Responding to Genocide: The Politics of International Action 9781685850593

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Responding to Genocide

A project of the International Peace Institute

RESPONDING TO GENOCIDE The Politics of International Action

edited by

Adam Lupel Ernesto Verdeja

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2013 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2013 by the International Peace Institute, Inc. All rights reserved by the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Responding to genocide : the politics of international action / edited by Adam Lupel and Ernesto Verdeja. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-58826-930-0 (hc : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58826-906-5 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Genocide. I. Lupel, Adam, editor of compilation. II. Verdeja, Ernesto, editor of compilation. HV6322.7.R474 2013 364.15'1—dc23 2013003034 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5

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To Bettina Spencer, whose support and love have been invaluable as I worked on this project. —Ernesto Verdeja To my parents, Warren and Sally Lupel, and To the memory of the Jews of Uman, Ukraine, and the victims of Babi Yar, where 33,771 Jews from Kiev were massacred by Nazi forces on September 29–30, 1941. —Adam Lupel

Contents

Foreword, Terje Rød-Larsen Acknowledgments

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1 Responding to Genocide Adam Lupel and Ernesto Verdeja

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2 Genocide: Debating Definitions Ernesto Verdeja

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3 The Causes of Civil War and Genocide: A Comparison Frances Stewart

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4 Detection: The History and Politics of Early Warning Barbara Harff

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5 Mediation and Diplomacy in Preventing Genocide I. William Zartman

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6 The Role of Transnational Civil Society Iavor Rangelov

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7 The Role of Regional Organizations Timothy Murithi

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8 The Role of the UN Security Council Colin Keating

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Contents

9 Politics, the UN, and Halting Mass Atrocities Thomas G. Weiss

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10 Developing the Political Will to Respond Adam Lupel and Ernesto Verdeja

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List of Acronyms Bibliography The Contributors Index About the Book

257 261 281 283 299

Foreword Terje Rød-Larsen, President, International Peace Institute

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he International Peace Institute (IPI) is proud to present Responding to Genocide: The Politics of International Action, edited by Adam Lupel and Ernesto Verdeja. This book offers a systematic analysis of the distinct actors and tools that the international community can use when confronting genocide. It provides a practical assessment of the political challenges faced by international organizations, nation states, and civil society groups as they seek to prevent or detect and stop genocidal violence. It may be said that how we define a crime determines how and when we respond to it. Thus, the book begins by analyzing the debates over the definition of genocide, and by presenting new research on the social, economic, and political causes of mass violence, comparing and contrasting the causes of civil war and genocide. The book’s contributors survey the actors, strategies, and policies that are available to prevent atrocities or to stop them once they have begun. They discuss national, regional, international, and transnational actors and institutions. They examine the specific tools available, including risk assessment models, early warning systems, mediation and preventive diplomacy, civil society pressure, and military intervention. The contributors also address the recurring impediments to timely and robust action, including notions of absolute state sovereignty and the absence of political will, which remains the critical ingredient of any effective international response to mass atrocities. The book concludes with a helpful guide on how to support the development of the political will to respond to genocide in the face of so many obstacles to effective action.

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Foreword

Responding to Genocide forms part of IPI’s ongoing research on conflict prevention, mediation, and preventive diplomacy. In 2011, IPI contributed to the UN Secretary-General’s report on preventive diplomacy by providing four case studies that were later published in a separate report, “Preventive Diplomacy: Regions in Focus.” In 2012, IPI published A Good Office? Twenty Years of UN Mediation in Myanmar, a history that provides lessons learned from twenty years of the SecretaryGeneral’s engagement in the country. And in 2013, IPI published a multichapter research report titled “New Technology and the Prevention of Violence and Conflict,” in partnership with the UN Development Programme and the US Agency for International Development. Each of these projects has the overarching goal of strengthening the core tools at the disposal of multilateral organizations and their member states to address the causes of conflict and instability. In that spirit, we hope that the present volume will contribute to efforts to strengthen the international capacity to prevent mass atrocities and help to improve collaborative efforts to stop them once begun. IPI owes a debt of thanks to all of its generous donors who fund our research and make publications like this one possible. In particular, IPI would like to thank the governments of Finland and Norway for contributing to our work on conflict prevention.

Acknowledgments

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his project began as a series of discussions about the political challenges and possibilities of preventing mass human rights violations in the modern world. We sought to bring together prominent scholars and diplomats to explore the state of prevention and intervention policy, as well as the ways forward for establishing a robust responsibility-toprotect norm. As editors, we are grateful to our contributors, who worked through several drafts as we aimed to move beyond academic boundaries and create a work that speaks to both scholars and policymakers. We would also like to thank Alex Bellamy and the two anonymous reviewers who read and commented on an earlier version of the manuscript. In addition, thanks are due to the anonymous reviewers of each of the chapters. We would also like to express our gratitude to Lynne Rienner for her ever-energetic encouragement throughout the process of putting this volume together and to our project editor at Lynne Rienner Publishers, Lesli Brooks Athanasoulis, for her patience and keen editorial eye as the manuscript went from raw material to finished product. Ernesto would like to thank Jessica Brandwein and Ashley Greene at the University of Notre Dame for research assistance and the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at Notre Dame for supporting his research and work on this project. Adam would like to thank a number of people who supported this project at the International Peace Institute— from the book’s earliest days as a vague proposal to its final stages of production—including Ed Luck, James Cockayne, Ellie Hearne, Paul Romita, Warren Hoge, Francesco Mancini, Mireille Affa’a-Mindzie, Adam Smith, Jill Stoddard, Marie O’Reilly, and Thong Nguyen. Adam would also like to thank Renata Segura for being an essential partner in every way, romantic, intellectual, parental, and professional. —the Editors xi

1 Responding to Genocide Adam Lupel and Ernesto Verdeja

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n April 6, 1994, Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and a number of his aides were killed when their plane was shot down as it approached the airport in the country’s capital, Kigali. Accompanied by Burundi’s president, Habyarimana was returning from a round of peace negotiations in neighboring Tanzania with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi rebel force that had fought a three-year civil war against the government prior to a ceasefire brokered by the United Nations in 1993. Immediately after Habyarimana’s assassination, the war resumed: his Hutu-led government established roadblocks around the capital and mobilized forces against the insurgents. Simultaneously, government militias began a systematic campaign of exterminating the civilian Tutsi population as the armed forces and rebels engaged in fighting around the country. The United Nations, which had a peacekeeping force already in place in Rwanda, withdrew most of its forces after Hutu militias killed several peacekeepers and images of their bodies were broadcast around the world. The small peacekeeping force left behind had only a minimal impact on the ensuing genocide that took hundreds of thousands of lives. In the aftermath of the killings, observers around the world asked why the international community had failed Rwandans so dismally.1 International outrage over the United Nations’ failure in Rwanda seemed to signal a new global resolve to stop mass human rights violations. Newspaper op-eds decried the slaughter that followed the peacekeeping force’s removal, human rights activists called for strengthening international responses to mass atrocity, and diplomats and politicians vowed to prevent future genocides. Tragically, these responses were not new: genocide and mass atrocities have elicited international condemna1

