The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS) was an ad hoc commission of participants which in 2001 worked to popularize the concept of humanitarian intervention under the name of "Responsibility to protect". The Commission was instigated in the wake of the Kosovo War by Lloyd Axworthy and the Chretien government in September 2000 and co-chaired by Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun under the authority of the Canadian Government. Part of its membership was from the UN General Assembly.[1]
The ICISS "was funded by the Canadian Government, together with major international foundations including the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Simons Foundation. ICISS was also indebted to the Governments of Switzerland and the United Kingdom for their generous financial and in-kind support to the work of the Commission."[1]