Abstract

This paper answers one question posed by the Committee: “To what extent has the UK fulfilled its commitment made in 2005 to protect civilian populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing? Has the UK fulfilled its commitment?”
(1) The UK is meeting its R2P through diplomacy efforts at the UN Security Council, humanitarian assistance in Syria and the region through DFID, and via its Syrian resettlement programme at the Home Office. The recommendation is to explicitly link all domestic policies that help to protect Syrians from mass atrocities in order to operationalise the UK’s rhetorical commitment to R2P.
(2) The UK is failing to fulfill R2P’s aspirational objectives such as ending the mass atrocities in Syria. However, non-coercive options have not been exhausted, such as committing to finding consensus in the UN Security Council by adjusting the UK’s objectives or by using the Uniting for Peace initiative in the UN General Assembly.