrocities. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon attended the breakfast and delivered a statement, which can be found here: Secretary-General's Ministerial Meeting on R2P Statement. At the completion of the meeting the Global Centre, together with the Netherlands and Guatemala, issued a joint statement about the event, which can be found here: Ministerial Roundtable Discussion Joint Statement.

Photos of the Fourth Annual Ministerial Meeting:

17 June 2011
Workshop: Operationalizing the Responsibility to Protect
On Friday 17 June 2011, the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict and the Centre for International Studies, Oxford, jointly convened an event to analyze R2P's preventive agenda and ouline steps that could be taken to enhance the effectiveness of preventive startegies and tools. The recent experiences in Cote D' Ivoire and Libya demonstrate that R2P is an important factor in the decision by the Security Council to respond in a "timely and decisive" manner to the spectre and evidence of mass atrocities. Yet, the international community has faced a number of challenges in anticipating the range of policy options available and assessing their appropriateness and likely effects in these different contexts. The workshop addressed some of these gaps by bringing together scholars and practitioners to examine the normative, political and operational questions that are raised by structural and proximate R2P prevention and their long term consequences for the advancement of the principles of R2P in international society.

17-18 May 2011
First Meeting on R2P National Focal Points
The first meeting of focal points jointly convened by the Foreign Ministries of Costa Rica, Denmark and Ghana, in association with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, took place on 17 and 18 May 2011. Thirty-one countries participated, nineteen of which sent a designated senior level official from capital, and twelve representatives from the missions to the United Nations. Twelve panelists from the world of academia and diplomacy participated in the conversation. The meeting had the purpose of being the springboard for setting up a functional R2P focal points network for the prevention and halting of mass atrocities. Press Release.

For information about events held prior to 2011, contact a GCR2P staff member at: info@globalr2p.org.