Publication

This Vienna Seminar considers how to best move forward the “Responsibility to Protect” (RtoP) agenda, and what steps the UN and the international community must take to effectively implement the concept. The Seminar focuses specifically on the role of the UN Security Council, and on the instruments the Council has at its disposal for preventing RtoP crimes and for protecting populations from their ravages. The speakers explore this central question through a series of panels focusing on issues such as the Council’s role in early engagement and preventive diplomacy, ways to strengthen early warning and assessment mechanisms, and steps to make United Nations peace operations more effective in protecting civilians. In order not to consider these challenges only in the abstract, they look at them through the lens of two case studies, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the role of MONUC, and the Central African Republic and Chad and the roles of MINURCAT and EUFOR.