Never Again? The UN's Role in Genocide Prevention

Journal of Strategic Security, 2018

This article addresses the under-theorized dual-mandate of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention was drafted in the wake of the Holocaust and other Nazi genocidal atrocities committed during World War II. The primary mission of the Genocide Convention was to establish a uniform definition of this scourge, and insert its prevention and punishment into the list of obligations states hold within the current international legal regime. Based on the past 70 years, it is clear that the international community has overwhelmingly failed to uphold the Genocide Convention’s prevention mandate. The Convention and its signatories have been more successful in punishing perpetrators posthaste (e.g., the 1940s Nuremburg and Tokyo trials; the 1990s tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; and the International Criminal Court). Eyeing the failure of the international community in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the Canadian government created the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that created the doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). The article argues that R2P has filled part of the gaps in the Genocide Convention and allowed states to take affirmative actions to prevent genocide in the modern era (e.g., Libya 2011).

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm has spawned a lot academic literature since its formulation in 2001. The focus of these has mainly been on the responsibility to react, the second of the tri-partite continuum that makes up the R2P norm. This is undoubtedly due to the controversial nature associated with military action. This preoccupation ignores the importance of the initial step of R2P – the responsibility to prevent. This is compounded by the fact that presently prevention is mostly focused on the prevention of genocide. This is problematic because state practice in relation to the prevention of genocide usually is to ensure that genocide is occurring before prevention begins. This detracts from R2P’s equal theoretical treatment of genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing – vastly different crimes. It is my contention that the present level and nature of focus on prevention in international law would undermine the utility of R2P as an instrument to be used by the international community. An individual state’s compliance with R2P within its borders is easy to evaluate; it is in the extra-territorial exercise of R2P that problems arise. This article aims to examine the responsibility to prevent by dissecting the component crimes of R2P and their prevention, examining prevention through the overarching lens of disciplines in international law and the various practicalities that impede prevention. The inclusion of the prevention gross human rights violations in the ambit of R2P is examined as an answer to the difficulties addressed.

The international community embraced the norm of responsibility to protect (RtoP) when the 2005 UN World Summit members signed a document enshrining this concept and the General Assembly and the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1674. Further, in January 2009, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a report, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, which argued for the implementation of RtoP according to three principles: the primary responsibility of the sovereign state to protect its citizens; the international community’s commitment to assist the state in building its capacity to carry out its RtoP; and the timely and decisive international intervention when the sate is manifestly failing to carry out its responsibility. The paper argues that the UN’s attempt to curb genocide, ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity through RtoP, while admirable, has serious shortcomings and faces formidable challenges that it must overcome if the norm of RtoP is to command universal support as a legal principle that promises realistic application. An example of North Korea is used to illustrate the obstacles.

Strathmore Law Journal, 2020

States are collapsing and genocidal acts are being committed or may happen any moment. In these instances, states look to the United Nations (UN) to act in order to prevent genocide from happening. This article seeks to determine if there exists an obligation under international law for the UN to prevent genocide, and in that event, can the UN be held responsible under international law for failure to comply with this obligation? This article further analyses these questions by looking at the aspect of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) which elicits an obligation to prevent genocide first to states and then to the UN. At the very minimum, every state must protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In the case of states failing to undertake this obligation, the UN is bound to step in and undertake this obligation. Hence, this is a responsibility that is an obligation to states first and then to the UN. In summation, this article esta...

Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2016

RUTGERS LAW REVIEW

I am very grateful to Rutgers Law School for the invitation to speak at this important conference. It is a great pleasure to be here this afternoon in the company of such distinguished panelists and a committed audience. My presentation concentrates on the importance of the prevention of mass violence and international crimes, including genocide, and I will present mainly from the perspectives of the International Center for Transitional Justice (ICTJ) programs in several countries, and also from my experience between 2004 and 2007 as the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the Prevention of Genocide.1 Breaking the cycle of impunity and fostering accountability are crucial components in the prevention of future violence and mass atrocities: no prevention efforts can take place without a serious attempt to break the cycle of impunity for past human rights violations, especially if they are so widespread or systematic as to constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide. If perpetrators feel shielded from prosecution or investigation for the crimes they already committed, they have an incentive not only to commit them anew, but also to raise the stakes and perpetrate even more serious crimes. Failure to do justice to the victims usually leads to sentiments of revenge, and thus, to the likelihood that more crimes will occur. Accountability is essential not only to halt the vicious cycle of revenge, but also to enable the victims to make their own decisions as to their protection and well-being, so that they are not merely passive recipients of the international community's efforts. Finally, accountability for past crimes is also important so that the victims, their families, and their communities can distinguish between their victi-*

2011

'…I know there is a God because in Rwanda I shook hands with the devil. I have seen him, I have smelled him and I have touched him. I know the devil exists, and therefore I know there is a God. Peux ce que veux. Allons-y' (Dallaire, 2004: xviii). Genocide is perhaps the most extreme and destructive crime against humanity, however, the international response to incidents of this nature has frequently lacked political will or commitment, either financially or through military interventions. A commonality in the lack of genocide intervention by individual states is the absence of gainful resources such as oil, gold and diamonds in the country of conflict, or through the description of such events as 'civil wars'. A further problem encountered with the intervention of genocide is its legal classification, the limited meaning of which has consequently resulted in governments failing to respond whilst attempting to determine the correct 'terminology', with the recent conflicts in Darfur being a key example of this problem (Quayle, 2005). This thesis, therefore, attempts to determine whether genocide can be actively prevented through a discussion of the potential causal factors of genocide, and a critical evaluation of whether existing responses to genocide are both appropriate and effective. This dissertation is dedicated to all those who lost their lives to genocide and to those still living with the painful memories left behind. I sincerely hope that 'Never Again' will, one day, be more than an empty slogan.

