High-level Meeting: Responsibility to Protect and Human Rights

The HRFG hosted a High-level experts meeting with the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the Responsibility to Protect, Jennifer Welsh.The meeting involved approximately 22 participants, including prominent legal specialists and scholars, and senior representatives from the OHCHR, Non-Governmental Organizations, and the ICRC.

Chaired by Dr Gilles Giacca, the Experts meeting was designed to provide guidance and input for the United Nations Secretary-General’s annual report on the Responsibility to Protect, which in 2014 will focus on Pillar II: assisting states to fulfill their responsibility to protect. As noted in the Secretary General’s 2009 report on Responsibility to Protect, there are a variety of ways in which the international community can encourage and help states to exercise their responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The experts convened in Geneva specified further how these various instruments and approaches could further the goal of preventing or responding to atrocity crimes - or their escalation - as well as reflect more generally on the relationship between human rights violations and such crimes. Participants also indicated where and how the agenda for atrocity response and prevention could be integrated into the existing work of human rights instruments and institutions.

For further information, please contact Dr Gilles Giacca (gilles.giacca@law.ox.ac.uk)