1 The Responsibility to Protect and the Responsibility to Assist: Developing Human Rights Protection through Police building Charles Hawksley & Nichole Georgeou Abstract Responsibility to Protect’s Pillar II requires the international community to assist states to build their capacity to promote resilience to genocide and mass atrocities. In this chapter we unpack this ‘Responsibility to Assist’, and identify its myriad forms with modern peacekeeping and state building. Such operations are often tasked with post- conflict reconstruction, where the emphasis on rule of law requires international police building efforts, and in this chapter we explore this phenomenon in Timor Leste and Solomon Islands. We argue Pillar II police building concentrates on building the rule of law to prevent future atrocities, and by applying gender as a lens to these two operations we unpack the tensions created as local police translate and implement international norms of human rights.