Gareth Evans to Discuss the Responsibility to Protect in Lecture at Institute For Advanced Study
PRESS CONTACT: Alexandra Altman, (609) 951-4406
Gareth Evans, Chancellor of the Australian National University and former Foreign Minister of Australia, will give a lecture, “After Syria: The Future of the Responsibility to Protect,” which will take place on Wednesday, March 12, at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the Institute campus. This lecture is supported by the Dr. S. T. Lee Fund for Historical Studies and is free and open to the public.
In this lecture, Evans will posit whether it is possible to end once and for all genocide and other major crimes against humanity occurring behind sovereign state walls to ensure that there will never again be another Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrenica or Darfur. Evans will also question if the new principle of “the responsibility to protect” (or R2P), which was unanimously embraced by the U.N. General Assembly in 2005 and was applied with dramatic effect in Libya in 2011 has run its course with the Security Council paralysis over Syria. Evans will examine whether China, Russia, Brazil and India would ever support the use of coercive military force for human protection purposes, and will discuss if R2P is an idea whose time has come and now gone.
Gareth Evans is regarded as one of the leading architects of and global advocates for the “responsibility to protect” concept, initiated by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which he co-chaired in 2001. He previously spent twenty-one years in Australian politics, thirteen of them as a Cabinet Minister, including as Foreign Minister from 1988–96. Evans was President of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group from 2000–09, and currently holds the position of President Emeritus.
Evans has written or edited ten books, including The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Brookings Institution Press, 2009) and Nuclear Weapons: The State of Play (ANU, 2013), and has published over 100 journal articles and chapters on foreign relations, human rights and legal and political issues. Evans received the 2010 Roosevelt Institute Freedom from Fear award for his pioneering work on R2P, conflict resolution and arms control, and was named by Foreign Policy magazine one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2011.
For more information on this and other lectures at the Institute, visit http://www.ias.edu/news/public-events.
About the Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study is one of the world’s leading centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. The Institute exists to encourage and support curiosity-driven research in the sciences and humanities—the original, often speculative thinking that produces advances in knowledge that change the way we understand the world. Work at the Institute takes place in four Schools: Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science. It provides for the mentoring of scholars by a permanent Faculty of approximately 30, and it ensures the freedom to undertake research that will make significant contributions in any of the broad range of fields in the sciences and humanities studied at the Institute.
The Institute, founded in 1930, is a private, independent academic institution located in Princeton, New Jersey. Its more than 6,000 former Members hold positions of intellectual and scientific leadership throughout the academic world. Thirty-three Nobel Laureates and 40 out of 56 Fields Medalists, as well as many winners of the Wolf and MacArthur prizes, have been affiliated with the Institute.