The book provides an up to date and authoritative account of how the UN is re[1]thinking its
obligations to protect civilians during conflicts. Based on hundreds of interviews with senior
UN officials and humanitarian protection staff in headquarters and in the field and a review of
the UN´s ´grey literature´. It also draws on the author´s own experience of working on human
rights and protection in some of the world´s most violent conflicts. It is written not about
what the UN ought to do - or how it could have behaved differently in an abstract or
theoretically ideal world - but what the UN is actually doing to fulfil the fundamental
purposes set forth in its Charter.
