As we mark the 20th anniversaries of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) in 2025 and the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) in 2026, we do so against the backdrop of a world in turmoil. Atrocity crimes are no longer shocking exceptions but recurring features of global disorder. In this moment of fragmentation and fatigue, the UN human rights system remains a critical foundation of our international protection architecture. Yet, 20 years since the creation of the HRC, the system now faces immense and escalating challenges – not only from political backlash and fiscal crises, but also from the lack of principled, consistent and sustained engagement by member states. If we are serious about upholding the commitment made through the Responsibility to Protect, we must fully grasp how vital our actions within the wider UN human rights system are, not just for shaping international response to situations at risk of or experiencing atrocity crimes, but for the message they send to victims and perpetrators.

The HRC as an anchor of hope and source of protection for victims

Over the past 20 years, the HRC has become an essential space for affected communities to seek recognition, demand scrutiny and mobilize response. Human rights defenders, victim and survivor communities and civil society organizations, such as the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, have played a critical role in mobilizing HRC engagement across diverse situations: pushing for Special Sessions on Sudan, Ukraine and Ethiopia; ensuring the establishment of investigative mechanisms for Syria, Venezuela, Yemen, South Sudan or the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT); and shaping innovative accountability tools like the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar.

Member states from across all regions have helped shape the HRC’s effectiveness. Latin American countries have played an instrumental role in creating robust mandates on Venezuela and Nicaragua; the European Union has been pivotal on initiatives on Afghanistan, Burundi and North Korea; and African states have consistently advanced resolutions on the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Together, these measures form a core part of the R2P toolbox, and over the past 20 years, the international community has become increasingly adept at using these tools creatively to both translate the political commitments of R2P into concrete action and to directly address risks and crimes endured by affected communities.

While the HRC – and wider UN human rights system – cannot and does not enforce rights, it does something equally vital: it provides a space for affected communities to demand attention, recognition and action, creates pressure on perpetrators and keeps the promise of a rules-based order and accountability alive. This is vitally important when domestic avenues for protection and justice are effectively non-existent. It is one of the few spaces where victims can speak directly to the world, where civil society can challenge silence and indifference and where governments – however reluctantly – can be held to account in full view of their peers. For those whose lives have been shattered by atrocity crimes, the HRC may not deliver justice overnight, but it offers recognition, dignity and a pathway to keep pressing for change.

Recognize, deter, document: rethinking the HRC’s impact

“Impact” of HRC action is not a one-size-fits-all concept – it can range from deterring further violence to catalyzing political pressure or laying the groundwork for long-term political or legal accountability and affirming the dignity of victims.

For example, the establishment of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) on Venezuela in 2019 influenced the behavior of perpetrators. After the FFM’s first report in 2020 spotlighted extrajudicial executions, killings by state agents dropped by over 50 percent in 2021. As the Venezuelan government attempted to deter further scrutiny, the FFM’s report pressured them to re-engage with and grant limited access to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), whose in-country presence has been vital for victims and survivor communities and their families. Similarly, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry (CoI)’s 2019 report, which utilized the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes, was instrumental in drawing international attention to atrocity risks ahead of the 2020 elections and played a critical role deterring large-scale violence on voting day. While in both cases the government continued policies that amount to crimes against humanity, these examples demonstrate that perpetrators are deeply averse to international scrutiny and will alter their behavior – at least temporarily – when under the global spotlight.

In Myanmar, Syria and the OPT, documentation by HRC-mandated investigative mechanisms has been instrumental for criminal proceedings at the International Court of Justice and in universal jurisdiction cases. These proceedings are profoundly meaningful to affected communities and can contribute significantly to establishing an accurate historical record of atrocities. They also help create new legal precedents and innovative approaches that can inspire and guide responses to other emerging or protracted atrocity crises.

Even when political solutions are out of reach, acknowledging suffering and establishing the truth is far from inconsequential, it affirms dignity and supports long-term advocacy. For instance, the 2014 CoI report on crimes against humanity in North Korea remains a foundational tool for affected communities, sustaining advocacy efforts and illustrating that the HRC’s value cannot be measured solely by immediate outcomes.

