This week’s twentieth anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide again focused attention on R2P. In ‘We the Peoples’: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century (also known as the Millennium Report), released in March 2000, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan posed a stark question: “if humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?” His challenge was picked up by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which in December 2001 issued The Responsibility to Protect. Although the doctrine later adopted unanimously by UN member states at the 2005 World Summit turned out to be somewhat different, the close link with Rwanda remains.

In Myanmar, R2P is currently a critically important issue, but it would be hard to claim that the set of norms bundled up in the concept has broad domestic acceptance or even much local acquaintance. A great deal of grassroots engagement therefore needs to be undertaken to embed awareness. However, there is also a wider problem, which is that by a couple of measures R2P appears to have little real purchase in Asia. If R2P principles are to be implemented in Myanmar, this regional shortfall first needs to be addressed.

One measure is UN Security Council votes on issues informed by R2P. The successful resolutions on this list are not particularly revealing. In a total of 21 endorsed from January 2006 to February 2014 (helpfully assembled on a single webpage by GCR2P), 18 passed unanimously. The other three registered zero votes against, and only small numbers of abstentions. Most interesting is resolution 1973 on the situation in Libya, which on March 17, 2011 passed 10-0 with five abstentions. The five were China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India. Alongside the Libya vote, however, stand three unsuccessful resolutions on Syria, all of which were vetoed by both China and Russia. There were no other negative votes on any of the three, but two registered abstentions: from Brazil, Lebanon, India and South Africa on October 4, 2011, and from Pakistan and South Africa on July 19, 2012. While there’s nothing definitive here, there does seem to be a certain reluctance among major Asian powers to embrace R2P.

A second measure, I think more telling, is Asian engagement with R2P support activities. In September 2010, the governments of Denmark and Ghana collaborated with GCR2P to launch R2P Focal Points. This initiative invites governments to make a senior official responsible for R2P promotion, and to join a global network committed to R2P principles. To date, 37 countries from the global north and south have appointed a national R2P Focal Point and become part of the network. Most are from Europe: 20 EU members plus six additional states. The rest are from Africa (4), Latin America (4), Australasia (2) and North America (1). Not one is from Asia.

For R2P to become meaningful in Myanmar, where pressing contemporary challenges make its core elements highly applicable, it has to gain a basic level of acceptance in the wider region. Working on that is a key task for GCR2P and affiliated advocacy groups.