2017

This issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention, titled “Global Approaches to Atrocity Prevention: Theory, Practice, and the State of the Field,” presents a critical overview of the current state of Atrocity Prevention around the world. The issue was conceived of in mid-2016 by Douglas Irvin- Erickson and James P. Finkel, with the hope of responding to two immediate needs in scholarship and practice. First, we felt, scholars can always bene t from the perspectives of practitioners, o cials, and others with experience working in various bureaucracies—while practitioners and policy makers could bene t from scholarship that helps them critically reflect on their work. Secondly, very li le research was being conducted on the sudden outburst of energy around the world (over the past ve years) to create national-level government, governmental, and civil-society institutions (with clear institutional connections to governments) dedicated to the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities.

Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2019

In its evolving delineation from the senior field of Holocaust studies, the interdisciplinary field of genocide studies has seen a remarkable growth in the past 25 years. We have seen the professionalization of the field through the emergence of two organizations, the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 1994 and the International Network of Genocide Scholars in 2005. Each organization gave birth to new scholarly journals for the field and the corresponding growth of scholarship has led to an impressive robustness of interdisciplinary work reflected in the compilation of comprehensive textbooks and handbooks, myriad edited volumes, and a seemingly endless array of workshops, seminars, and conferences. On-line encyclopedias, discussion groups, blog sites, and curricular initiatives in secondary and higher education reveal the extent to which both scholars and educated laypeople continue to wrestle with the concept, and, more importantly, the reality of genocidal violence. Genocide studies remains, however, a young and, at times, fractious discipline, in search of theoretical and conceptual maturity-often acutely reflected in the self-imposed tension between scholarship and activism. For too long, there remained an "ivory tower" lens in our field that upheld the former and, too often, looked down with suspicion, or even derision, upon the latter. This has been challenged, however, with the emergence of new generations of teacher-scholars in the field-coming from more diverse disciplinary, age, gender, cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic backgrounds-who have pushed us to redefine "engagement." Increasingly, activism has come to be seen as a necessary complement to scholarship. To divorce the two, cheapens both. There can be a synergy between scholarship and activism in which each is nurtured and informed by the other. This is just one transition that has pushed us to reframe the field in which we work. It also, however, pushes us to bring a critical lens to other long-held disciplinary assumptions. As Alex Hinton first argued in 2012, "the time is right to engage in critical reflections about the state of the field." 1 Referring to this exercise as "critical genocide studies," Hinton called for a "critical thinking about the field of genocide studies itself, exploring our presuppositions, decentering our biases, and throwing light on blind spots in the hope of further enriching this dynamic field." 2 In that spirit, this article expands those critical reflections to the work of genocide and atrocity prevention. Of particular focus in this piece is the communication of the logic of atrocity prevention to State actors. As genocide studies has developed as a field, we also have become more insular; professionalizing how we operate in such a way that it has pulled us away from those very venues in which we should be applying our work. From the sure footing of the outside, we often criticize State actors, particularly policymakers, for their impotent actions in the face of escalating risks or, even, genocidal violence. But we seldom speak with them or push ourselves to find ways to bridge what we know with how they work. Scholars and State actors occupy separate intellectual and institutional universes, to the impoverishment of both communities. Recognizing that reality, this paper will examine how genocide studies scholars might be more productive and influential voices in deliberations on atrocity prevention, particularly in engagement with State actors. Since its inaugural seminar in 2008, I have had the privilege to be involved with the work of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation (AIPR), an international NGO devoted to atrocity prevention through education, training, and technical assistance to State actors.

Dissertation, 2013

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) was adopted by the General Assembly sixty-five years ago. Following the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, the Genocide Convention’s primary object and purpose was the eradication of the crime through its prevention. Numerous cases of genocide have been committed since the Convention entered into force in 1951, betraying the hope that the Convention would eradicate the world of this ‘odious scourge’. This begged the question: why, despite its universal condemnation and international legal prohibition, has genocide continued to be perpetrated and, in particular, why has the international community failed to take the necessary measures to prevent it? An analysis of the text of the Genocide Convention and the scholarly literature revealed that the Convention includes weaknesses that diminish its preventive efficacy. Because the Genocide Convention evolved through a negotiating process that produced three formal drafts of the convention, the final draft was compared to the previous two to determine whether the identified weaknesses originated in the initial draft or were negotiated into the adopted text. Only one of the identified weaknesses was present in the initial draft. These findings supported my thesis that the Genocide Convention’s preventive efficacy was intentionally weakened, while also raising the question of whether the five permanent members of the Security Council had other motives when they introduced these changes to the Genocide Convention. Why would the negotiating parties, the permanent members of the Security Council chief among them, actively work to weaken components of the draft convention? After reviewing the scholarly literature and taking into account the historical context within which the treaty was being negotiated, I concluded that the negotiating parties privileged considerations of national interest and state sovereignty rights over the development of a treaty capable of achieving the full international prohibition of genocide. The permanent members worked to ensure that they would not be implicated in the commission of genocide and that the Genocide Convention could not be used to justify interference in their internal affairs. The purposeful weakening of the Genocide Convention’s preventive efficacy, while based in plausible reasons for doing so, demonstrates a lack of commitment to the prevention of genocide. Collectively, the weaknesses combine to relegate the Genocide Convention to a form of symbolic legislation. Because there have been multiple failed attempts to amend the Genocide Convention, the future of genocide prevention likely lies elsewhere. Three recent developments in international law provide some promise for the future. The development of the Responsibility to Protect, the establishment of the International Criminal Court, and the International Court of Justice’s ruling in the case of Bosnia v. Serbia, were analyzed to determine their potential to improve on the record of genocide prevention. It was concluded that each offers promise and each contains practical limitations.