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tion and calls for intervention since at least the early nineteenth century. Throughout the 1800s, a small but vocal group of Western European activists called for military interventions to protect Bulgarian, Syrian, Greek, and other Christian minorities from abuse by the Ottoman Empire.2 The twentieth century saw popular mobilizations to protect the rights of civilians in the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and mass killings in East Pakistan, Biafra, and more recently Bosnia and Kosovo.3 Nevertheless, the sustained attention given to preventing genocide over the last two decades marks an important shift from previous eras: since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations and human rights organizations around the world have drawn attention to the need to prevent and stop genocide, crimes against humanity, and other significant human rights violations, and they have devoted enormous resources to this cause. Recently, activists have called for interventions in Sudan, Libya, Syria, and elsewhere to protect vulnerable populations from state terror; the principle of a state’s “responsibility to protect” its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity has become part of the international humanitarian vocabulary. At the 2005 World Summit in New York, the governments of the globe unanimously accepted this principle and committed themselves to act decisively when individual states manifestly fail to satisfy their obligations to their populations. This remarkable surge in global attention, accelerated over the past ten years, raises a number of provocative questions about the justifications for and substance of long-term preventive measures and shortterm robust action to stop mass-atrocity crimes. With this volume we intend to contribute to ongoing debates on prevention and intervention by examining the possibilities and challenges of creating viable international response mechanisms to genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing—the four primary classes of crimes that generate the most debate in international policy circles, and that are addressed by the responsibility-to-protect principle. We proceed by disaggregating and systematically examining the key elements of responses, including relevant actors, levels, and tools that together constitute the domain of international action. This disaggregated approach rests on an inclusive analytical perspective that differs from prevalent approaches, which focus primarily on “humanitarian” (meaning military) interventions. Rather, we approach the challenge of stopping mass atrocities by examining the responsibilities of states to protect their people, international assistance to encourage states to meet their obligations, and timely and decisive responses by international actors when

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states are manifestly failing to protect their populations.4 Thus, in this volume we analyze not only international intervention but prevention efforts as well. A more inclusive perspective allows us to identify the opportunities and barriers to international responses that are often missed in analyses focusing on only one particular strategy, such as military intervention, or one conflict phase, such as full-scale civil war. By adopting a wider perspective, we can identify the linkages between various responses, as well as the ways in which they may reinforce one another or work at cross-purposes. This perspective generates a set of questions: What are the causes of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing? What strategies and policies are available to prevent these atrocities, and when required, intervene to stop them? Who is best positioned to act? What are the impediments to timely and robust action? What are the dangers associated with responding? How do political factors shape the nature of international responses, and how do they limit or enable the chances of success? Answering these questions requires engagement with a host of factors, including multiple actors and institutional levels (national, regional, international, transnational), ideational and material challenges, and a variety of complex interactions that shape outcomes. These various factors can combine in numerous ways, in some cases resulting in swift and decisive responses and in others working at cross-purposes to slow or derail meaningful action. Thus, we scrutinize here the processes that shape engaged response. In exploring these processes, we analyze a variety of tools available for prevention: detection programs, early warning systems, mediation, preventive diplomacy, civil society pressure, and military intervention, among others.

State Sovereignty Transformed

Our discussion of international response mechanisms must begin by addressing the principle of state sovereignty, which structures international politics and plays a central role in shaping prevention and intervention options. State sovereignty has often been viewed as a sacrosanct principle that protects states from any foreign scrutiny or intervention, making concerted international response against domestic genocide or similar crimes especially difficult to mobilize. Thus, before moving on to introducing the specific actors, levels, and tools of response, we must address how conceptions of state sovereignty have been transformed over the past several decades. Because of these transformations, sover-

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eignty, in principle, does not pose an insurmountable barrier to effective responses to mass atrocities, and such responses do not necessarily undermine a commitment to state sovereignty. In fact, they can support it. The international system as centered in the UN Charter has two often-competing centers of gravity: the sovereign equality of states and the declared universality of human rights. While not incompatible, their coexistence does result in periodic tensions. The United Nations was founded on a commitment to independent state sovereignty, no matter the character of the state—democratic, socialist, monarchical, or something else.5 This commitment provides fundamental order to the global system, and stems from the guiding aspiration to avoid a repetition of the conflagrations of the first half of the twentieth century and to bring some stability to what realist international relations scholars call the anarchic world order.6 Yet, equally, in the wake of the Holocaust and other wartime atrocities against civilians, the founding of the United Nations sought to reaffirm “faith in fundamental human rights.” And Article 1(3) of the UN Charter cites “promoting and encouraging respect for human rights” as a primary purpose of the organization. These two fundamental commitments—to sovereign equality and human rights—place two distinct subjects at the center of international affairs: the state and the individual. For much of history, international law only addressed state action, and sovereignty entailed a reciprocal agreement among national governments to allow independent states to rule their territory without external interference. International law lay between states and did not penetrate their borders, and individuals had no autonomous standing in international law. However, that principle of noninterference becomes normatively questionable and practically undermined when international law is drafted in the name of humanity and the individual, as it has been repeatedly since World War II.7 More and more, the principle of human security has entered the lexicon alongside state security as a concern of international affairs.8 The law prohibiting genocide is paradigmatic for this development, as William Schabas has shown. In a relatively short amount of time the legal prohibition of genocide has gone from being the cause of one committed scholar in the 1930s, to being approved in the UN General Assembly in 1948, to being declared a jus cogens (peremptory norm) of public international law by the International Court of Justice in 2006.9 Now a recognized part of customary international law, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (as discussed in chapter 2 of this volume) seeks to protect individuals and var-

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ious classes of groups against the most heinous of crimes, and it imposes obligations on states that no commitment to state sovereignty can claim to abrogate. It thus challenges any strict or absolute notion of state sovereignty. The change in understandings of sovereignty has accelerated as states have become increasingly interconnected, and the notion that political authority cannot cross borders has become difficult to maintain, particularly with regard to international peace and security. At a time when a conflict in one state can easily spill over borders to inflame a whole region—as was the case in the African Great Lakes and West Africa in the 1990s and early 2000s—or have profound effects on the entire global economy—as does any conflict in the oil-rich Middle East—what happens within state borders is no longer of exclusively domestic concern. Clearly, a model of the state as somehow closed off behind an impenetrable wall of sovereignty is not compatible with an increasingly integrated transnational system of international law, global commerce, and cultural exchange.10 For example, even under the strictest state-centric interpretation of the UN Charter, member states temper their commitments to absolute sovereignty with the recognition of certain collective obligations for maintaining peace and security, reflecting a new condition of “complex interdependence.”11 For many observers, the traditional notion of state sovereignty can no longer completely capture the character of twenty-first-century political authority: in today’s world, sovereignty is “complex.” And it is such an understanding that informs our approach in this volume. Under such conditions of complexity, Westphalian—or absolute— sovereignty comes to represent an ideal type that has little relation to how state sovereignty actually functions in the international system of the twenty-first century. One must look to other models. For example, in addition to Westphalian sovereignty, Stephen Krasner has identified three other well-known types of sovereignty that are relevant to an understanding of how modern state sovereignty operates: • International legal sovereignty refers to the mutual recognition of states in the international sphere. • Interdependence sovereignty refers to the ability of public authorities to control movements of people and goods across borders. • Domestic sovereignty entails the classic Weberian notion of the state as the supreme authority within a territory, controlling a monopoly on legitimate violence or force.12

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Importantly, these types do not necessarily go together; it is possible to have one or more without the other in a variety of combinations. For example, Somalia maintains its international legal sovereignty, but has only the most limited form of domestic sovereignty; Taiwan for decades has maintained a quite stable form of domestic sovereignty and a relative level of interdependence sovereignty in the absence of a broadly recognized international legal sovereignty. More basically, Edgar Grande and Louis Pauly argue that internal and external sovereignty should be distinguished, recognizing that they can have quite separate, though interdependent, trajectories.13 Internal sovereignty refers to the domestic relationship between state and society and stems from the legitimated authority structures within a territorially defined legal-political order. External sovereignty refers to the state’s independence from other states and authorities in the international system.14 At times, the international community has violated external sovereignty in order to restore internal sovereignty after a destructive civil conflict has subjected a population to mass atrocities. In this respect, humanitarian intervention can be pursued in the interest of restoring—not abrogating—sovereignty.15 This point, of course, is highly contested, and disputes over what type of external interference sovereignty allows, if any, and in what context, animate many of the debates over the responsibility to protect and the prevention of genocide. The key is that modern sovereignty is not a zero-sum game. One can distinguish between levels and functions of sovereignty, and to give ground on one does not necessarily mean compromising the integrity of the others. In this respect, “Sovereignty is a variable, not a constant.”16 In this way, the law prohibiting genocide and the broader development of human rights and humanitarian law should not be set in opposition to state sovereignty.

