(UN Secretary General) Ban urges effective mechanism to apply responsibility to protect principle

[pampango]

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39021&Cr=responsibility+to+protect&Cr1=

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today called for a concerted international effort to develop a mechanism for applying the principle of the global responsibility to protect to ensure that this century becomes the first one whose history is not “written in the blood of innocents.”

“We need to sharpen our tools for prevention and for protection,” Mr. Ban told the General Assembly’s Interactive Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect. “We need a fuller understanding of what motivates the perpetrators and planners of mass violence. We need to explore how to apply the principle more consistently across cases,” he said.

Agreed at a summit of world leaders in 2005 and sometimes known as ‘R2P’, the principle holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes against humanity and requires the international community to step in if this obligation is not met.

“No action is without risk of doing harm, so we must try to avoid unintended consequences, whatever our good intentions. But the history of atrocity crimes is not one of acting too boldly, but of doing too little, too late,” said the Secretary-General.

“Every day, we work together on conflict prevention, mediation, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. We share abiding commitments to human rights and the rule of law. The results have been impressive. Now we can do the same for atrocity prevention,” he added.