GENOCIDE PREVENTION

The day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was approved, there was another international instrument approved by the U.N. General Assembly through Resolution 260:¹⁴ The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The international community is ready for a more committed effort toward genocide prevention. In 2005, sixty years after the liberation of the extermina­tion camps in Auschwitz, a resolution was passed to remember the dead by committing the human family not only to the memory, but also to the preven­tion of such crimes. The terrible violence of Rwanda and Cambodia has also stirred the conscience of many who find it unacceptable for humans to kill humans and for the state to sustain, condone, and support such violence. As we also begin to realize that more people were killed by states in the last cen­tury than by active wars, intrastate violence becomes less acceptable.

Self-restraint, as previously mentioned, must be supported by negotiating transformative dynamics that will allow human rights to become an accepted norm for all humans and not for just a few. In this framework, recent debate emerged at the beginning of this century around the concept of the responsibil­ity to protect. The international commission¹⁵ that first introduced the term in the international debate clearly identified three stages in the responsibility to protect: prevention, reaction, and rehabilitation.

This new bold political move may have the effect on the international sys­tem of creating the equivalent of a law enforcement unit. When human rights are taken seriously, systems of prevention are in place and proper responses to potential violence are available. When early warnings indicate impending vio­lence, then the debate is framed in terms of crime prevention. In such a system, violence is not prevalent and should not be expected, while abuses will only rarely be experienced. All current early warning systems include human rights as meaningful indicators. The challenge is to make sure that the political will to act on the assessments occurs not only occasionally, but with methodical reg­ularity as well. Against this backdrop, a closer collaboration of conflict resolu­tion and human rights can provide us with the systemic and transformative understanding we need to positively and creatively address the unknowns of our own destructiveness. In conclusion:

• Benefits of a prevention approach can be demonstrated only when such a strategy is pursued coherently over time. While the debate over responsi­bility to protect is very important, it has unfortunately at times been polar­ized in such a way that prevention has been perceived as intervention.

• Focus on genocide prevention could actually help individual states to develop convincing and effective preventive strategies that are not imposed by external actors, but rather indigenously created.

• Genocide prevention can provide similar momentum to catalyze our collective attention toward crystallizing prevention in new patterns of communication and new decision-making processes both within and among states.

• Development of networks can be extraordinarily effective. They have the capacity to operate across institutional lines, linking state and interna­tional organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and institutional actors.

• Early warning systems are fundamental components of a prevention strategy, yet they are still in formation. The need to establish mecha­nisms to collect and analyze information so as to present policy makers with meaningful political options is urgent.

• Effective early warning systems imply a deep understanding of root causes of conflict plus an establishment of the management capacity that allows systematic analysis and interpretation of relevant data as well as its systematic collection and recording.

• Need for consistency and accuracy of data sets is a crucial element in the overall worth of the early warning systems. However, collective human capacity to understand deadly conflict through a quantitative approach is relatively recent and must be strengthened by an empha­sis on genocide prevention that takes seriously all human rights viola­tions, relevant violent events, and indications of possible escalation of atrocities.