Prevention, Intervention, Response

The transformation of understandings of sovereignty as well as the emergence of a robust body of international human rights and humanitarian law during the past seventy years has created opportunities for international efforts to prevent or stop genocide and similar crimes. Over the past two decades in particular, these efforts have become more sophisticated but also more contentious, engendering heated debates over their applicability and limitations. In this section we examine three key concepts at the center of these debates—prevention, intervention, and

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response—which have come to dominate global discourse on sovereignty and the protection of human rights. These concepts also play a central role in this volume. Scholars and practitioners have debated the content of these concepts extensively and no settled consensus exists on their definition, but we can identify their salient features. Prevention broadly refers to those strategies, policies, and practices directed toward anticipating and arresting the onset of significant political violence prior to its occurrence, as Frances Stewart discusses in her chapter in this volume. Conflict prevention is at the core of the United Nations’ founding charter (Article I) and has played a central role in the organization’s work through its history. However, the nature of conflict has changed significantly since the period when the United Nations was established. Today, most violent conflicts are within states while traditional interstate warfare has declined,17 meaning that prevention strategies are being adapted to these new circumstances. Prevention efforts naturally differ depending on context, including the kind of political tensions that exist in a given country or region, the relative strengths and interests of contending actors, and existing structural obstacles to peace. The seminal 1992 UN document An Agenda for Peace emphasized preventive diplomacy, understood as “action to prevent disputes arising between parties, to prevent existing disputes from escalating into conflicts and to limit the spread of the latter when they occur.”18 This early framework has expanded to include three distinct forms of conflict prevention: operational prevention, which refers to measures aimed at the proximate conditions that serve as tipping points or accelerants for overt political violence by employing early warning and detection models, preventive diplomacy, mediation, sanctions, and the like; structural prevention, which focuses on the roots of violence and instability, such as pervasive economic inequalities or widespread marginalization of ethnic groups “that could lead to intrastate or interstate conflict over the long term”;19 and systemic prevention, consisting of efforts to address global and transnational factors that make conflict more likely.20 In its most inclusive and contested formulations, prevention may address illegal financial and arms flows, transnational environmental and natural resource pressures, and international crime syndicates, although most prevention analysts and practitioners have yet to adopt this broad-based approach. Intervention refers to the use of international coercive military force without the consent of the target state aimed at preventing or stopping ongoing atrocities like genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. In other words, intervention means warfare for the

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purpose of protecting the human rights of foreign citizens and changing the behavior of the target state or its leaders.21 The intervention discourse has focused in large part on the practical, legal, and political questions surrounding external actors’ right to intervene and limit the sovereign prerogatives of the target state.22 This focus is not surprising, given the high stakes involved in military interventions and the privileged place held by the principle of state sovereignty in international politics. Nevertheless, framing intervention politics exclusively in terms of their impact on state autonomy ignores a host of complex issues and questions that inform decisions to intervene, including the rights of victims and threats to international security posed by severe domestic instability and violence. Furthermore, this narrow focus on external coercive force has drawn attention away from the broader obligations that states have toward their own populations and the variety of preventive measures they can take to protect their citizens’ basic rights. The narrowness of these debates has stimulated efforts to rethink the nature of international engagement from a broader perspective—that of a state’s responsibility to its people. The responsibility to protect (R2P) principle was first articulated in 2001, and its key elements were incorporated into the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document adopted by UN member states.23 The principle represents a seminal step in rethinking the relations between sovereignty and intervention. It stipulates that state sovereignty does not signify an absolute right to control a territory or population by any means necessary; rather, state sovereignty entails responsibilities “in both internal functions and external duties.”24 In particular, the state has the responsibility to protect its population from four key crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. The UN Security Council affirmed the principle in 2006,25 and in 2009 it received substantive elaboration in the UN Secretary-General’s report on the issue, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect. According to this report, the principle rests on three pillars: First, an existing responsibility of individual states to protect their citizens from the four listed crimes, as well as from their incitement; second, the international community’s commitment to assist and aid states in satisfying these obligations; and, third, the responsibility of the international community, through the UN, to respond in a timely and decisive manner to help protect vulnerable populations when states are manifestly failing to do so. Such responses can entail a wide range of measures, of which military intervention is only a last resort.26 In this reconceptualization, intervention falls under the broader rubric of response.

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Prevention and response are often framed as opposed to one another, or at least in significant tension. Some observers see prevention efforts as prior to response (including, most explicitly, military intervention), and thus the need for response represents a failure of earlier prevention strategies. This point is perhaps most obvious in discussions on Rwanda and the international community, where the collapse of the 1993 Arusha peace accords was followed by genocide and the resumption of civil war. The lesson that many analysts drew is that a failure of preventive measures requires a turn to more robust international action. The result is a sequential understanding of action that became the dominant framework in international policy circles: first prevention, and if that fails, then intervention.27 However, a report by the UN SecretaryGeneral in July 2012 argues that prevention and response are closely linked, and that international action often combines elements of each.28 While not surprising in light of the failures in Rwanda, the sequential ordering approach risks creating an artificial distinction between different modes of international engagement that simplify, in problematic fashion, the complexity of processes of violence escalation and deescalation. Too strong a distinction between prevention and response assumes that violent conflicts all share the same fundamental causes and dynamics, and thus can be addressed using the same generic framework. Rather than assume that international action should follow a standard sequential approach, the options available to prevent and stop genocide and mass atrocities should be framed in a more comprehensive and context-sensitive fashion, so that complex cases are not forced into the same analytical framework, generating cookie-cutter responses. Extensive research has revealed multiple paths to violence, and some transitional regimes experience heightened instability and return to violent conflict, while others do not.29 Thus, response measures may be identified for use in tandem in some instances and sequentially in others, depending on the conditions of the particular case at hand. To understand this, we need to ask: Who is responding? Where? At what level of engagement? And with what tools?

Framing International Responses

Responding to massive human rights violations involves a number of different levels, actors, and tools. In this volume, we focus on four conceptually distinct levels of analysis: individual states, regional organizations, international organizations, and international civil society. These distinctions are useful for heuristic purposes, because they provide a

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certain degree of conceptual ordering on what is otherwise a confusing international political context. The first level concerns individual states. Given that primary responsibility for protecting civilians lies with the state, any preventive efforts must focus on the state’s capacity and willingness to prevent major human rights violations at home. States carry an obligation to ensure the presence of effective mechanisms for handling the inevitable domestic disputes and political contestation that are parts of political life, and should seek to protect basic human rights and the welfare of their citizens and residents. Research has shown that a country’s basic political arrangement is a primary factor influencing whether rights are systematically protected: democracies in particular are less likely to engage in major human rights violations domestically than authoritarian or semiauthoritarian regimes.30 In addition to inclusive political systems that provide voice and veto power to citizens, independent judicial institutions that guarantee the rule of law, security forces under civilian control, and broadly equitable economic arrangements are all positively correlated with the protection of human rights and low levels of repressive behavior. Thus, the first level of analysis is the state, and the protection of human rights is centered on this key actor. States do not, however, exist in a completely anarchic international context. A second level of analysis concerns the variety of regional organizations that have emerged since World War II to shape international politics. Perhaps the most developed broad-based and influential regional organization is the European Union, though organizations such as the Organization of American States, African Union, Arab League, and Association of Southeast Asian Nations, among others, have also developed into important political players throughout the world. Regional actors often have stronger economic, political, and cultural ties to repressive states than global actors, and thus can wield important influence on repressive behavior. Regional organizations in particular may work as an authoritative collective voice to shame publicly the abusive practices of a member state. More substantively, regional organizations have many effective tools at their disposal. They may bring economic pressure—or threats of sanctions—on abusive elites to stop violations, and in some instances they may send peacekeepers to member countries, such as the African Union’s missions to Somalia and Sudan or the European Union’s involvement in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the other hand, regional organizations may also work to protect abusive leaders, as when the Arab League expressed its support for Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir after the International Criminal Court indicted him for war crimes in 2009. Over the past decade and a half,

