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1. The UN Security Council’s Implementation of the Responsibility to Protect: A Review of Past Interventions and Recommendations for Improvement

Author:
Jared Genser
Publication Date:
09-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
When it was adopted by the United Nations (UN) system in 2005, the doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was meant to provide an implementation mechanism for the international community to respond to governments that were perpetrating the mass atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. As R2P is now in its second decade of existence, it is important to evaluate past implementation of R2P by the UN Security Council — the UN body charged with taking collective action when all other preventive efforts have failed and atrocity crimes are being committed or are imminent. This briefing paper is a summary of a more detailed law review article recently published in the University of Chicago Journal of International Law.
Topic:
Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing, International Community, Responsibility to Protect (R2P), UN Security Council, and Crimes Against Humanity
Political Geography:
United Nations and Global Focus

2. Defining the Four Mass Atrocity Crimes

Author:
Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Abstract:
During the 2005 United Nations World Summit, heads of state and government accepted the responsibility of every state to protect its population from four crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing. The first three crimes are legally defined in various international legal documents, such as the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their 1977 Additional Protocols, and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Their status as international crimes is based on the belief that the acts associated with them affect the core dignity of human beings, both in times of peace and in times of war.
Topic:
Genocide, War Crimes, Ethnic Cleansing, and Crimes Against Humanity
Political Geography:
United Nations and Global Focus

3. Evelyne Schmid. Taking Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Seriously in International Criminal Law

Author:
Mara Tignino
Publication Date:
07-2015
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
Evelyne Schmid’s new book, Taking Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Seriously in International Criminal Law, aims to provide a bridge between developing practice and existing knowledge. At the heart of her book lies the question of how, or to what extent, violations of ESCR are addressed in international criminal proceedings and transitional justice mechanisms. She criticizes the current marginalization of ESCR abuses in scholarship on international criminal law and bemoans the reality that ‘efforts to address the legacy of widespread human rights abuses display a bias towards civil and political rights’. While some have argued for an expansion of international criminal law to account more directly for violations of ESCR, Schmid claims such an expansion is unnecessary; in her view, such violations already fall within the scope of international crimes.
Topic:
Genocide, Human Rights, International Law, United Nations, War Crimes, Courts, and Transitional Justice
Political Geography:
Europe, North Korea, Cambodia, United Nations, and Myanmar