Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus 
Illuminating the Arts-Policy Nexus is a fortnightly series of articles on the role of art in public policymaking. This series invites WPI fellows and project leaders as well as external practitioners to contribute pieces on how artists have led policy change and how policymakers can use creative strategies.
In Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, World Policy Institute Senior Fellow Ian Bremmer illustrates a historic shift in the international system and the world economy—and an unprecedented moment of global uncertainty.
The Responsibility to Protect: A Political Salon with Jared Genser
World Policy Institute presents:
The Responsibility to Protect: A Political Salon with Jared Genser
Tuesday, June 26
6:30 - 8:00 pm
This event is by invitation only.
The NATO-led operation to prevent Colonel Gaddafi's forces from inflicting mass atrocities on Libyan civilians in 2011 was the first UN-authorized military intervention to invoke explicitly the "responsibility to protect" doctrine as grounds for intervention. Under “R2P,” as it is known, a sovereign state has a responsibility to protect its citizens from mass atrocities. And other states have a responsibility to step in through graduated measures up to actions by the UN Security Council if a government cannot or will not fulfill this responsibility. In face of similar circumstances in Syria, however, NATO continues to dismiss the possibility of carrying out similar operations there. Was the Libya intervention a one-time event or an important precedent? What does it mean for R2P that the Security Council hasn’t acted on Syria? When does the doctrine apply, and what does this mean for future international crises and efforts to prevent mass atrocities?
In this Political Salon, Jared Genser, co-editor of The Responsibility to Protect:The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Times (Oxford University Press 2011), will discuss the concept of R2P and its potential merits and caveats, offering potential avenues for approaching this central question involving international human rights and global security.
About the Speaker
Jared Genser is Managing Director of Perseus Strategies, a law firm whose practice focuses on international human rights. Independently, he is founder of Freedom Now, a non-profit organization that works to free prisoners of conscience worldwide. Previously, he was a partner in the government affairs practice of DLA Piper LLP and a management consultant with McKinsey & Company. He has taught semester-long seminars about the UN Security Council at Georgetown University Law Center and the University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania law schools. He co-edited (with Irwin Cotler) The Responsibility to Protect: The Promise of Stopping Mass Atrocities in Our Time, a contributor volume on R2P that brings together diverse perspectives from authors such as Gareth Evans, Desmond Tutu, and the late Vaclav Havel.
Related Reading
From World Policy Journal
“Words as Weapons” by Susan Benesch, Spring 2012
“A New Administration and the UN” by Stephen Schlesinger, Winter 2008-2009
“Humanitarian Intervention: Getting Past the Reefs” by Shashi Tharoor and Sam Daws, Summer 2001
From World Policy Blog
Rethinking Western Intervention and Human Rights By Azadeh Pourzand, June 13, 2012
Just War: The Naiveté of the Responsibility to Protect by Patricia de Vries, May 24, 2012
Serbia: A NATO Success Story by Elizabeth Pond, August 22, 2011
Rwanda: France’s Long Silence by Pauline Moullot, December 14, 2011
Serbia and the Decline of NATO Military Clout by Erik Brattberg, April 3, 2012
Tags: 