Crosscutting Issues
Today’s global challenges are increasingly interconnected. From climate change to digital technologies, the Global Centre examines how emerging threats intersect with human rights and atrocity prevention and what must be done to respond.
Justice and Accountability
Ending impunity for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing through criminal investigations and effective transitional justice processes, including truth commissions, reparations and memorialization, among other judicial and non-judicial mechanisms, is essential to the work of the Global Centre and to upholding R2P. Accountability can serve as a deterrent of future atrocity crimes and is an important foundation for achieving reconciliation, as well as lasting peace and stability.
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Evolving Technologies and Atrocity Prevention
New and emerging digital technologies – including social media platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), geospatial technology, facial recognition and surveillance tools – are rapidly reshaping our interactions in the modern world. These technologies can both enable and prevent mass atrocity crimes.
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Applying a Gender-Sensitive Lens to R2P
Understanding the gendered dynamics of atrocity crimes is essential for designing effective and inclusive prevention strategies to protect populations at risk. A gender-responsive approach ensures that atrocity prevention efforts are intersectional and responsive to the protection needs of all communities.
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“The Global Centre is an indispensable resource for promoting R2P and mass atrocity prevention.”
Dr. Jennifer Welsh
Former UN Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect
Addressing Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier of Atrocities
Climate change is a pervasive threat to global peace and security, acting as a “threat multiplier” that amplifies political instability, deepens societal tensions and increases the risk of mass atrocity crimes. It undermines security, destabilizes political systems, weakens economies and contributes to large-scale displacement – all of which heighten the risk of conflict.
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Improving Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection
The Global Centre has sought to understand the gaps that lead to failure in effectively protecting populations from mass atrocity crimes during peace operations. The Global Centre has worked towards addressing these gaps through a number of activities aimed at improving threat assessments and sensitizing policymakers and peacekeepers to the importance of identifying early warning signs for atrocity crimes. Through workshops, developing and conducting trainings, and further engagement with the UN, the Global Centre has developed a new approach to assessing threats to populations in a peacekeeping context.
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Protecting Cultural Heritage
The systematic destruction of cultural heritage seeks to erase a targeted group’s history and identity, undermining cultural continuity and posing an existential threat to its survival. Recognizing the link between cultural destruction and the commission of mass atrocity crimes is essential for developing effective strategies to prevent and respond to genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
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