REPORT: Overview of the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Report on the Responsibility to Protect; State Responsibility and Prevention

The Secretary-General released an advanced English copy of the Report to Member States in mid-July, and is expected to publicly release the Report in all working languages of the United Nations by mid-August.

The Report identifies six risk factors that have been evident to varying degrees in situations where RtoP crimes were committed: a history of discrimination or other human rights violations, often on an ethnic, racial or religious basis against members of a particular group/population; the underlying motivation of actors for targeting a community; the presence of armed groups and/or militias and their capacity to commit atrocities, both through access to small arms and light weapons and/or their financial ability to support military operations; the undertaking of circumstances or actions to facilitate the perpetration of atrocities; a government's lack of preventive capacity and the absence or lack of credible judicial, human rights, and security sector institutions; and the commission of acts that could constitute elements of the RtoP crimes as defined in international law.

To read UN Secretary-General Report on RtoP and State Responsibility and Protection please click here.

To read International Coalition for the RtoP summary of UNSG Report 2013 please click here.