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This article offers an overview of subtle yet significant shifts in Beijing's stance on non-interference and evolving standards of responsible and responsive international engagement in humanitarian crises to highlight China's firm, but cautious, support for the responsibility to protect (R2P). Although it is reticent to apply sanctions and objects to nonconsensual force, China has clearly and consistently affirmed the R2P principle and issued corresponding statements in favor of bolstering the UN's capacity to avert mass atrocity. China's statements provide a basis for Beijing to play a constructive, if reserved, role in translating the responsibility to protect from principle to practice. This article argues that the path of most promise and least resistance for consolidating China's support for implementing the responsibility to protect is paved in practical engagement rather than polemics. It concludes with specific measures that may be taken for China to contribute to upholding the global pledge to protect populations from genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Women, Peace and Security (WPS) scholars and practitioners have expressed reservations about the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) principle because of its popular use as a synonym for armed humanitarian intervention. On the other hand, R2P's early failure to engage with and advance WPS efforts such as United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution 1325 (2000) has seen the perpetuation of limited roles ascribed to women in implementing the R2P principle. As a result, there has been a knowledge and practice gap between the R2P and WPS agendas, despite the fact that their advocates share common goals in relation to the prevention of atrocities and protection of populations. In this article we propose to examine just one of the potential avenues for aligning the WPS agenda and R2P principle in a way that is beneficial to both and strengthens the pursuit of a shared goal -prevention. We argue that the development of gender-specific indicators.-particularly economic, social and political discriminatory practices against women -has the potential to improve the capacity of early warning frameworks to forecast future mass atrocities.

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This article explores the relationship between the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and the pursuit of the so-called ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) agenda at the UN. We ask whether the two agendas should continue to be pursued separately or whether each can make a useful contribution to the other. We argue that while the history of R2P has not included language that deliberately evokes the protection of women and the promotion of gender in preventing genocide and mass atrocities, this does not preclude the R2P and WPS agendas becoming mutually reinforcing. The article identifies cross-cutting areas where the two agendas may be leveraged for the UN and member states to address the concerns of women as both actors in need of protection and active agents in preventing and responding to genocide and mass atrocities, namely in the areas of early warning.

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The progression of genocide cases against Myanmar through the international justice system highlights the absence of an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) response to the Rohingya crisis. This article argues that ASEAN's lack of intervention is undermining its legitimacy, and hence, centrality. The article begins by demonstrating that ASEAN's principles of noninterference and consensus have in the past been flexibly interpreted, and then asserts that to maintain legitimacy and centrality, ASEAN must do three things: it must be seen to be doing something commensurate with the gravity of the situation; it must demonstrate capacity to forge unity among its members; and it must demonstrate institutional integrity by adhering to its human rights commitments. The final part of this article then explores two ways in which ASEAN could more constructively respond to the Rohingya crisis: through the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights; and the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance.

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