The Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P Centre) is dedicated to advancing the responsibility to protect principle through research and policy dialogue.
Launched in February 2008, the Centre is a partnership between the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and The University of Queensland. It has helped achieve significant progress in developing the region’s normative consensus on R2P and in building partnerships and communities of practice across the region.
Today, the Centre works with partners in almost every corner of the region, stretching from Myanmar to Japan, promoting R2P and facilitating national action to prevent atrocities. The Asia Pacific region has emerged as an engaged region exemplified by the highly successful regional conference held in Cambodia to mark the tenth anniversary of R2P in 2015. The Centre has also promoted the implementation of R2P through regional action, and supported the CSCAP Study Group on R2P and the High Level Advisory Panel on the Responsibility to Protect in Southeast Asia, chaired by former ASEAN Secretary-General Dr. Surin Pitsuwan.
This focus on regional partnership was exemplified by the launch, in late 2015, of the Asia Pacific Partnership for Cooperation. Partners from civil society, academia, non-government organizations and governments motivated by a shared vision of a region that protects its own people from atrocities have agreed to collaborate together to further develop regional expertise and capacity building on atrocity prevention and establishing pathways between regional mechanisms and global institutions. Future work of the Centre will continue to consolidate the consensus for the R2P principle and focus attention on supporting R2P’s practical implementation by governments and non-state actors.
The Centre works closely with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (GCR2P) and is a member of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect (ICRtoP) - based in New York. It is also a member of the Consortium on Non-Traditional Security in Asia (NTS-Asia) based in Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and partner in the Providing for Peacekeeping project, with the International Peace Institute (New York). The Centre is also actively engaged with the United Nations, in particular supporting the work of the UN’s Office on Genocide Prevention and R2P and participating in the UN General Assembly’s dialogues on R2P.
The Centre looks to its partnerships, as well as the contributions of our Centre Research Fellows, advice of our International Advisory Board, and support from our Patrons to enhance our ability to support implementation of the Responsibility to Protect both in the region and globally.