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regional organizations have taken an increasingly important role in responding to mass atrocities. A third level of analysis focuses on international organizations and institutions. The most prominent and influential of these is, of course, the United Nations, which since the end of the Cold War has played an enormous role in global peace efforts. In the past decade in particular the United Nations has sought to “move from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention” in an effort to identify and address the fundamental causes of mass violence.31 The United Nations has expanded its preventive diplomacy initiatives and economic and arms sanctions efforts, and continued peacekeeping missions around the world, carrying out over sixty peacekeeping missions since its founding in 1945. Today the organization is involved in preventing and halting major human rights violations across the globe. The effectiveness of peacekeeping—its most visible practice—has received modest empirical support in recent studies, which find that international peacekeeping missions overall contribute to peace by changing incentive structures of belligerents and reducing fear and mistrust, although a number of factors mitigate the long-term impact of peace operations.32 Furthermore, the United Nations has dedicated significant resources to early warning and mass atrocity detection programs to identify and interdict the escalation of violence in unstable countries (though with mixed success), and has developed a host of assistance programs to aid weak states in strengthening their institutions and building democratic legitimacy.33 The final analytical level concerns global civil society. The dominant peacemaking framework emphasizes elite mediation and formal mechanisms of conflict termination through the United Nations or other state-centric institutions, with relatively little input from civil society groups. However, over the past two decades a vibrant international civil society has emerged that has taken an increasingly central role in advocating human rights. This robust international civil society consists of a space of social relations autonomous from states or interstate institutions (such as the United Nations) where groups and movements create new alliances, further their interests and views, and engage with one another to shape public and elite opinion with the aim of influencing state policy and public discourse.34 Civil society organizations are well positioned to place increased pressure on state leaders to address massive violations, and they also serve as important critics of the assumptions and justifications behind state policy. These groups, along with the media, can have a modest but identifiable impact on state policy by publicizing and shaming abusive practices. As our contributors show, these actors can reframe and critique orthodox elite representations of

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mass atrocity and mobilize popular support for ending mass violence, but international civil society groups are no panacea for human rights: they may often have different priorities than national and local groups, or may present simplistic accounts of violence and responses that do not reflect the messy reality on the ground. Our divisions into four levels are meant to provide some clarity into what is often an exceedingly fluid political environment. Nevertheless, these divisions are only conceptually distinct; as the contributors to our volume show, developments on one level may affect events on another. Any account of international responses must remain sensitive to the complex patterns of interactions and influence across levels. * * * Our focus is on the politics of international action during genocidal violence, which does not exhaust the range of challenges that genocide and mass atrocities raise. A sophisticated literature has emerged on postviolence policies and strategies, including the viability of prosecutions, truth commissions and commissions of inquiry, reparations for victims, social reconstruction, and economic development programs for badly damaged societies.35 Additionally, a recent strand of scholarship has argued that successful peace strategies must include subnational actors to ensure that peace efforts enjoy resonance and legitimacy among the population. Hybrid approaches to peace, which include local participants in decisionmaking positions (rather than merely recipients of external aid and support) are more likely to ensure that peace takes hold over the long term.36 These questions are pressing, but they fall outside the remit of our project, in which we aim at analyzing international efforts to respond to genocide and related atrocities. We agree that a wide array of factors and actors are important for securing peace in the long term. However, our specific focus in this volume is on the international dimensions of prevention and intervention, which continue to play an important role in stopping mass atrocities like genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. In light of this, we see the volume as contributing directly to rethinking the possibilities and limitations of international responses to mass violence.

Organization of the Book

Chapters 2 through 4 discuss various conceptualizations and causes of genocide and mass violence. Ernesto Verdeja presents an overview of

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the definitional and conceptual debates over the meaning of genocide. Verdeja argues that the compromised political origins of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), which continues to provide the dominant legal and political definition of the crime, has affected policy debates over what constitutes “genocide” and how to prevent it. For Verdeja, policymakers should adopt a more inclusive and sociologically accurate conception that focuses on the systematic targeting of a group for destruction, regardless of its identity. The chapter also explores a number of contemporary discussions over the conceptualization of genocide and explores its relation to other forms of mass atrocity. Frances Stewart follows with a systematic examination of the root economic and political causes of genocide and civil war. Drawing on the burgeoning quantitative scholarly literature on political violence, Stewart notes that in modern times genocide and civil war are both patterned forms of collective violence that often occur together. She finds that prior histories of large-scale violence are predisposing factors in both cases, as are horizontal inequalities that remain salient between contending groups. Nevertheless, Stewart notes that regime type and per capita income levels affect the likelihood of genocide and civil war differently, and genocides are more likely to occur once a civil war has begun. Barbara Harff’s chapter builds on the preceding contributions by examining the development and evolution of risk assessment and early warning systems to detect the onset of genocide and politicide (the systematic targeting of groups based on their political identity). Risk assessment systems examine a variety of structural conditions proven to affect the likelihood of genocide, including salient ethnic and political divisions, political regime type, a country’s embeddedness in international trade, and histories of political violence. Based on the presence or absence of these conditions, a country may be at a high, medium, or low risk of genocide. Harff notes that risk assessments provide little insight into the timing of genocidal outbreaks, for which early warning models are needed. She critically examines the dynamic factors that explain the onset of genocide, such as severe political crises, the seizure of power by ideologically extremist elites, and state capacity to carry out sustained mass killing. Harff, herself a noted contributor to early warning and detection theories, presents a valuable examination of current genocide detection modeling, which is central to making informed policy decisions for responsible prevention and intervention. I. William Zartman’s chapter turns to the difficult politics of external conflict mediation and diplomacy. Zartman places mediation firmly

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in the “second pillar” of the responsibility to protect, in which third parties work to assist states in securing the conditions needed to protect their populations. He provides an overview of the various means available to third parties who mediate ongoing domestic disputes that can turn deadly, particularly those identity conflicts that spiral into sustained mass killings like genocide and politicide. Zartman discusses how structural measures, such as the establishment and support of institutions that promote cooperation or bounded competition, can play a significant role in shaping the political incentives of elites and create conditions where continued commitment to an inclusive political order is rewarded politically. He also highlights the ways in which external actors can contribute to trust building and attitudinal shifts among opposed political leaders who have a history of turning to violence to resolve conflicts. Zartman’s chapter is clear about the challenges and limitations of mediation, but it also identifies the concrete objectives that carefully tailored mediations can accomplish. Zartman’s chapter provides a valuable overview of the mediation tools available to third-party actors. Chapters 6 through 8 disaggregate the actors and levels of analysis that constitute a robust international will to respond. Iavor Rangelov focuses on the remarkable emergence of a truly transnational civil society over the past two decades devoted to preventing and stopping ongoing genocide and mass violence. Transnational civil society actors have received only superficial attention in policy studies that still largely focus on state actors and international organizations like the United Nations, but their ability to shape political discourse can no longer be ignored. Rangelov frames his discussion through a provocative assessment of the Save Darfur movement, noting its internally diverse, contested, and ambivalent nature, and the complex ways in which its core idea of a moral duty to protect others has shaped an emerging “global humanitarian regime.” The chapter advances our understanding of civil society by examining the positive contributions—and limitations—of global social movements dedicated to stopping genocide. Timothy Murithi explores regional organizations, which have evolved during the past two decades to take important roles in international debates over intervention and prevention. Drawing on the African Union and Arab League, Murithi analyzes the advantages and limitations of regional organizations in responding to mass atrocities. He shows how these organizations often mobilize political will in a timely fashion, at least compared to organizations like the United Nations, when political violence is escalating, and how they frequently carry greater political legitimacy than individual states or the Security Coun-

