Kampala Conference on R2P in East and the Horn of Africa

Refugee Rights News
Volume 4, Issue 3
May 2008

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is an emerging norm of international law which provides that states have primary responsibility to protect their citizens from crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, genocide and war crimes; when a state fails to do so, however, the responsibility falls on the international community. R2P expresses a commitment to action along a continuum, from prevention to rebuilding, with a focus on prevention. The principle was first articulated in a 2001 report by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty entitled “The Responsibility to Protect.” In September 2005, the international community endorsed central aspects of R2P in the United Nations’ 2005 Summit Declaration.

On April 17 and 18, 2008, the International Refugee Rights Initiative (IRRI) together with the Responsibility to Protect—Engaging Civil Society (R2PCS), a project of the World Federalist Movement–Institute for Global Policy (WFM), hosted a conference on R2P in East Africa and the Horn of Africa. The conference took place at the Metropole Hotel in Kampala and was well attended by academics and civil society representatives from around the region, including the AMANI Forum, the East Africa Law Society, the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, the Kenya Human Rights Commission, Foundation for Human Rights Initiative, HURINET, HURIFO, and Oxfam. The conference was part of a global series of consultative roundtables organized by R2PCS with the objective of building a global civil society coalition for R2P. Other gatherings have occurred in Accra, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Johannesburg, Ottawa, and one is planned for Paris.

The conference’s three main objectives were to increase understanding of R2P and how it applies to conflicts in the region, explore how to strengthen regional and international mechanisms to support R2P, and forge partnerships among a core group of CSOs interested in building a regional coalition for R2P. Measured against those three main objectives, and indeed any objectives, the conference was a great success.

The first day of the conference focused on providing on overview of R2P and discussing how to increase understanding and use of the principle in the region. It included presentations by Bill Pace and Saapna Chatpar of WFM, Yitiha Simbeye of the University of Dar Es Salaam and Getechew Demeke of Africa Humanitarian Action in Ethiopia. Discussions highlighted regional institutions such as the African Union, the East African Community, the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, and the Inter Governmental Authority on Development, which have existing mechanisms to bolster R2P (for a detailed account of those mechanisms, please see “Aspects of the Emerging Legal Framework Bolstering the Responsibility to Protect in East Africa and the Great Lakes Region” at www.refugee-rights.org).

The second day of the conference focused on strengthening civil society activity and collaboration for R2P in the region. It was decided that there should be parallel state-centric and civil society-centric strategies for bolstering R2P. The state-centric approach was further subdivided into national and regional strategies, and participants thought that the civil society-centric strategy should be multi-pronged to target academia, community leaders, faith groups, the general public, the media and NGOs. Central within both strategies will be education, as delegates believed that many leaders and policy makers do not know about or fully understand R2P.

At the end of the conference, an informal follow-up committee was appointed to work on building a regional coalition for R2P. We will keep readers abreast of future developments as we work to put momentum behind R2P.

For more information, please visit www.responsbilitytoprotect.org.