Strengthening State Resilience for the Prevention of Mass Atrocity Crimes

It is now ten years since the 2005 United Nations World Summit where states unanimously endorsed the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. In particular, many states are supportive of Pillars One and Two, while controversy still surrounds the application of Pillar Three in some circumstances. In this policy brief, the authors note the decisive shift toward questions of implementation, and consider three areas of Pillar One that are central to current discussion amongst member states of the UN: resilience, accountability and the focal point narrative. They focus on the difficulties that are encountered in the implementation of these points, and emphasise that understanding what actors already do to strengthen resilience and mitigate risk provides a more nuanced understanding of why it is that some states experience mass atrocities while others - with similar challenges - manage to avoid them. This then provides insights for prevention.