March 2009
Acting Against Atrocities: A Strategy for Supporters of the Responsibility to Protect
Discussion Paper
By Claire Applegarth and Andrew Block
The advent of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) signals the international community’s commitment to ending genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, and serves as a declaration that state sovereignty will no longer be a shield behind which perpetrators of mass atrocities can hide. Despite achieving consensus for RtoP’s vision among UN member states in 2005, efforts to move RtoP from words to action have stalled.
