Background

In 2005, the World Summit Outcome of the United Nations General Assembly adopted the principle of the ‘responsibility to protect.’ This principle means that each State has the responsibility to protect its populations from “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity [hereafter called ‘atrocity crimes’]. The international community should encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility and support the United Nations in establishing an early-warning capability.”

The United Nations, and all its member nations, agreed to take action through the Security Council if peaceful means are inadequate and national governments are unable to protect their populations from atrocity crimes.

However, since 1945, efforts by the United Nations and individual nations to protect populations from atrocity crimes either have failed or have not been attempted. Millions upon millions of innocent civilians have lost their lives or been wounded and displaced, their property and livelihoods destroyed.

We, the legislators of the city of Edina, Minnesota, acknowledge the moral imperative of the right to protect all citizens from atrocity crimes; this reflects the highest values of freedom, care, and preservation of the lives of innocent civilians.

The citizens of the City of Edina, Minnesota elect Members of Congress and, with other citizens, the President and Vice-President of the United States. We believe that these officials have a responsibility to use every legal means to protect people from atrocity crimes wherever those crimes occur.

The Resolution

We, the Mayor and the Members of the City Council of Edina, urge the following three actions:

• That the President and Congress commit to implementation and global leadership of the World Summit Outcome on the responsibility to protect innocent civilians through the strategies in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document and in the 2006 Security Council Resolution 167;
• That the President develop non-unilateral, diplomatic, economic, and other non-violent strategies to implement the responsibility to protect in coordination with the governments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union, the African Union, the Organization of American States, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations;
• And that the President and Congress take every possible action, consistent with such strategies to safeguard the security of innocent non-combatant men, women and children in Darfur, Sudan, where the United States has declared a genocide to be occurring.

This resolution is to be sent to the following:

• President and Vice-President of the United States
• U.S. Secretary of State
• U.S. Secretary of Defense
• U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations
• President pro tempore of the U.S. Senate
• Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
• The Minnesota delegation to the Senate and to the House of Representatives