Critics frequently question whether HRC action has value if atrocities persist – as though the HRC, or any political or diplomatic forum for that matter, were a simple switch capable of ending all crises. While multilateral action may have its limits, the impact can still be profound. The effectiveness of these tools is also evident in the immense efforts of hostile governments to shut down or discredit them. To dismiss the HRC’s value simply because it cannot single-handedly resolve all atrocity crimes is not only analytically flawed – it also does a disservice to the countless victims who fight to have their suffering recognized and documented, often at great personal risk.

The gap between early warning and political action

It is widely recognized that the UN human rights system plays a critical role in early warning of atrocity crimes. Special Rapporteurs issued clear warnings ahead of genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and Myanmar in 2017. Yet, time and again, UN member states fail to act on these warnings until crises reach their peak, by which point the human and political costs are exponentially higher. In Ethiopia, it took more than a year after violence broke out in Tigray in November 2020 for member states to decide whether evidence of atrocity crimes documented by OHCHR, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission and numerous civil society organizations warranted the strongest HRC response: the establishment of an independent investigative mechanism. In the case of China, member states took an important and applaudable, if ultimately unsuccessful, step in 2022 by attempting to pass a resolution on the situation in the Uyghur Region after OHCHR warned of crimes against humanity. However, despite a subsequent referral on the situation by the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to the UN Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect under its ‘early warning and urgent action’ procedure, governments have yet to demonstrate political will to renew efforts for formal discussion at the HRC, even as evidence of atrocity crimes continues to grow.

Even in situations where the HRC is mobilized successfully and member states establish critical monitoring, investigative and reporting mandates, the initial response is often not followed by sustained measures to address the crisis or its root causes. Investigative mechanisms, frequently created in the midst of violence, serve as critical early warning tools to prevent further escalation and recurrence. Reports on Nicaragua, Palestine and South Sudan illustrate how these bodies regularly sound alarm bells about further deterioration of protracted crises. Too often, however, political follow-up falls short. For example, as early as 2019 the FFM on Myanmar urged member states to impose the necessary sanctions to cut off support to the Tatmadaw, including on aviation fuel and gas, banking and arms transfers. The failure to act on these recommendations helped enable a successful coup two years later and the continued commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity across Myanmar today. This dynamic is also compounded by the inaction of the UN Security Council (UNSC), where political divisions have routinely blocked briefings from HRC mechanisms, leaving many findings and warnings produced by the system to languish without ever informing the UNSC’s deliberations on atrocity situations.

This persistent gap – between a system that regularly alerts us to danger and the political action taken – is not only illogical but deadly. In Gaza, despite clear and persistent calls by the CoI and the Special Rapporteur to take concrete measures to respond to genocide, apartheid policies and settler colonialism, rhetorical concern has yet to translate into concrete action by many governments. In Sudan, regional and multilateral conflict prevention efforts have repeatedly centered on political actors that UN human rights mechanisms have long identified as responsible for atrocity crimes. This persistent disconnect has helped entrench cycles of violence and ongoing genocidal campaigns. In Venezuela, various HRC stakeholders have warned that long-standing sectoral sanctions imposed by the United States (US) have deepened an already unprecedented humanitarian emergency, while simultaneously enabling the government to deflect accountability by framing the crisis as a consequence of Western imperialism.

These examples demonstrate the disconnect between the information and analysis produced by HRC mechanisms and the way in which we utilize it to inform follow-up engagement. The termination of UN investigations in Ethiopia in 2023, on the very day the team warned of imminent risks of renewed war crimes and crimes against humanity, demonstrates that political considerations can override protection imperatives. The establishment of mandates should mark the beginning, not the endpoint, of international engagement and fit within a holistic, long-term atrocity prevention strategy. The findings and recommendations by OHCHR, Special Rapporteurs or investigative mechanisms should systematically feed into wider political, diplomatic and economic strategies at the bilateral, regional and multilateral levels, from targeted sanctions to conflict mediation and financial cooperation – not just into statements of concern at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.

