The new "Global Responsibility to Protect" project, an independent research and advocacy organization dedicated to improving international response to genocide and mass atrocities, was officially launched on February 14 with a luncheon roundtable at the United Nations headquarters. It will be housed within the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center.

Vijay Nambiar, Chef de Cabinet to the UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon, delivered the Secretary-General's welcoming remarks to the Centre. He said, "The birth of this new initiative holds great promise in supporting the endeavours of the international community to take the principle of the responsibility to protect from concept to actuality, from word to deed." Mary Robinson, President of Realizing Rights, formerly President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, also spoke at the event.

Financial support for the project has been pledged by the Governments of Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Norway, The Netherlands, Rwanda and the United Kingdom, two foundations and one private donor.

The Responsibility to Protect, known as R2P, refers to the obligation of states toward their populations and toward all populations at risk of genocide and other large-scale atrocities. This new international norm states that the primary responsibility to protect populations from human-made catastrophe lies with the state itself; when a state fails to meet that responsibility, either through incapacity or ill-will, then the responsibility to protect shifts to the international community; and that this responsibility must be exercised by diplomatic, legal, and other peaceful measures and, as a last resort, through military force.

These principles, adopted by the UN General Assembly at the 2005 World Summit, were based on the findings of a 2001 report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. That Commission's co-chairs, Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun, will serve as co-chairs of the Global Responsibility to Protect project's International Advisory Board. The Board also includes a number of leaders of prominent organizations related to international peace and justice, and Thomas G. Weiss, Presidential Professor of Political Science at The Graduate Center and Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.

The Global Responsibility to Protect project seeks to eradicate a legacy of inaction that has led to the loss of millions of lives during the Holocaust and in places such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Darfur. It will foster understanding and acceptance of the R2P norm, and work to ensure that the R2P norm is invoked accurately and effectively by a wide range of governmental, inter-governmental, and non-governmental actors.