THE RESPONSIBILITIES
TO PROTECT
26 April 2021
SPEECH
26 April 2021
SPEECH
Presentation by Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AC QC* to Myanmar Institute of Australia Webinar, 26 April 2021
There can be no doubt whatever that what is now happening in Myanmar, just as what happened with the military’s assault on the Rohingya in 2017, is unequivocally in violation of the Responsibility to Protect, or ‘R2P’, principles unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly sitting at head of state and government level at its 60thanniversary World Summit in 2005, and endorsed thereafter on multiple occasions by the UN Security Council.
Those in Myanmar leading the resistance to the generals are acutely aware of the existence and relevance of R2P, and in particular its third pillar: that should a state ‘manifestly fail’ to meet that responsibility to its own people, it is the responsibility of the wider international community to ‘take collective action in a timely and decisive manner’, including – at the most extreme end of the reaction spectrum – through military intervention, but only if this is endorsed by the UN Security Council.