Last week René Cassin, together with a number of civil society organisations, took part in a joint initiative calling for all UK political parties to maintain commitment to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and atrocity prevention.
We are deeply disturbed by the on-going conflicts in the Central African Republic, Syria, Iraq, Burma and North Korea. As a charity that draws on Jewish experiences to campaign for human rights, genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleaning and crimes against humanity are shocking atrocities that are all too familiar to us. Not only do these atrocities breach numerous human rights protections, they also generate international instability and heighten the threat of security in the UK.
In 2005, all UN member states endorsed R2P, acknowledging the responsibility of every state to protect its population from atrocities and the duty of the international community to take action to prevent and respond to such crimes. We are extremely concerned by the recent report commissioned by UNA-UK in 2014, which found that the current UK strategy on preventing conflict and promoting stabilisation does not mention R2P, or the prevention of genocide or atrocity crimes as a goal.
In a joint letter with the UNA-UK and other NGOs we have demanded that the UK produces a comprehensive strategy that places atrocity prevention on the agenda as a goal of stabilisation and conflict prevention.
You can read the joint letter here.
