Mr. Moderator, 

We thank the President of the General Assembly for convening this informal interactive dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). The interventions made by the panelists are useful. The remarks made by various delegations point to the complexity of the issue and a clear indication that consensus is needed on several conceptual issues. 

The latest report of the Secretary-General stresses that the key to responsibility to protect must be 'prevention' and underscores that policies for capacity building must be 'nationally-owned' rather than imposed from outside.  

The UN and its member states, and regional or sub-regional organisations, should be ready to offer assistance, as required by the state concerned, to strengthen its policies and programmes, including capacity building, to protect its people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity and also to prevent their occurrence. 

Mr. Moderator, 

It has been India's consistent position that the responsibility to protect its population is one of the foremost responsibilities of every State. The right to life is one of the rights from which no derogation is permitted under any circumstance.                                                                                                                                                            
 The principle of State sovereignty, following the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, has evolved into a well established principle of the international law. It has been the basis for inter-state relations for more than three centuries. However, the developments since then have shown that there is a gap between the principle of State sovereignty and the concerns that this principle has not always been able to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing or crimes against humanity.

Therefore, India like other members of the international community understands the need to find appropriate ways to address this gap to ensure implementation of the 'responsibility to protect' takes place in a manner that will not undermine international order. 

India believes that further discussions are required within the international community on issues like - which instruments should be used; what are the thresholds that will trigger preventive measures and who would identify them; who should be empowered to implement R2P, as the four crimes mentioned in the World Summit outcome document may or may not impact global peace and security in every circumstance. 

Therefore, these are issues that require further careful consideration and discussions, rather than pre-emptive decision making. 

I thank you.