United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Professor Jennifer Welsh, co-director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, as his special adviser focusing on the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The idea of a ‘responsibility to protect’ (R2P) has been the international community’s primary response to the problem of humanitarian intervention to prevent gross violations of human rights.
Professor Welsh, also a principle investigator of the Oxford Martin Programme on Human Rights for Future Generations, will work to further the conceptual, political, institutional and operational development of R2P, which was embraced by member states at the UN World Summit in 2005.
- Watch Jennifer Welsh's webcast on the responsibility to protect