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cil. Nevertheless, Murithi shows how internal political divisions can be particularly pronounced in cases where neighboring countries have especially strong ties to perpetrator regimes. Proximity, then, can be a source of rapid response but also an obstacle to intervention. Given these challenges, Murithi identifies a number of strategies that can leverage the advantages of regional organizations in the struggle against genocide and mass atrocities. A central challenge to articulating theories and programs of political response is understanding how they unfold in practice. This practical challenge is not merely epiphenomenal to well-developed theorization or policymaking, but a constitutive feature of preventive politics. Colin Keating’s chapter tackles the theory-practice nexus directly through an important set of reflections on intervention debates in the UN Security Council. Keating’s background as New Zealand’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1996 and president of the Security Council during the Rwandan genocide offers him a unique vantage point from which to assess the difficulties of constituting a collective will to respond. Surveying the two decades of Security Council debates since the end of the Cold War, he concludes that the Council has made some limited but important advances in confronting genocide and widespread human rights violations. The final contributor, Thomas G. Weiss, addresses the vexing question of armed interventions. Weiss canvasses the history of UN intervention debates and argues that the post-Rwanda consensus on the need for speedier and more robust interventions has weakened, and today R2P risks sanctioning too little intervention, not too much. He cites prima facie cases of humanitarian crises that merit a forceful international response—including Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Zimbabwe—and shows how a variety of obstacles have prevented the development of a defensible policy of international response. For Weiss, the key is to develop a mechanism for multilateral military action that is not primarily dependent on the United States, and to consolidate those UN agencies that provide humanitarian services and protection. Strengthening multilateral response capabilities can mitigate the chronic shortcomings that great power politics pose. Indeed, the interventions of the past two decades have confirmed, as if any doubt existed, that international actors are not motivated solely or even primarily by a concern for the plight of defenseless civilians. That power and national interest play a dominant role in international politics, and that global powers often employ human rights and humanitarian discourse to further their own goals, are by now hardly contested claims.37

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Nevertheless, policy and scholarly debates that focus on the necessary legal and institutional steps to mobilize an international will to respond too often treat such procedural elements as the source of political and normative justification for international action. Critics have charged, rightly, that the motivations, interests, and aims of major and regional powers, as well as the general structure of international politics that reinforces existing power relations, should be subjected to critical scrutiny.38 The contributors to this volume share these concerns. They investigate the assumptions and presuppositions of international responses and critique the ways in which countries mask their individual interests behind the collective will. Throughout this book, the interests of powerful countries are analyzed and assessed with two goals in mind: first, to show how power politics operate in prevention and intervention; and second (and more constructively), the ways in which a genuine collective will that prioritizes the protection of civilians can be fashioned. The responsibility to protect cannot be divorced from politics; moral and legal rights are always implicated in existing politics and power relations. However, we hope to show in this volume that national and global interests can be brought closer to the imperatives of human rights, even though tensions and obstacles will persist. Our concluding chapter revisits this discussion and explores one of the principal obstacles to effective international action aimed at preventing or stopping mass atrocities: a fundamental lack of political will to take risks or commit state resources to come to the aid of people in faroff lands. We conclude by identifying four areas that are keys to the long-term development of the political will to respond: universal norms, common interests, particular incentives, and visionary leadership.

Notes 1. Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000); Bruce Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001). 2. Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs About the Use of Force (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); Gary J. Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Knopf, 2008); Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim, eds., Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 3. Aryeh Neier, The International Human Rights Movement: A History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012); David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002).

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4. This language echoes the paragraphs on the responsibility to protect from United Nations, 2005 World Summit Outcome, UN Doc. A/RES/60/1 (New York: United Nations, October 24, 2005), para. 139. 5. On sovereign equality in the United Nations, see The Charter of the United Nations, Chapter I, Article 2(1). 6. Kenneth Waltz, Man, the State, and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). 7. Ruti G. Teitel, Humanity’s Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 8. See, for instance, the Human Security Report Project, www.hsrgroup.org. 9. William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 3–4. 10. This is discussed at length in Adam Lupel, Globalization and Popular Sovereignty: Democracy’s Transnational Dilemma (London: Routledge, 2009). 11. Robert O. Keohane, “Sovereignty in International Society,” in David Held and Anthony McGrew, eds., The Global Transformations Reader, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2003). 12. Stephen Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 9–25. 13. Edgar Grande and Louis W. Pauly, eds., Complex Sovereignty: Reconstituting Political Authority in the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 11–12. 14. Ibid. See also Andrew Arato and Jean L. Cohen, “Banishing the Sovereign? Internal and External Sovereignty in Arendt,” in Politics in Dark Times: Encounters with Hannah Arendt, edited by Seyla Benhabib, Roy T. Tsao, and Peter J. Verosvek (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Martin Loughlin, “Ten Tenets of Sovereignty,” in Sovereignty in Transition, edited by Neil Walker (Oxford: Hart, 2003), pp. 55–86. 15. Robert Keohane, “Political Authority After Intervention: Gradations in Sovereignty,” in Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas, edited by J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert Keohane (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 286. 16. Ibid. 17. Therése Pettersson and Lotta Themnér, States in Armed Conflict 2010 (Uppsala, Sweden: Uppsala Conflict Data Program, 2011); Human Security Report Project, Human Security Report, 2009–2010: The Causes of Peace and the Shrinking Costs of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 18. United Nations Secretary-General, An Agenda for Peace, UN Doc. A/47/277-S/24111 (New York: United Nations, 1992), para. 20. 19. Paul Romita, “The UN Security Council and Conflict Prevention: A Primer,” New York: International Peace Institute, October 2011, p. 3. 20. Christoph Mikulaschek and Paul Romita, “Conflict Prevention: Toward More Effective Multilateral Strategies,” New York: International Peace Institute, December 2011, pp. 2, 13; United Nations, “Progress Report on the Prevention of Armed Conflict,” Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/60/891, July 18, 2006. 21. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Re-

