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From Co-Founders

Greetings!

On behalf of everyone at the Canadian Centre for R2P, we wish to extend you a warm welcome for visiting our website.

The CCR2P was co-founded in February 2010 by Victor MacDiarmid and Tina Park. The co-founders were greatly inspired by an undergraduate seminar at Trinity College taught by Erin D. Mooney, called "Protecting People in Peril," and a graduate seminar taught by Hon. Bill Graham on the evolution of Canadian foreign policy.  At the time CCR2P was founded, very few actors were discussing R2P in the international sphere and even fewer actors were discussing the principle in Canada.  The co-founders realized there was a pressing need to fill this discursive gap on the R2P principle.   They also believed that in light of Canadian leadership in giving birth to the R2P principle, there was a great need to keep up the dialogue in the public sphere and that such dialogue should be pursued in a non-partisan environment.  

The first meeting for CCR2P took place at Massey College on February 15, 2010, where three research divisions (normative, legal, policy) were launched, with Minsuk Kim as the Director of Research. Thirty analysts from the International Relations Program, Department of Political Science, and Faculty of Law joined the CCR2P in its first year. 

Since then, our research divisions continued to grow every year, both in numbers and in the quality of our research efforts.  Today, we have research divisions across Canada such as the Faculty of Law division at McGill University and Prevention Watch division at Carleton University. We currently have over 100 analysts working with us directly at the University of Toronto across many academic disciplines and professional fields. Many of our analysts are multilingual, and we have turned our unique linguistic advantage to create a database called "R2Plive.org" which tracks R2P-related news in real-time and publishes online for free access to any interested members of the public. Our R2Plive database currently has over 3000 articles in English, French, Spanish, Chinese and Korean, as we hope to expand to Russian, Arabic and other languages in the next few years. 

In tandem with our founding mandate, CCR2P has also been active in its advocacy efforts since its inception. Our first full-day conference held in 2011 focused on the "Ten Years since the ICISS report," and the following conference in 2012 focused on the role of emerging powers in promoting R2P.  In 2014, we ran a nation-wide campaign to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide, involving a full-day conference with Dr. Jennifer Welsh (UN Secretary-General's Representative on R2P) as our keynote speaker, a film festival called "Eyes on Genocide," a youth & education outreach to secondary schools in the Greater Toronto Area, a publication project with the Canadian International Council's opencanada.org, and a social media campaign to raise public's awareness on genocide prevention. CCR2P also co-hosted a panel discussion on R2P and Lessons from Rwanda with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lloyd Axworthy.  In the meanwhile, CCR2P was invited to advise the Inter-Parliamentary Union on their resolution on R2P, both in Quebec (2012) and in Quito, Ecuador (2013). This resolution, entitled "The Role of Parliamentarians in Enforcing R2P" made an important turning point in the political implementation of R2P, as it marked the largest gathering of parliamentarians from around the world to affirm their commitment on mainstreaming R2P in their national governments (over 600 parliamentarians attended the IPU assembly in Quito in 2013). As a member of the International Coalition for RtoP, CCR2P has been invited to civil society dialogue with the UN Office on the Prevention of Genocide and the annual UN General Assembly on R2P held at the UN Headquarters in New York City.  Since 2012, CCR2P has also actively participated in the civil society's contribution to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's annual report on R2P. 

The co-founders at CCR2P strongly believe in the power of education and empowerment for R2P's future. We have travelled to Vienna, Brasilia, Seoul, London, Istanbul, Ottawa, Barcelona, Washington DC, and many other places around the globe to raise awareness about R2P and to call for regional and local bodies to incorporate R2P in their policy-making process. Most recently, we hosted a roundtable on Canadian Foreign Policy & R2P with Hon. Hugh Segal (Master of Massey College), Very Rev. Lois Wilson, and Member of Parliament Dr. Kirsty Duncan.   We are also expanding our R2P Scholars Network, composed of Junior Fellows and Senior Fellows, to better connect the intellectual community for R2P and solidify our knowledge base. With over 50 fellows around the world, R2P Scholars Network has an excellent potential to serve as a hub for scholarly research on R2P. 

This year, CCR2P will be engaging in another extensive campaign to reflect upon the 10th year anniversary since the 2005 World Summit Outcome. We hope to critically examine the normative journey of R2P in the last decade based on the paragraphs 138 and 139 of the World Summit Outcome. Moving beyond a theoretical discussion, this year's campaign focuses on how national governments can affect R2P's development through their behaviour at home and abroad. Our discussion will take place with an eye towards future political implementation of R2P and how we can mainstream R2P in our policy-making process. We invite you to join the dialogue, and share your insights on how we can take the debate into the real world. 

tinaparkandvictormacdiarmid

We wish to take this opportunity to thank you for your interest and support for R2P, and hope to meet you in person in the near future. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions!

Sincerely,

Victor MacDiarmid & Tina J. Park

Co-Founders, Canadian Centre for the Responsibility to Protect