Senior government officials and high-level representatives from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the United Nations (UN) have begun a two-day Global Network of National Focal Point for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) conference in Accra to discuss ways of preventing mass atrocity crimes.

The conference, co-hosted by the governments of Ghana and Denmark in association with the governments of Australia and Costa Rica, as well as the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre (KAIPTC), would give participants the opportunity to exchange experiences and develop ideas that could strengthen national efforts to prevent mass atrocities.

Opening the first R2P conference to be held in West Africa, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Hannah Serwa Tetteh, said the conference was significant for the country because it created the avenue for Ghana to develop more traction in the on-going capacity-building.

She said the importance of the responsibility to protect was a compelling global norm which would define the future of the global community.

She thus called on the delegates, to rededicate themselves to promoting a convergence towards shared valued and norms as well as the promotion of local inclusive partnership.

“Such an inclusion and transparent approach constitute the very foundations of any democratic and human right-based process,” she said.

She also called for the existing frameworks normative and institutional to be leveraged in the regional economic groupings in order to build resilient national and regional communities capable of preventing atrocities, managing diversities and facing the global changes with resilience.

“Our goal should be to build resilient national and regional communities, locally owned, and which will necessarily reduce considerably, if not eliminate entirely, the current sometimes, overwhelming burden on the global community,” Ms Tetteh noted.

Carsten Nilaus Pedersen, Ambassador of Denmark to Ghana said the R2P initiative sought to assist member states in strengthening their national work on preventing atrocities by building a community on shared commitment.

H. E. Pedersen noted that the decisive factor in the prevention of mass atrocities is first and foremost in the ability of each and every country to prevent such crimes at home.

He said, “A growing number of countries stand united in the view that the prevention of genocide and other mass atrocities should not just be a topic for discussion and actions at the international and multilateral level. The responsibility to protect is to act and to act early.”

Dr Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect said the network invited member states to appoint national R2P focal points who in their government as senior civil servants could advance the work on prevention of atrocities.

“By appointing a national R2P focal point, member states renew their commitment to the responsibility to protect and make the possibility of ending mass atrocities a reality,” he said.

Brigadier General Obed Boamah Akwa, who represented the governing board of the centre, said the conference would contribute towards the international community’s ability to prevent and stop genocides, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

“The guiding principle now is that of non-indifference of the international community when countries fail to protect their citizens during conflicts. This meeting is, therefore, critical in strengthening the capacities of regional focal persons in this evolving specialized field.”

The National Responsibility to Protect Focal Point Initiative was launched in 2010 by the governments of Denmark and Ghana in New York with the aim of formulating proactive strategies to prevent and halt mass atrocities both nationally and internationally.