Framing a protection service

The United Nations has recognized that the plight of civilians is fundamental to its mandate (UNSG, 1999: paras. 67, 68). While protecting civilians has been an aim of UN peacekeeping operations for over a decade, the organization has not always succeeded in achieving this goal. Civilians are still under threat in places such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where UN peacekeeping operations are currently deployed (UNSC, 2010). While governments honoured their responsibility to protect civilians in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire, calls for the international community to stop mass atrocity crimes in Sri Lanka (Egeland et al., 2009), Syria (Stack and MacFarquhar, 2012) and elsewhere have fallen on deaf ears.

Related Subject(s): Human Rights and Refugees