SECURITY STRATEGY, ATROCITY PREVENTION & THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT WORKSHOP

PORT VILA, VANUATU (2 October 2024): The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) is happy to support efforts by the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (APR2P) to ensure that MSG countries, and others in the region, implement the commitments made to address mass atrocities such as genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

In his opening remarks at the MSG R2P Workshop, Director General of the MSG Secretariat, Leonard Louma, warned of the danger of thinking that these enumerated mass atrocities do not occur in our part of the world. He acknowledged that this is due largely to our notions being framed by what transpired in Kampuchea under Pol Pot, Kosovo and Rwanda. This he said, is a fallacy and provides a false sense of innocence to our governments and encourages in them a nefarious attitude of complacency.

The Director General urged participants to give serious consideration to this subject matter and the need to look at MSG countries’ national policies, regulations, and laws to accommodate state commitments on atrocity prevention and Responsibility to Protect (R2P). 

He noted that Governments have an inherent obligation to protect the people they govern in their nation states and must ensure their welfare is taken care of and their dignity as human beings protected. 

“At the risk of oversimplifying the notion of atrocity, we would do well to think of it as a cruel act or mistreatment that injures the dignity of a human being. Suffering from hunger, affliction with NCDs, lack of basic drugs in our medical and health facilities, abuse in the treatment of our inmates in our prisons, etc. Atrocity prevention and taking heed of, and acting on, early warning signals is critical.”

“Once we start thinking of atrocities in the sense of lack of security then we will get our governments and ourselves to approach it in a way that our people deserve to be treated,” DG Louma commented.

The Director General also clarified that the MSG is not averse to collective security approaches aimed at addressing the region’s security concerns, despite the fact that it is sometimes portrayed as being in opposition.

“In our efforts to properly frame collaboration in the security space, explore synergies between new initiatives and existing initiatives, and ensure necessary guard rails are considered in any security arrangement, we are often portrayed as being against a collective security initiative. Far from it.”

DG Louma noted the ongoing efforts in collective security and expressed appreciation for the Australian Government’s collaboration with the MSG Secretariat on many matters of mutual interest.

The newly-appointed Australian High Commissioner to Vanuatu, H.E Max Willis, acknowledged the MSG and the APR2P for co-facilitating the Workshop and stated that Australia was happy to be associated with the funding of the Workshop.

The training explored how governments in the region currently accommodate atrocity prevention in policy and practice, and how they can work at the national and regional levels to better implement their R2P commitments.