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search Centre, 2001), p. 8; R. J. Vincent, Nonintervention and the International Political Order (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1974). Intervention as used here differs from so-called protection-of-civilian missions, which involve foreign peacekeepers operating with the permission of the host country. See Victoria Holt and Glyn Taylor with Max Kelly, Protecting Civilians in the Context of UN Peacekeeping Operations (New York: UN DPKO/OCHA, 2009). 22. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); J. L. Holzgrefe and Robert Keohane, eds., Humanitarian Intervention: Ethical, Legal, and Political Dilemmas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Neta Crawford, Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization, and Humanitarian Intervention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2012); Alan J. Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans,” International Studies Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2008): 49–80; Louis Henkin, “Kosovo and the Law of Humanitarian Intervention,” American Journal of International Law 93, no. 4 (October 1999): 824–828. 23. ICISS, Responsibility to Protect; United Nations General Assembly, 2005 World Summit Outcome Document A/60/L.1 (New York: United Nations, 2005), paras. 138–139. 24. ICISS, Responsibility to Protect, p. 13. 25. UN Security Council Resolution 1674 (April 26, 2006), UN Doc. S/RES/1674. 26. United Nations, “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect,” Report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/63/677, January 12, 2009. 27. The paradigmatic example of this is the US Institute of Peace’s “conflict cycle” bell curve, which graphs violent conflicts as going through three primary stages: latent conflict, escalation to sustained violence, and deescalation through mediation or negotiation. See Louis Kriesberg, “Settlement Stage,” in Beyond Intractability, edited by Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess (Boulder, CO: Conflict Information Consortium, 2003), www.beyondintractability.org. 28. UN Secretary-General, “Responsibility to Protect: Timely and Decisive Response,” UN Doc. A/66/874, July 25, 2012. 29. Caroline Hartzell, Matthew Hoddie, and Donald Rothchild, “Stabilizing the Peace After Civil War: An Investigation of Some Key Variables,” International Organization 55, no. 1 (2001): 183–208; Barbara F. Walter, “Does Conflict Beget Conflict? Explaining Recurrent Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 41, no. 3 (May 2004): 371–388; Paul Collier, Anke Hoeffler, and Måns Söderbom, “Post-Conflict Risks,” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 3 (2008): 461–478. 30. The relations between democracy and peace are found in Christian Davenport, State Repression and the Domestic Democratic Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Bruce Russett and John O’Neal, Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001). 31. UN Secretary-General, Prevention of Armed Conflict, A/55/985S/2001/574 (New York: United Nations, 2001). 32. Virginia Page Fortna and Lise Morjé Howard, “Pitfalls and Prospects in the Peacekeeping Literature,” Annual Review of Political Science 11 (June

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2008): 283–301; Michael W. Doyle and Nicholas Sambanis, Making War and Building Peace: United Nations Peace Operations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006); Joshua S. Goldstein, Winning the War on War: The Decline of Armed Conflict Worldwide (New York: Plume, 2012); “UN Peacekeepers in Africa: Helping to Calm a Continent,” The Economist, June 9, 2012. 33. Micah Zenko and Rebecca R. Friedman, “UN Early Warning for Preventing Conflict,” International Peacekeeping 18, no. 1 (2011): 21–37; Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Preventing Violence, War, and State Collapse: The Future of Conflict Early Warning and Response (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Press, 2009). 34. Ernesto Verdeja, Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), p. 138. 35. Pablo De Greiff, ed., Handbook on Reparations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Naomi Roht-Arriaza and Javier Mariezcurrena, eds., Transitional Justice in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Truth Versus Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Edels Hughes, William Schabas, and Ramesh Thakur, eds., Atrocity and International Accountability: Beyond International Justice (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2007). 36. Alexander L. Hinton, ed., Transitional Justice: Global Mechanisms and Local Realities After Genocide and Mass Violence (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011); Sally Engle Merry, Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Law into Local Justice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). For a general reconceptualization of peace theory and practice, see Daniel Philpott and Gerard F. Powers, eds., Strategies of Peace: Transforming Conflict in a Violent World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 37. Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010); James Peck, Ideal Illusions: How the U.S. Government Co-Opted Human Rights (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011). 38. David Chandler, “Unraveling the Paradox of ‘The Responsibility to Protect,’” Irish Studies in International Affairs 20 (2009): 27–39; see response in Alex J. Bellamy, Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).

2 Genocide: Debating Definitions Ernesto Verdeja

T

he past twenty years have witnessed an increased interest in genocide. Following the end of the Cold War, the catastrophes in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia raised doubts about the international community’s ability or willingness to stop large-scale atrocities. Simultaneously, scholars, policymakers, and activists focused their attention on understanding the causes of genocidal violence with the aim of finding ways of identifying the signs of impending mass slaughter. Although scholarship on genocide has grown enormously, heated debates persist over conceptualizing the phenomenon of genocide, with significant political, legal, and moral consequences. What exactly is genocide? What are the strengths and limitations of its legal definition, which continues to frame political and policy discussions? How does genocide differ from war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing, among other violent phenomena? I explore these questions in this chapter. I focus on genocide because of the heightened attention on it in prevention and intervention debates, but I also discuss the other main categories of mass violence identified in the responsibility to protect norm: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. My objective is to provide a critical analysis of the concept of genocide, a necessary task given that so many political debates about prevention and intervention often use the term “genocide” in a loose or unclear way, with problematic policy results. The following chapters by Frances Stewart and Barbara Harff discuss the empirical conditions under which genocide and related forms of mass atrocity occur, and later chapters explore the relation between genocide and international responses. I proceed in several steps. First I present genocide’s conceptual foundations in the work of Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jewish legal 21

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scholar who introduced the term. I then move on to examine the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG), which owes its existence to Lemkin but misses many of his careful sociological insights about the nature of genocide. The convention’s definition stipulates the importance of intentionality, identifies legally relevant categories of victim groups, and provides a relatively expansive definition of acts that constitute genocide. Although the UNCG’s is not the only current legal definition of genocide, it remains the dominant one, and I thus give it extensive treatment here. As I discuss, this definition suffers from a number of conceptual shortcomings that have had ramifications for subsequent prosecutions and policymaking, leading legal scholars and social scientists to provide more coherent definitions that reflect how extermination actually unfolds in practice. I then canvass a number of contemporary discussions over the conceptualization of genocide and present the legal and sociological differences between genocide, war, and ethnic cleansing.

Lemkin and the Origins of the Concept of Genocide

Raphael Lemkin’s importance in formulating the concept of genocide can hardly be overstated. He developed the main elements of its legal definition and elaborated a sophisticated account of the relationship between various forms of repressive state behavior and extermination. Contemporary scholars of genocide frequently note his importance, but unfortunately he is rarely given more than brief attention.1 Many of his insights were lost in the process of codifying the UN Convention but are still relevant to current discussions about genocide. Lemkin’s first attempts to define genocide go back to 1933, when he sketched a law banning barbarity and vandalism. “Barbarity” he defined as “the premeditated destruction of national, racial, religious, and social collectivities,” which included “acts of extermination directed against ethnic, religious or social collectivities whatever the motive (political, religious, etc.). . . . Also belonging in this category are all sorts of brutalities which attack the dignity of the individual in cases where these acts of humiliation have their source in a campaign of extermination directed against the collectivity in which the victim is a member.”2 “Vandalism” referred to the “systematic and organized destruction of the art and cultural heritage in which the unique genius and achievement of a collectivity are revealed in fields of science, arts, and literature.”3 For Lemkin, these two crimes were part of a broader class that focused on destroying collective identities. He realized, of course, that

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states often employ a variety of destructive policies against minorities and that these policies require careful attention on their own, but he was concerned that too great an emphasis on specificity outside of the broader context of repression risked minimizing the totalizing nature of barbarity and its primary goal: destroying a social group through various means. These early writings are remarkable for their broadly sociological perspective, particularly how they pay attention to many forms of destruction, ranging from severe economic oppression and marginalization to physical extermination. During World War II Lemkin developed his ideas of this new crime further, combining barbarity and vandalism in one concept. In Axis Rule in Occupied Europe he introduced the term “genocide”: “By genocide we mean the destruction of a nation or ethnic group. This new word is made from the Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing).”4 Genocide could include a variety of actions over time: “genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except where accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves.”5 Intentional mass killing, while clearly a strategy used in genocide, does not exhaust the term itself; a variety of other actions coordinated to destroy group existence can qualify as genocide. Elsewhere, Lemkin discussed the nature of these synchronized destructive policies, noting that they may include not only physical destruction through starvation or direct killings, but also the destruction of a group’s political institutions, attacks on the social cohesion of group identity, suppression of cultural expression, economic repression or enslavement, depopulation through the prohibition of biological reproduction, banning religious practices, and even encouraging “moral debasement” of the targeted group.6 Genocide was thus comprehensive, total, and coordinated, and was directed at the destruction of collective identity and life through a variety of methods, including but not limited to killing. Lemkin’s contributions to formulating the elements of genocide were significant. Nevertheless, his formulation suffered from several shortcomings that still inform contemporary legal and scholarly debates. For instance, he focused on the destruction of national groups (and occasionally ethnic groups),7 but excluded political, racial, religious, or other groups that could be—and often are—targeted for extermination. Why national or ethnic groups ought to qualify as victim classes while other collective identities should not is not apparent, and Lemkin did

