Our morning session started off with the intriguing legal question of whether the Security Council is obliged, under national law, to authorize the use of force in r2p situations. This, in its last analysis, would make an ‘abusive’ veto by a perma…

This morning’s session was opened with remarks by Edward Luck, special advisor to the secretary general of the UN with a mandate concerning the conceptual, political and operational aspects of the responsibility to protect (r2p). He sketched out t…

André Nollkamper, the chair of the conference, opened our first plenary today by outlining what he called the potential of the r2p, which will hopefully guide the upcoming exchanges and deliberations between the participants, both offline and onli…

‘Never again’ – this may be the most commonly cited post-WWII pledge, epitomizing a common determination to be capable of learning from history after all and to move towards a time when turning a blind eye towards grand-scale atrocities would no l…