European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect launches
The launch of the centre, which is based in the School of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), was marked with a talk from Professor Alex Bellamy.
The European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (EUR2PE) is a partnership with POLIS, The Budapest Centre for Mass Atrocities Prevention and The Hague Institute for Global Justice. Its aim is to add research capacity to support and critique those who are discussing the Responsibility to Protect, a UN commitment to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. It will also help coordinate the network of Responsibility to Protect researchers, facilitating research collaborations, funding applications and exchanges.
Central to its mission is enhancing the student learning experience at Leeds. It has already helped set up the Leeds branch of the Student Coalition for R2P, and put them in contact with their counterparts at the University of Queensland.
Professor Alex Bellamy, Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at The University of Queensland, Australia, spoke at the launch on 8 December. His talk combined analysis of the normative effort to win support for the R2P principle with an examination of international responses to major crises since 2009, as well as some critical cases before that time. It suggested that whilst tangible progress has been made, significant challenges remain ahead that will require a redoubling of efforts.
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