Dissemination Meeting/Policy Roundtable on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP)

The RSIS Centre for NTS Studies and the JICA Research Institute are organising a two-part series of Dissemination Meetings/Policy Roundtables on the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) this year. The first meeting will be held in Tokyo, Japan, on 26 January 2011. The objective of these dissemination meetings/policy roundtables is to promote an understanding of RtoP and to assist in operationalising the concept in Asian policymaking.

Within Asia, RtoP – a result of people-centred security concepts such as the human security framework and non-traditional security – has gained traction among policymaking communities throughout Asia as a response to conflicts in the region. In particular, the East Asian region provides fertile ground to further normative shifts away from the primacy of the traditional conception of state sovereignty towards sovereignty as a responsibility to protect populations as a result of its experience with conflict and the recent developments in Asian regionalism. Against this background, the RSIS Centre for NTS Studies launched the project on ‘Operationalising the Responsibility to Protect in Asia’ to examine and track normative shifts of Asian governments and civil societies on RtoP, in collaboration with the JICA-RI.

To achieve this, a Study Group on the Responsibility to Protect was convened in 2009. Amongst the issues examined by the study group include the role of major powers in East Asia in the advancement of RtoP and the potential of regional mechanisms such as the ASEAN Charter and the Blueprint of the ASEAN Political and Security Community (APSC), the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights (AICHR) and the ASEAN Commission on Women and Children (ACWC) to promote RtoP.

The Dissemination Meeting/Policy Roundtable in Tokyo aims to share the study group's research findings on possible policy entry points for operationalising RtoP in Asia and to engage with a wider community of state as well as non-state actors, including policymakers, the diplomatic corps, academics, international and non-governmental organisations.

To apply for the symposium please click the button below.

JICA Research Institute Mr. YAMADA , TEL: 03-3269-9073 E-Mail: yamada.koji@jica.go.jp