EU Statement – UN General Assembly: Responsibility to Protect

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Mr. President,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the EU and its Member States.

The Candidate Countries North Macedonia*, Montenegro*, Albania*, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Bosnia and Herzegovina*, the potential candidate country Georgia, as well as, Andorra and San Marino align themselves with this statement.

The EU and its Member States thank the Secretary-General for his report “Development and the Responsibility to Protect: Recognizing and Addressing Embedded Risks and Drivers of Atrocity Crimes” and its recommendations. We also thank the UN Secretary-General's Special Advisers on Genocide Prevention and on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and their office, whose work we actively support politically and financially.

Approaching the SDG Summit in September, this report provides a timely and welcome input underlining how critical it is to address atrocity risks to realise the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development. There can be no peace without sustainable development, no development without peace, and neither without accountable governance and full and equal enjoyment of human rights.

The EU and its Member States are strong supporters of the UN in this field, both in the operationalisation and implementation of the R2P principle and in achieving the 2030 Agenda.

Aligned with the 2030 Agenda, which remains the common global roadmap for a better and more sustainable future, "Our Common Agenda" – including an ambitious New Agenda for Peace – offers indispensable opportunities for the transformative changes necessary to address the challenges of the 21st century.

While we aim to address global challenges and build more resilient societies, operationalising R2P also requires tackling underlying causes that provide fertile ground for atrocity mind-sets to grow. In the EU, with tools and policies such as the EU’s Atrocity Prevention Toolkit, our Early Warning System and Horizon Scanning, and our Conflict Analysis Screenings, we work to enhance our ability to identify and address early warning signs in our external action. Additionally, our bilateral Human Rights Dialogues contribute to mitigating atrocity risks by addressing democracy and rule of law, non-discrimination, torture prevention, hate speech and disinformation to mention a few examples. Our civilian Common Security and Defence Policy Missions also contribute, for example by supporting security sector reform in Iraq and the Central African Republic, and by monitoring the situation on the ground in the South Caucasus.

Lessons from these experiences underscore the importance of dedicating sufficient attention and resources to early action, preventive diplomacy, dialogue, and mediation. Equally, working better across the Humanitarian-Development-Peace Nexus is key to ensure strategic coherence, break vicious cycles of conflict and protect hard-earned development gains.

In that regard, EU conflict analysis is a powerful tool as it gathers EU Delegations and relevant EU services working on development, peace, security, humanitarian affairs and human rights, helping to break the silos and ensure that our development programming is sensitive to and addresses risks of conflict and atrocities. We encourage the UN and its Member States to link R2P and development through prevention, and to consider detecting and responding to early warning signs of atrocity risks in their development plans and programming.

The EU backs the strengthening of early warning and prevention mechanisms within the UN system, and stands ready to provide support in this regard, as well as in the implementation of the Youth and Women Peace and Security Agendas.

The prevention of atrocities is never negotiable. Preventing violent conflict is key to saving populations from the scourge of war and resulting suffering. But, if and when prevention fails, we must respond. The EU underscores the responsibility of the Security Council to act in situations of mass atrocities and encourages all UN member states to join the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency (ACT) Code of Conduct and the French-Mexican initiative on the use of veto in cases of mass atrocities.

In closing, the EU calls upon the UN Secretary-General to include in his future R2P reports an analysis of trends regarding risks of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing and their prevention as well as systematic follow-up of the implementation of recommendations for response and mitigating measures.

Thank you.

* North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania and Bosnia and Herzegovina continue to be part of the Stabilisation and Association Process.