A/HRC/28/66 Coordinating Committee, to take an active ownership of the Rabat Plan of Action and develop strategies to eliminate the root causes of violence in the name of religion. 51. Furthermore, States should safeguard the memory of all population groups, and of religious communities in particular, including by developing and protecting national archives, memorial museums and monuments. 2. Responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity 52. At the 2005 World Summit, Heads of State and Government committed to the responsibility to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.13 This entails the responsibility of States to protect their own populations from atrocity crimes; the responsibility to help other States do so through the provision of international assistance; and the responsibility to take collective action when a State manifestly fails to protect its population. In particular, the word “populations” refers to all people living within a State’s territory, whether citizens or not, and including religious groups. The principle builds on existing obligations under international law and embodies a political determination to prevent and respond to atrocity crimes, but does not itself have an independent legal character. 53. In his 2009 report on implementing the responsibility to protect (A/63/677), the Secretary-General established a framework for implementing the responsibility to protect principle on the basis of three equal, mutually reinforcing and non-sequential pillars. The first pillar encompasses the responsibility of each individual State to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The second pillar focuses on the provision of international assistance on the basis of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome, which asserts that the international community should, as appropriate, encourage and help States to exercise this responsibility, and that the international community should also support the United Nations in establishing an early warning capability and assist those which are under stress before crises and conflicts break out. The third pillar outlines options for taking collective action, in a timely and decisive manner and in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, should peaceful means be inadequate and where national authorities are manifestly failing to protect their populations.14 3. Obligations of non-State armed groups (a) International human rights law 54. While international human rights law traditionally focused only on the obligations of States,15 an evolving approach recognizes the importance and impact of certain non-State actors, arguing that some human rights obligations also apply to them, including non-State armed groups with (or arguably even without) effective control over a territory. In that regard, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women stressed in its general recommendation No. 30 (2013) on women in conflict prevention, conflict and postconflict situations, that “under certain circumstances, in particular where an armed group with an identifiable political structure exercises significant control over territory and population, non-State actors are obliged to respect international human rights”.16 13 14 15 16 See General Assembly resolution 60/1, paras. 138 and 139. See also www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/responsibility.shtml; and A/69/266, paras. 78-85. See CCPR/C/21/Rev.1/Add.13, para. 8. See CEDAW/C/GC/30, para. 16. 13