The UNGA and Accountability in Ukraine - Rebecca Barber

Law and the Future of War

This episode is the second instalment in a series of podcasts analysing accountability in the current Ukrainian conflict.
In this episode we are talking to Rebecca Barber, an expert in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) powers and humanitarian action, to discuss the power of the UNGA and its role in providing accountability for actors in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. This episode also addresses the role of the UNGA in relation to the legitimacy of governments (with particular reference to Myanmar); the role of the UNGA in relation to humanitarian assistance (with reference to Syria); and the responsibility to protect.
Rebecca Barber is a PhD Scholar with the TC Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland, and a Senior Human Rights Research Fellow with the Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect and is the recipient of the 2022 Article/Chapter (ECR) Award by the Australian Legal Research Awards. Barber has extensive experience working with international humanitarian NGOs well as multi-sector humanitarian response programs in humanitarian crises around the world. She has also worked as a humanitarian advocacy advisor with Oxfam and Save the Children, and as a lecturer with the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership at Deakin University.

Additional Resources:

• Rebecca Barber, ‘The Powers of the UN General Assembly to Prevent and Respond to Atrocity Crimes: A Guidance Document’ (Asia Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, 29 April 2021)
• Rebecca Barber, ‘Cooperating through the General Assembly to End Serious Breaches of Peremptory Norms’ (2022) 71(1) International and Comparative Law Quarterly 1 :
• Rebecca Barber, ‘An Exploration of the General Assembly’s Troubled Relationship with Unilateral Sanction’ (2021) 70(2) International and Comparative Law Quarterly 343:
• Rebecca Barber, ‘Does International Law Permit the Provision of Humanitarian Assistance Without Host State Consent? Territorial Integrity, Necessity and the Determinative Function of the General Assembly’ (2020) 23 Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law 85.
• Alex Bellamy, ‘The Responsibility to Protect at 15: A Promise Unfulfilled’ (Global Centre for R2P, 21 September 2020). Find other commentaries on the Global Centre’s website.
• Watch ‘A conversation with the UN Special Advisers on the Responsibility to Protect’ (2020) here on the Global Centre’s website.
• Read the Secretary General’s Annual Reports on R2P on the Global Centre’s website. Read the 2009 ‘Report of the Secretary-General: Implementing the Responsibility to Protect’ on the UN and the Rule of Law