UNSG Special Adviser Mô Bleeker Becomes Senior Fellow at the Geneva Academy

15 April 2025

In March 2024, Mô Bleeker was appointed by the UN Secretary-General (UNSG) as his Special Adviser on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General. She is mandated to advise the UNSG about international responses to prevent mass atrocities. With her extensive diplomatic experience, she brings invaluable expertise to this important mandate.

We are proud to announce her affiliation with us as Senior Fellow, a position which strengthens our collective work to advance international humanitarian law, human rights, and the principles of the Responsibility to Protect through research and policy development. Below, she reflects on her collaboration with the Geneva Academy and how it contributes to our shared goals.

COULD YOU PLEASE ELABORATE ON YOUR WORK AND THE KEY AREAS OF FOCUS?

Our cooperation is based on a shared understanding of the importance of the responsibility to protect. The Responsibility to Protect emerged in the 2005 World Summit document. Adopted unanimously, this principle was formulated as a reaction to the genocides in Rwanda and Srebrenica. It affirms that each state is responsible for preventing and protecting its population at the national, regional and local levels, and that when necessary, the international community must intervene with the full range of means at its disposal under the United Nations Charter to prevent and provide an adequate (timely, relevant) response to protect any population that may suffer from crimes of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity.

How does our collaboration contribute to your work?

The collaboration with the Geneva Academy is based on this shared interest. We are both committed, in our respective fields, to developing solid conceptual approaches to the prevention and effective protection of populations against atrocity crimes, that builds upon existing norms and standards and integrates prevention and protection into the permanent public agenda, in concertation with civil society.

This collaboration is also very concrete, for example, the Geneva Academy recently supported the organization of a seminar with international experts on this issue, an event I had wished to organize for some time, but lacked the means to do so. I am immensely grateful to Paola Gaeta and to the Geneva Academy team for this support.

In this period of poly-crisis and the need to decolonize minds, ways of working and partnerships, the responsibility to protect is becoming a very relevant framework. For prevention to be successful, it requires ownership and an intimate understanding of the context, including its vulnerability and strengths. Prevention begins at home and no society is immune: discrimination, hate speech, structural and cultural exclusion, for example, happen everywhere, while the potential dynamics may be different in each context, depending on the resilience and vulnerabilities of each society. Prevention is also, by nature, a process. It requires exchange, dialogue, and a scientific understanding of each context, including the endogenous and exogenous factors at play and their interactions, as well as the identification of triggers and early warning signals. At the same time, it requires building dialogues and concerted efforts to formulate nationally led mechanism, policies and strategies. Ownership is ‘a must’ for prevention and protection strategies to become effective in anyway.

On another note, my office is in New York, but I live in Switzerland; this is an immense opportunity for a sustained dialogue between New York and Geneva, the capital of human rights and international humanitarian law. And the Geneva Academy is an integral part of this dialogue.

Over the past decade, the notion of R2P has suffered waning political support, including due to its misuse in contexts such as Libya in 2011. How will this legacy impact how you intend to approach your mandate?

It is important to recollect, that while the UNSC resolutions 1970 and 1973 of 2011 regarding Libya were fully within the scope and spirit of the responsibility to protect, the way resolution 1973 was implemented undermined trust in the responsibility to protect. Consequently, its implementation in subsequent atrocity situations was impeded at a great cost for populations at risk. In this context, Brazil’s concept of ‘responsibility while protecting’ was a crucial contribution. Today, member states are more aware of the diversity of peaceful tools and means at disposal and about the fact that a UNSC resolution to deploy military options based on Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter (on actions to maintain and restore peace and security) is only a last resort measure. 

Do you see a role for the mandate in the 2025 Peace Building Architecture Review (PBAR), or how would you like to see R2P reflected in the PBAR process?

The Peace Building Architecture Review is a very important milestone, taking place in a highly complex geopolitical context. The inputs from the different regions will be crucial, to ‘democratize’ the conversation and push for the creation of national prevention bodies with their regional counterparts, as well as the systematic integration of what I call an ‘atrocity prevention lens’ in the national and regional public agenda.

The year 2025 marks 20 years since the UN General Assembly unanimously adopted the World Summit Outcome Document. The political climate has radically changed during this period to one of uncertainty and polarization. How will your mandate pivot to manage today’s geopolitical fragmentation?

Over the past 20 years, we have witnessed growing negative trends in the conduct of violent conflicts, including an increasing number of direct attacks against norms and standards agreed to by the international community and against multilateral institutions that have been built through cooperation and a commitment to a rules-based international order.

At the same time, significant progress has been made at conceptual and operational level thanks to different stakeholders world-wide. However, there are still enormous gaps in the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect. The fact is, we can only address the serious dangers facing us, if we are guided by common values and principles. The Responsibility to Protect can be part of the solution in this moment of great global instability. It can become an ethical compass.

To mark this 20th anniversary, we have conducted a broad survey, and the responses have been unanimous; the Responsibility to Protect is there to remain. Communities under threat perceive it as a real support, a vision of protection. Many stakeholders are requesting support to conceptualizing implementation, sharing lessons learned, and exploring ways to implement the Responsibility to Protect at all levels.
In this multipolar world, new member states are also emerging that wish to uphold international norms and standards and fulfil the commitment of the Responsibility to Protect. We will support them, and when necessary, we will also develop the difficult but essential dialogues required to protect populations from these atrocious crimes.
I am once again very thankful to the Geneva Academy for the opportunity to think together and convene a broad network of partners to develop constructive ways to protect the most vulnerable.