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not develop a satisfactory answer to this question; he did, however, point out—correctly—that historically national groups were likely to be targets of extermination. This fact is not, however, an argument, but only an empirical observation that could change in the future. Furthermore, although genocide was understood as synchronized attacks involving a variety of strategies, whether these methods were commensurable in severity or what their relationship to each other should be was not clear. For instance, why would moral debasement compare to massacres and policies that erase collective identity and shared histories? Debasement, after all, is not the same as destruction. Nor did Lemkin elaborate on how these various strategies relate to one another. Certainly, killing with the aim of destroying a group is genocidal, but is severe economic repression sufficient to qualify as genocide? How extensive must economic repression be to merit consideration as genocidal? Must other methods be employed in tandem? Is banning religious expression on its own genocidal, especially when religious practices are central to a group’s identity? Lemkin realized that in practice various strategies would be employed, but he provided relatively little analysis of their conceptual linkages and relation to national destruction. Part of the reason is likely his focus on the Holocaust, which made the relationships apparent, given that the Nazis employed a variety of policies and measures to exterminate Jews, Roma, and Sinti, but outside of the Holocaust framework the term “genocide” lost some conceptual clarity.8

The UN Genocide Convention

Lemkin’s purpose in writing Axis Rule in Occupied Europe was to make genocide a crime in international law, and he succeeded: the concept entered legal discourse in the period following World War II. Although genocide was not one of the crimes prosecuted at the postwar Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals,9 the term appeared in the indictment outlining Nazi offenses as well as prosecutors’ closing arguments. The successful prosecutions of several high-level Nazis at Nuremberg catalyzed efforts to criminalize genocide, and subsequent trials of Nazi commanders for enslavement and extermination in Eastern Europe helped move the concept firmly into law.10 After several years of debate in the United Nations, the UN General Assembly approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. The convention secured sufficient ratifications to enter into force in 1951 and has remained the legally binding definition in international law to this day.11 Although in-

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terpretive debates exist over the meaning of its main elements, the text is unlikely to change any time soon: its definition of the crime has been adopted directly into the statutes of the International Criminal Court and the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia (ICTR and ICTY, respectively).12 Given the central importance of the convention, I sketch here some of its basic elements and then follow with some concerns and points of contention that have direct consequences for policymaking and prosecutions. The UNCG stipulates that genocide is a “crime under international law” which the contracting parties “undertake to prevent and to punish.”13 It is prohibited without exception. Importantly, genocide is not merely a state crime: individuals can be held criminally responsible for acts of genocide.14 In principle, nonstate actors can also commit genocide, but in practice states or their proxies generally have the resources and logistical capacity to carry out the large-scale destruction of groups. Article II of the convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Like Lemkin’s earlier formulation, the convention protects groups; individuals are thus victims of genocide only to the extent that they are members of one of the groups specified in the text. The convention also requires that perpetrators commit one or more of the listed acts with the intent to destroy the group, either completely or in part. Genocide does not require that the perpetrator successfully exterminate all members of the group, which in practice has occurred very rarely, nor is an absolute number or proportion of victims necessary. Rather, the only requirement is that one or more of the acts listed above be committed against group members with the necessary intent. The convention does not cover cultural genocide, such as the destruction of property or cultural patrimony, although in certain instances the widespread destruction of property may result in eradicating the conditions for group survival, and thus qualify as genocide under Article IIc. Nor are economic repression or religious prohibitions given special status. Indeed, the convention criminalizes physical and biological

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genocide (Article IIa–c, and Article IId–e, respectively), although a weak conceptualization of cultural genocide appears in Article IIe, as I discuss further below. Acts

Prohibited acts range from the straightforward to the more complex, adding to popular and scholarly confusion over what constitutes genocide. Although the UNCG went into effect sixty years ago, most of its key provisions have been defined only the past fifteen years, since the ICTY and ICTR were established. Case law has grown significantly over this period, but scholars continue to disagree over a number of central points. Killing (IIa), the first prohibited act listed in the convention, is the most explicit and obvious way of destroying a group; the prohibition includes individual killings and massacres. “Causing serious bodily or mental harm” (IIb) may include enslavement, starvation, and bodily and mental torture, as well as rape, forced impregnation, and sexual violence.15 Scholars debate over what qualifies legally as mental harm, specifically how extensive and sustained it must be and whether it requires long-term or even permanent mental consequences to merit being considered genocidal.16 Nevertheless, a recent ruling in the ICTR has judged that seriousness should be evaluated case by case rather than according to some external metric.17 The infliction of destructive conditions of life (IIc) is meant to capture more complex and longer-term methods of group destruction than explicit killing through massacres. Genocide may emerge, for instance, through a slower cumulative process of starvation or deportation to areas unfit for habitation.18 The specific acts that constitute the imposition of destructive conditions are not defined in the convention because the framers realized that too many possible strategies could qualify. Instead, IIc is evaluated by examining the strategies in toto and determining whether an overall intention exists to destroy the group physically. Article IId prohibits measures meant to “prevent births within the group,” which includes a variety of policies and actions, such as forced impregnation where the woman must carry an unwanted fetus and may suffer severe social and cultural sanctions from her group for her rape.19 Killing members of one sex (such as all men) or targeted deportation meant to impede group reproduction (such as all girls and women of reproductive age) also qualify.20 Thus, the massacre of Bosnian Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica is genocidal under IId. The measures can be physical or mental, and include threats that result in preventing births.21

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Crucially, the policy must be coercive: voluntary family planning and birth control programs are not genocidal, even if the state provides them. The final act listed in the convention (IIe) bans forcibly transferring children from one group to another.22 The act rests on the claim that forced removals destroy the group physically by eliminating future generations and thus the group’s future existence, but importantly, the crime is not triggered merely through removal. Children must be transferred to another group, presumably one of the groups listed in the convention (that is, another national, ethnic, racial, or religious group).23 By placing children in another group, their original identities are erased and replaced by new ones. The UNCG’s framers realized that removing children on its own could qualify as genocide according to other acts listed in the text. Indeed, removal may violate IIa if the children are killed, IIb if children or parents suffer severe mental harm, and possibly IId if removal is one of several measures meant to prevent births within the group. Why, then, was IIe included? The article seems to pivot on a conception of cultural genocide not found elsewhere in Article II, so that genocide can occur with the destruction of the values, beliefs, language, practices, or other important cultural markers of a group, even if the members are still left alive. In fact, IIe does not stipulate that the children must be physically or mentally harmed or even materially worse off in their new group.24 Rather, IIe is triggered by the erasure of children’s former collective identity and imposition of a new one through forced inclusion in a different group. Forced removal and inclusion in a new group constitute cultural destruction. Clearly this article thus fits uncomfortably with the others emphasizing physical or biological destruction, although it is closer to Lemkin’s capacious understanding of genocide. In all cases, the acts listed above must be part of intentional group destruction. Groups