The establishment of human rights mechanisms often signals political will to uphold R2P, but that commitment must be matched by meaningful, holistic follow-up. Bridging this gap requires a deeper commitment from member states to take the outputs of human rights mechanisms seriously – and to integrate them into broader foreign policy and atrocity prevention efforts that transcend beyond Geneva.

The cost of selectivity: eroding trust in the human rights system

A further challenge stems from how UN member states selectively engage with the HRC, often using it as a tool to advance political interests rather than uphold shared principles. Selective responses to atrocity situations – driven by political alliances more than by the imperatives of international law – have undermined the credibility of those entrusted to act through the HRC. This growing inconsistency sends a devastating message: that some victims matter more than others.

The responses to recent crises makes this clear. The rapid and coordinated response to the crisis in Ukraine, including the establishment of a CoI within days of the February 2022 Russian invasion, demonstrated that decisive action is possible when political motivation exists. By contrast, it took over a year – and enormous pressure from civil society – to establish a similar mechanism for ongoing atrocity crimes in Ethiopia. Many of the same states that championed responses to both Ukraine and Ethiopia have acted in stark contrast to this with regards to the findings by existing mechanisms on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and Israel’s apartheid policies in the OPT. Meanwhile, governments that rightly criticize Western selectivity often remain silent in the face of crimes committed against the Rohingyas, Uyghurs or non-Arab communities in Darfur.

Acting with principle within the HRC means responding to atrocity crimes wherever they occur, guided by international law and universal human rights standards. However, the failure of such principled engagement has come alongside a broader effort by perpetrators and their allies to shield themselves from HRC scrutiny. This includes efforts to terminate investigative or reporting mandates, launch reprisals against human rights defenders or sponsor government-affiliated NGOs to monopolize speaking space during regular HRC sessions. Recent developments point to a worrying escalation in these efforts. The unilateral sanctions imposed by the US on the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, following her reporting on the complicity of governments and private entities in the genocide in Gaza illustrate how far some governments are willing to go to attack the system when it holds them or their allies to account.

In the context of the UN’s current political liquidity crisis and looming institutional reforms, there is an alarming risk that budgetary constraints will be further weaponized to justify scaling back the HRC’s work. Efforts by the Eritrean government to terminate vital reporting by a designated Special Rapporteur during the 59th session of the HRC are just the latest example of this troubling trend.

A moment of reckoning and opportunity

As conversations about improving the HRC’s efficiency and impact continue, some proposals such as cutting back on crucial updates and dialogues about crisis situations, risk narrowing the Council’s impact. While reforms of the UN system are necessary, such decisions should not be driven solely by budget cuts but guided by maintaining the system’s effectiveness and purpose: to expose perpetrators, preserve evidence, compel states to publicly engage and provide valuable spaces for civil society, survivors and victims’ voices.

To meet that purpose, member states must show real willingness to take decisive action, not only when doing so aligns with their political interests, but whenever human rights imperatives demand it. The ongoing UN80 reform process offers a critical opportunity to confront many of these challenges head-on.

If we are serious about upholding our individual and collective Responsibility to Protect, we must move beyond rhetoric to action. That means:

• • • Ensuring early warnings trigger political responses;
    • Treating HRC mandates not as endpoints, but as tools for sustained engagement through an atrocity prevention lens;
    • Bridging the gap between HRC outputs in Geneva and global policy responses;
    • Confronting selectivity and respond consistently; and
    • Resisting efforts to weaken the Council’s core functions.

This is not simply a question of institutional reform. It is a test of political will and moral clarity. The Responsibility to Protect is not just a principle, it is a promise to the world’s most vulnerable. The HRC must remain one of the key places where that promise is upheld. Its credibility, and the lives of countless people, depend on whether states have the courage to act when it is most difficult, not merely when it is politically convenient.