This meeting was the fifth in a series of seminars organised to focus on aspects of the United Nations’ (UN) role in Africa and the recent UN reform process. The aim of the policy seminar was to interrogate issues around humanitarian intervention in Africa and the responsibility of regional governments and the international community in the face of humanitarian crises. The “responsibility to protect” is the legal and ethical commitment by the international community, acting through organisations such as the UN and Africa’s regional organisations, to protect citizens from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and/or ethnic cleansing. The meeting reviewed and analysed the experiences and lessons from recent conflicts in Africa, as well as assessing the degree to which the “responsibility to protect” citizens has been adhered to by national governments within and outside the continent. A key concern of the seminar was to analyse the future of strategies to promote the protection of human rights in Africa.
