UN WORRIED OVER FAILURE TO PROTECT CIVILIANS FROM MASS ATROCITIES

United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has called for a renewed global commitment to the Responsibility to Protect, warning that the world today was failing to protect civilians from mass atrocity crimes.

The Responsibility to protect is a principle adopted two decades ago, which Guterres says remains “a moral imperative” and “an unfulfilled promise.” He told member-states that the world was witnessing more armed conflicts than at any time since the end of the Second World War.

According to him, too often, early warnings go unheeded, and alleged evidence of crimes committed by states and non-state actors are met with denial, indifference or repression.

He added that responses are often too little, too late, inconsistent, or undermined by double standards, with civilians paying the highest price.

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Global leaders had at the 2005 World Summit made an unprecedented commitment to protect populations from the atrocity crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

The pledge affirmed that sovereignty carries not just rights but responsibilities, foremost among them the duty of every state to safeguard its own people.