Home > Shannon Raj Singh Participates in Panel on Challenges of R2P’s First Pillar

Shannon Raj Singh Participates in Panel on Challenges of R2P’s First Pillar

Apr 29, 2020

On 29 April, IPS Visiting Fellow of Practice Shannon Raj Singh spoke on a virtual panel organized by the Cambridge Centre for Geopolitics, on the subject of  R2P in Europe: Pillar I Challenges, along with Kate Ferguson, Executive Director of Protection Approaches, and György Tatár, Chair of the Budapest Centre for Mass Atrocities Prevention. The panel sought to challenge the notion that Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is a solely external commitment and to elaborate upon the vulnerabilities within Europe today that might lead to the commission of atrocity crimes.

In her remarks, Shannon argued that European states could do more to ground the norms of R2P’s Pillar One in the form of binding legal commitments, observing that, of the four atrocity crimes, the only one with a consistent definition under international law is genocide. She also urged European states to address gaps in their domestic legal architecture implementing R2P, and to better support Pillar One through accountability efforts, including pursuing innovative domestic prosecutions under the principle of universal jurisdiction and recognizing the political importance of reinforcing its values through the courts.

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