In March, the United Nations (UN) published its long-awaited Agenda for Protection, aimed at making protection a central and collective responsibility of the UN system. It is the first UN policy guidance document to set out in one place the different protection roles of the humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and human rights components of the organization. The agenda was a specific commitment of the Secretary-General’s 2020 Call to Action for Human Rights, as well as a response to the “systemic and structural” failings highlighted in an independent inquiry of the UN human rights response in Myanmar, published in 2019. A previous assessment of the UN’s protection shortcomings in Sri Lanka in 2009 drew similar conclusions.

This is not the first time the UN has tried to reinvigorate its commitment to improve its performance in preventing and responding to protection crises. The last Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, launched the Human Rights Up Front (HRuF) initiative in 2013 with the same broad objectives as the Agenda for Protection, albeit with mixed results. The question today is whether the current agenda can learn lessons from HRuF and make a tangible difference where previous efforts have fallen short. Read more