Edward C. Luck, a foreign policy adviser who was regarded as a conscience of the diplomatic community for devising strategies to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities, died on Feb. 16 at his home in Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. The cause was lung cancer, his daughter, Jessica Luck, said. As a special adviser at the United Nations to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Mr. Luck was instrumental in codifying when and how that world body and its member nations were obliged to intervene to prevent genocide and fulfill their “ responsibility to protect” (a principle later known by the “Star Wars”-infused nom de paix, R2P). That responsibility was endorsed in principle at a U.N. World Summit in 2005 in the wake of atrocities committed in the Balkans and in Rwanda that the world community had failed to prevent, and after NATO’s military intervention in Kosovo, which some nations criticized as violating existing rules against the use of force. Operating at the level of assistant secretary-general from 2008 to 2012, Mr. Luck amplified on the vague diplomatic jargon adopted in 2005 and synthesized it into a practical strategy built on three imperatives, which Gareth Evans, chairman of the international advisory board of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, an advocacy group, described this way in a tribute to Mr. Luck:“The responsibility of states to protect their own peoples, the responsibility of other states to assist them, and the responsibility of the global community to respond in a timely and decisive manner if a state was manifestly failing to meet its responsibilities.”

Source: International New York Times March 16, 2021 20:11 UTC