EU Statement – UN General Assembly: Responsibility to Protect and the Prevention of genocide
– CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY –
Madam President,
I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union and its Member States.
The Candidate Countries North Macedonia, Montenegro*, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina* and Georgia, as well as Armenia, Andorra, San Marino align themselves with this statement.
We thank the Secretary-General for his report on the sustained implementation of the responsibility to protect. We also thank the Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect for her crucial work.
The figures set out in the Secretary-General’s report are deeply troubling. In 2025, over 120 armed conflicts were recorded around the globe, resulting in more than 48,000 deaths. As of early 2026, some 239 million people needed urgent humanitarian assistance, and over 117 million were forcibly displaced worldwide. Women and children bear a disproportionate share of this suffering. These are not abstractions: they are a daily indictment of our collective failure to act. They make the responsibility to protect not a principle for the history books, but an urgent imperative for today.
The Secretary-General’s report reminds us that R2P is, at its core, a cooperative commitment. As the report states: “Dialogue and cooperation between States, affected communities, civil society and the United Nations can strengthen prevention and protection efforts, strengthen national ownership and support resilience.” The EU and its Member States wholeheartedly embrace this vision. We will not protect populations from atrocity crimes by working alone. We must come together – across governments, institutions, regions and communities. And it is in that spirit that the EU and its Member States remain firmly committed to R2P in all its pillars and dimensions: prevention, protection and non-recurrence.
Effective prevention requires sustained national policies, evidence-based risk assessment, and attention to the specific needs of persons in vulnerable situations. The Secretary-General’s report rightly highlights the role of disinformation, hate speech and incitement to hatred or violence as drivers of atrocity risk: addressing these is not only a matter of freedom of expression policy, but a prevention imperative. It also flags discriminatory policies against women and girls as an atrocity risk indicator, and we echo the call for gender equality and women’s full enjoyment of human rights to be treated as integral components of any prevention strategy.
When prevention fails, protection must follow, and that requires timely and decisive collective action. We reiterate our call on all Member States, and particularly those holding veto power, to support the ACT code of conduct and the French-Mexican initiative on refraining from the use of the veto in situations of mass atrocities. Where the Security Council is unable to act, we must not be paralysed: the General Assembly can and should fulfil its role, including through the “Uniting for Peace” procedure.
R2P and accountability are two sides of the same coin. The fight against impunity is not only a matter of justice for victims – it is also one of the most powerful tools for prevention. When perpetrators know they will be held accountable, atrocity crimes become less likely. This is why the EU and its Member States reaffirm their unwavering support for the International Criminal Court and call on all States that have not yet done so to ratify and fully implement the Rome Statute. We also reiterate our support to all other international courts and tribunals, as well as cooperation mechanisms, and we recall the adoption in 2023 of the Ljubljana-The Hague Convention, already signed by 40 States. No one – regardless of position or power – must be allowed to escape justice.
Cooperation – the very concept at the heart of R2P – is also what drives us forward in building the legal architecture to prevent and punish atrocity crimes. The Pact for the Future (Action 14(g)) calls on us to “redouble our efforts to end impunity and ensure accountability for violations of international humanitarian law, most serious crimes under international law, including genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and other atrocity crimes.”
We must answer that call, particularly at a time when multilateralism and international law are under strain.
When the international order based on international law is being tested, we must demonstrate that the United Nations remains capable of delivering on issues that unite us by their very nature and of advancing international law for the protection of all people. The ongoing process aimed at elaborating and concluding a Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Humanity is a powerful demonstration of exactly that: our collective capacity for constructive engagement on issues of universal relevance. The EU and its Member States have supported this process from the outset and urge all Member States to engage constructively with a view to adopting a convention that is sound, widely supported, and truly effective.
Madam President,
in closing: R2P was born from failures to uphold the promise of “Never Again” after World War II; from the horrors of tragedies that live in our collective memory. Twenty-one years on, we cannot fail again and that promise must be renewed and held with even more vigour and determination. Cooperation is what we need: cooperation to prevent, cooperation to protect, cooperation to hold perpetrators accountable, and cooperation to build the legal frameworks that make accountability possible. The European Union and its Member States are determined to play their full part.
Thank you.
- North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.