When the UN Refuses to Prevent Genocide: Legal, Political, and Religious Factors

From the publisher: The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations, reflecting the global commitment to 'never again' in the wake of the Holocaust. Seven decades on, The United Nations and Genocide examines how the UN has met, and failed to meet, the commitment to 'prevent and punish' the crime of genocide. It explores why the UN was unable to respond effectively to the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans, and Darfur, and considers new approaches recently adopted by the UN to address genocide. This volume asks the crucial question: can the UN protect peoples from genocide in the modern world? From the chapter author: There are a variety of reasons why UN members might not join together to prevent or punish a genocide, either through UN mechanisms or with a regional or unilateral intervention. First, they might regard the conflict and related atrocities as a permissible exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defense, as the United States argued in the case of the Vietnam War and the bombardment of the Ho Chi Minh trail and alleged 'Vietcong' bases in Cambodia and Laos. A very narrow reading of the Genocide Convention would aid such efforts. Second, there might be a political bloc or superpower behind the perpetrators, as with communist China in the case of Cambodia, or the Arab League or the African Union in the case of Iraq or Sudan. Third, there might be an absence of religious solidarity with the group, as with the Mandaeans and Yezidis of Iraq, the animists of southern Sudan, or the Catholic or Orthodox Christians of Nigeria or Syria, as opposed to other groups benefiting from religious solidarity or a willingness to sacrifice self-interest to aid the group(s), such as the Palestinians, Bosnian Muslims, Kuwaitis, or Libyans. To begin with the 'legal' factor, a number of scholars, not to mention defense attorneys, advocate a restrictive interpretation. Such an interpretation may halt efforts to impose the death penalty or other sanctions on perpetrators of 'genocides' in Cambodia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Sudan, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. The most prominent example is Professor William Schabas, in his often-cited book 'Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes' (2000; rev. 2009). While acknowledging that the drafting history of the Convention does not define genocide as requiring a genocidal plan or policy by identifiable government officials, his book argues that genocide is impossible to imagine without such a plan. Professor Schabas has argued elsewhere that genocide did not occur in Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Kosovo because there was no plan by a ruling elite to intentionally and completely destroy a race. Professor Schabas continued to maintain this interpretation past the point in time at which judges had arguably rejected it. When scholars pointed out that the drafting history often repudiated his narrow reading of the Genocide Convention, he appealed to public policy arguments against recognizing too many genocides. The gist of this policy argument is that a generous interpretation of the Genocide Convention 'demeans the suffering of the victims.' Yet the idea that the survivors of massacres are demeaned by genocide prevention is an odd one, and an idea that survivors often deny.