Last year’s uprisings throughout the Arab world yielded many questions on whether or not the international community should become involved a country’s domestic affairs. One particular country many observers are keeping an eye on at the moment is Syria. Bashar Al-Assad’s regime has allegedly carried out mass killings in response to the political unrest within his country, and while Arab League observers are monitoring the situation from within, the opposition wonders if a U.N. mandated force would show more teeth.
This topic was on the mind of many at R2P: The Next Decade, an event sponsored by The Stanley Foundation, that discussed the future of the U.N.’s “Responsibility to Protect,” or R2P, initiative. R2P focuses on halting genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing and is based on the idea that sovereignty is not just a privilege, but a responsibility.
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon gave a keynote speech at the event and said the key to the R2P initiative in 2012 is preventative diplomacy:
Secretary Ban Ki-moon: 2012 is the Year of Prevention from The Stanley Foundation on FORA.tv