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Media Release

May 1 2006

When is it our problem?
New perspectives stopping international atrocities

President of the global think tank, International Crisis Group (ICG), Hon Gareth Evans AO, QC, will confront the complex and pressing issues surrounding modern human crises in the world’s trouble spots in a public lecture Atrocity Crimes: Overcoming global indifference to be held at UniSA’s City East campus tomorrow.

For the past six years in his role at the helm of the Brussels-based ICG, Evans has analysed the factors that have the potential to lead to human tragedy on a mass scale including issues of governance, national barriers, international responsibility and human rights.

Hosted through the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission Gandel Oration and sponsored by the UniSA’s Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, the lecture will commence at 7.45pm Tuesday May 2, 2006, at UniSA’s Mutual Community Theatre, Basil Hetzel Building, Frome Road in the city.

Gareth Evans was co-chair of the Canadian-sponsored International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that advocated ‘responsibility to protect’.

This concept proposed that States should have an implied international obligation to intervene in the affairs of other States to prevent or stop humanitarian crises, where first-tier responsibility, namely the United Nations Security Council, cannot be exercised.

The 2001 Commission’s report stated, “If we believe that all human beings are equally entitled to be protected from acts that shock the conscience of us all, then we must …as an international community, be prepared to act.”

Evans said the responsibility to protect was looming as one of the most important issues to confront the international community today.

“The ‘responsibility to protect’ is proving to have enduring importance as the world struggles to find consensus on how to deal with genocide and other atrocity crimes occurring within state borders,” Evans says.

“The unanimous acceptance of ‘responsibility to protect’ by the World Summit in September 2005 has been widely regarded as one of the biggest, and potentially most significant, normative shifts to have occurred in international relations in recent times.”

In his lecture Evans will provide an invaluable insight into the complex legal, moral and ethical problems that surround taking responsibility and making decisions to intervene in cases of human rights abuses, atrocities and genocide.

Evans was an elected member of the Australian Parliament for 21 years and served as a Cabinet Minister for 13 years in the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments. As one of Australia’s longer-serving foreign ministers (1988-96), he was best known internationally for developing the United Nations peace plan for Cambodia and initiating the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

The ICG is one of the world’s leading independent, non-government sources of information, analysis and advice on conflict prevention and resolution and violent extremism. It has more than 110 full-time staff on five continents.

ICG has made its mark in the post-September 11 analysis of terrorist threats and the roots of Islamist violence, from Indonesia and Pakistan to the Gulf. It has also been involved in promoting peace strategies in numerous areas – including the Middle East – and generating international pressure on authoritarian regimes in central Asia.

The Hawke Centre presents programs that focus on building more effective societies. Both The B’nai B’rith and UniSA will present this oration as part of a commitment to raise awareness about international conflicts and atrocities.

The ADC Gandel Oration
Atrocity Crimes: Overcoming Global Indifference
Delivered by Gareth Evans, President of the International Crisis Group
Presented by The Anti-defamation Commission of the B'nai B'rith organisation and supported by The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, UniSA

For more information, phone the Hawke Centre (08) 8302 0215 or search online at
http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawke/events/2006events/Gandel_Oration.asp
 

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