The mandate of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty was to build a broader understanding of the problem of reconciling intervention and sovereignty and to foster global political consensus on how to move from polemics, and often paralysis, towards action within the international system, particularly through the United Nations. Under the chairmanship of Gareth Evans, former Australian Foreign Minister, and Mohamed Sahnoun, Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General, ICISS presented its report, The Responsibility to Protect, to UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan on December 18, 2001. The central theme of the report is that that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own citizens, and when they are unwilling or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader community of states. The report breaks new ground and helps generate a new international consensus on these issues.

The ICISS Research Directorate, located at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), provided essential support. This international research team was led by Thomas G. Weiss, Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute and Presidential Professor, Stanlake J.T.M. Samkange, a lawyer from Zimbabwe and former UN staff member, and Don Hubert, of the Peacebuilding and Human Security Division at Foreign Affairs Canada (FAC).

Research was compiled as a supplementary volume entitled The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background. The first part contains background research in the form of nine substantial research essays; the second part is a comprehensive bibliography; and the third, about the Commission, contains background information in how the Commission functioned and summaries of the consultations held around the world during its year-long mandate. This volume, like the report itself, should prove a quarry for scholars, specialists and policy makers for years to come. The first and third parts are available through FAC’s R2P-Home. The bibliography, which is periodically updated, is available through the Research Directorate home.

The Research Directorate continues to actively promote research about all aspects of humanitarian action and more specifically about "the responsibility to protect." Professor Weiss continues to work with the Government of Canada in ensuring appropriate follow-up at several levels - with governments, non-governmental organizations, parliamentarians, the media, and the academic community.

Statement by the UN Secretary-General Kofi A. Annan at the launch of the Commission's report on February 15, 2002:

"I sought to develop the idea of two notions of sovereignty: one for States, another for individuals. This idea was rooted firmly in the UN Charter, which affirms the sovereignty of States even as it challenges us to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war... How to protect individual lives while maintaining and even strengthening the sovereignty of States has become clearer with the publication of this report. You are taking away the last excuses of the international community for doing nothing when doing something can save lives."