THE HOLOCAUST AND THE UNITED NATIONS OUTREACH PROGRAMME

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The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme
attention during the first ten years has naturally focused on building
a common understanding of the principle, the Secretary-General
concluded that time has now come to move from conceptual debates
towards more practical consideration of implementation.
A Turn to Implementation
The adoption of the responsibility to protect reflected widespread
recognition that the status quo was both inadequate and unacceptable.
The principle was not designed to be a comfortable rhetorical
restatement of common values, but rather a spur to action. Judged
on this basis, it is clear that the principle remains painfully relevant.
Acts that may constitute genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and
crimes against humanity are occurring in the Central African Republic,
the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic
of North Korea, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and
Yemen. These situations have created protection challenges of a staggering
scale and produced widespread humanitarian crises, including
a global migration and refugee crisis.
In more general terms, too many Member States have yet to become
parties to the international conventions that set out the legal framework
for the prevention and punishment of atrocity crimes, including
the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime
of Genocide, the Geneva Conventions and the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court. We are currently witnessing an alarming
decline in the protection of human rights and respect for international
humanitarian law, particularly in situations where national
authorities have argued that exceptional security threats or political
crises justify temporary abrogation from their legal obligations.
On moral, political and legal grounds, the international community
must do better. The imperative to accelerate implementation of
the responsibility to protect is clear. Atrocity crimes directly challenge
our common humanity. They have deep and lasting effects,