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Multilateralism / Working Paper

Building a new role for the United Nations: the responsibility to protect

02/09/2005 By Jessica Almqvist, Carlos Espósito

Sovereignty implies both powers and responsibilities. None of these responsibilities seems more important than protecting vulnerable populations at risk from civil wars, insurgencies, State repression and State collapse.

The responsibility to protect builds on this claim. It is the idea that ‘sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens from avoidable catastrophe—from mass murder and rape, from starvation - but that when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states’ (Independent Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, 2003).

The High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change envisages a new broad collective security framework that gives further substance to this idea. The principle is also reflected in the recommendations of the report of the Secretary-General. Yet, the actual implementation of this responsibility remains uncertain.

This is especially evident in the recommendations of the Secretary-General regarding the use of force and the proposed creation of a Peacebuilding Commission.

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Keywords

Peacebuilding Security Sector Reform UN

Related publications

• A UN Peacebuilding Commission: what could be its core functions?
• Accountability of the proposed peacebuilding commission
• High level panel on threats challenges and change: recommendation to establish a Peacebuilding Commission
• In larger freedom: a second call for a peacebuilding commission
• United Nations Peacebuilding: challenging coherence

Bio author: Jessica Almqvist

PhD in Law from the European University Institute, Florence, Italy (2002) and LL.M. in International Law and Cand. Jur. from the University of Lund, Sweden (1993). Jessica Almqvist has worked on several topics, including international law, international justice, and human rights.

Bio author: Carlos Espósito

Carlos Espósito is Professor of International Law and International Relations at the Law School of the Universidad Autonóma of Madrid (UAM). He was also Advisor and Deputy Director of the International Law Department, Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation (2001-2004). Carlos Espósito holds a J.D. from the University of Buenos Aires (1989), PhD from the Universidad Autónoma of Madrid (1995) and a Certificate from the Centre for Studies and Research of the International Law Academy at The Hague (1997).