Welcome to the personal website of Gareth Evans

Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AO QC has been Chancellor of the Australian National University since January 2010, and a Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne since July 2009, and is President Emeritus of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, the independent global conflict prevention and resolution organisation which he led from 2000 to 2009.

He previously spent 21 years in Australian politics, thirteen of them as a Cabinet Minister. As Foreign Minister (1988-96) he was best known internationally for his roles in developing the UN peace plan for Cambodia, concluding the Chemical Weapons Convention, and initiating new Asia Pacific regional economic and security architecture. He has written or edited nine books - most recently The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All, published by the Brookings Institution in 2008 (paperback edition 2009) - and has published over 100 journal articles and chapters on foreign relations, human rights and legal and constitutional reform.

He has co-chaired two major International Commissions, on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2000-01), and Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (2008-10) whose report Eliminating Nuclear Threats was published in December 2009. He was a member of the UN Secretary General's High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004), the Blix Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction (2006), the Zedillo Commission of Eminent Persons on The Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond (2008) and the UN Secretary-General's Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention. He is Co-Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

In May 2010 Gareth Evans was awarded the 2010 Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Four Freedoms Award for Freedom from Fear, for his pioneering work on the Responsibility to Protect concept, and his contributions to conflict prevention and resolution, arms control and disarmament. In December 2011 Foreign Policy magazine cited him as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2011 "for making 'the responsibility to protect' more than academic".

(December 2011)

Click here for a full-length biography.

Recent Speeches, Papers and Comments

"Responsibility While Protecting", in Project Syndicate (Worldwide Distribution), 27 January 2012

"We can prevent famine if we heed the warnings", in The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 January 2012

"Australia’s Distinctive Presence in the World: And Why Winning a Security Council Seat Matters", Australia Day 2012 Breakfast Address, Parliament House, Melbourne, 26 January 2012

"R2P after Libya: The State of Play - And Next Steps", Notes of Presentation, Group of Friends of R2P, 19 January 2012

"A World of Grey", in Project Syndicate (Worldwide Distribution), 26 December 2011

"Letter in Response to Hugh Roberts, 'Who Said Gaddafi Had to Go?'", in London Review of Books, Vol. 33 No. 24, 15 December 2011

"Nothing gained by treating India as an outlaw", in The Age, 15 December 2011

"Media Release and Inaugural Statement", Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (APLN), Seoul, 12 December 2011

"India and Australia in the Asian Century", Keynote Lecture, The Asian Century – Security, Sustainability and Society: An India Australia Dialogue, Kolkata, 5 December 2011

"End of the Argument: How we won the debate over stopping genocide", in Foreign Policy magazine, 1 December 2011

All Speeches and Publications

Recent Videos and Broadcasts

Keynote Address: The Evolution of the Responsibility to Protect, The Stanley Foundation, New York, 17 January 2012

Responding to Mass Atrocity Crimes: The Responsibility to Protect After Libya, Chatham House, London, 6 October 2011

Debate: Intelligence Squared Debate: WikiLeaks as a Force for Good?, Big Ideas, Sydney, 23 June 2011

Keynote Address: War, Peace and National Identity, Festival of Ideas, Melbourne, 15 June 2011

Interview: Libya and the Responsibility to Protect, Newsline, 15 June 2011

Expert Panel: International Responses to Democratisation in the Arab World, Melbourne, 13 May 2011

All Videos and Broadcasts

Site last updated 15 December 2011