Who are the protected groups? The UNCG identities four categories of groups: national, ethnic, racial, and religious. An individual must be a member of a protected group to be a victim of genocide. Thus, people targeted for their political or class identities are not victims of genocide, including the majority of victims of the Khmer Rouge or the Hutu victims of the Hutu Power regime in Rwanda. The convention does not define groups at any length, which has generated a sophisticated philosophical literature on the nature of group identity, membership, permanence, and its relation to extermination,25 but

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legal discourse has not caught up and remains somewhat reductive and impoverished on this count, with problematic consequences for policy and prosecutions. Before turning to these problems, I offer a brief sketch of the categories as they are understood in current international law. A national group is defined rather straightforwardly as “a collection of people who are perceived to share a common legal bond based on common citizenship, coupled with reciprocity of rights and duties.”26 National group, therefore, is directly tied to formal legal membership in a recognized sovereign state, although the term “perceived to share” seems to indicate the possibility that objective citizenship status is not definitive, but only indicative of membership.27 An ethnic group is defined by common ancestry, language, or culture. Common culture itself includes shared values, beliefs, myths, and social practices sustained over generations that give rise to a common identity. In actuality, however, there are significant challenges to identifying distinct ethnicities. Ethnic identity changes over time as members emphasize certain aspects of shared identity while downplaying others. The core elements are always open to contestation and reinterpretation, and they may not be shared by all or even most members. Also unclear is how dense and exclusive these social relations need to be for a group to be considered an ethnic group. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, significant intermarriage took place among Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims (or Bosniaks) before the war. These groups speak the same language and rarely organized themselves along exclusivist ethnic lines, especially in urban areas.28 Ethnic identity became salient as conflict escalated and extremist elites drew on nationalist, ethnicist, and religious discourse to scapegoat others. In Rwanda the ICTR ruled that the Tutsi qualified as an ethnic group and had been persecuted according to this identity, but the court’s finding was achieved through a questionable analysis of Rwandan society that postulated significantly greater cultural differences between Hutu and Tutsi than existed in reality. Tutsi and Hutu speak the same language, often intermarried, and engaged in the same cultural and religious practices.29 These difficulties over category specificity are also found in debates over the category of race. The ICTR treated racial groups as sharing a common physical appearance, such as “hereditary physical traits often identified with a geographical region irrespective of linguistic, cultural, national, or religious factors.”30 Presumably this treatment would require identifying the general physical traits common to all or nearly all members of a racial group that distinguish it from other groups. The ICTR’s Akayesu case, which helped define “racial group” in the context of genocide, noted

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that for the purposes of international human rights law, not all members of a racial group must share the group’s defining physical characteristics; rather, identifiable group characteristics must be sufficiently salient and members of the group must be persecuted according to these characteristics. What this means in practice is not at all clear. If a racial group is defined by certain shared physical attributes among its members, and if these attributes are (as Akayesu states) objectively identifiable and unchanging, then presumably membership in the group is a function of whether an individual has those defining attributes. But, of course, race does not function that way socially or politically. Although, for the court, race has putatively objective biological roots, race is in fact a highly socialized identity, interpreted through the particular historical and political frames of reference that operate in society. To speak of racial groups in the context of genocide is to speak of the social and political reproduction of certain identities by perpetrators and others, not about some objective observation of physical characteristics that can be divorced from their social context. In Rwanda, for instance, many Tutsi do not fit the racial stereotypes of the group—tall, thin, high brow, and slender nose as opposed to the Hutu stereotype of short, stocky, and broad-faced. The complexity of applying race to the Rwandan case led the judges in Akayesu to abandon racial differentiation and focus instead on ethnicity as the salient marker in genocide. In the end, however, the problem of race is not limited to the Rwandan genocide, but rather to the more general issue of understanding racial groups as objective, exclusive categories for the purposes of genocide prosecution. Sudan’s violent campaign in Darfur provides an example: the racist discourse coming from Khartoum is not a reflection of preexisting racial categories, but rather has itself selectively reinforced group difference at the expense of other crosscutting identities that in the past served to prevent the escalation of violence.31 Finally, religious groups are defined through common religious beliefs, doctrines, or rituals. The ICTR has emphasized common “mode of worship,” drawing attention to practices in addition to ideas as critical features.32 Presumably, atheists and agnostics would also qualify as religious groups for the purposes of genocide prosecution since they may be targeted for having “deviant” beliefs, though international human rights law has not addressed at length the status of atheists as religious groups. Importantly, the convention does not protect political and economic groups. Thus, the persecution of an economic class, such as the so-called kulaks in the Soviet Union, or of a political group, such as communists and socialists in Indonesia in the mid-1960s, would not qualify as geno-

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cide, even if their destruction was intentional.33 Soviet pressure following World War II ensured that their class enemies would receive no recognition as victims of genocide, and the law will likely not be revised to include them.34 Nevertheless, the extermination of these groups and others would qualify as crimes against humanity and possibly war crimes (discussed further below). Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr, among others, have sought to include these groups through the term “politicide.”35 As this brief discussion shows, conceptual accounts of protected groups do not match neatly with the empirical facts on the ground, and some flexibility is thus required. The ICTY has conceded as much, arguing that a group’s “religious, ethnic, or national characteristics must be identified within the socio-historic context which it inhabits.”36 The ICTR notes, “At present, there are no generally and internationally accepted precise definitions thereof. Each of these concepts must be assessed in light of a particular political, social, and cultural context.”37 This challenge has led to two overarching approaches to determining group status: objective and subjective. An objective approach emphasizes the court’s understanding of a group and applies this to the targeted collective to determine whether it qualifies as a legally protected group. Objective approaches assume that groups have a permanence and facticity separate from a perception of them as perpetrators or victims. Historians, anthropologists, legal scholars, and social scientists with knowledge of the relevant society provide the court with additional expertise for determining whether the groups have real historical standing. Early ICTR cases such as Akayesu and Kayishema adopted objective understandings of ethnicity in Rwanda. In ascertaining whether the Tutsi were in fact an ethnic group for legal purposes, the Akayesu court noted that Belgian colonizers’ identity card system distinguished between Tutsi and Hutu ethnicities and that “all the Rwandan witnesses who appeared before [the court] invariably answered spontaneously and without hesitation the questions of the Prosecutor regarding their ethnic identity.” Given the preponderance of the evidence, the court ruled, “The Tutsi did indeed constitute a stable and permanent group and were identified as such by all” (emphasis added).38 Subjective approaches recognize that perpetrators help define groups through sustained patterns of dehumanization and persecution. Anthropological or other equally “objective” expert accounts of group salience are less relevant than a perpetrator’s understanding of who is an enemy. Thus, a particular collectivity does not need to meet an external standard for consideration as a protected group. Rather, the court ac-

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cepts the offender’s understanding of the group and assesses whether that group, as defined, falls under protection of the convention. The clearest statement of the subjective test is found in the ICTY’s Jelisi´ c case: To attempt to define a national, ethnical [sic] or racial group today using objective and scientifically irreproachable criteria would be a perilous exercise whose result would not necessarily correspond to the perception of the persons concerned by such categorization. Therefore, it is more appropriate to evaluate the status of a national, ethnical [sic] or religious group from the view of those persons who wish to single that group out from the rest of the community.39

The main difference between objective and subjective approaches, then, is the legally dispositive status of the perpetrator’s definition of the victim group: in the objective approach, it is one of several elements considered by the court, whereas from a subjectivist perspective it determines group identity. Therefore the question becomes whether that identity falls under the list of protected groups. Courts have seemingly been loath to abandon objective criteria for fear that doing so would allow for the massive expansion of protected groups, limited only by a perpetrator’s criteria for membership. Given the difficulties in establishing the legal criteria for ethnicity, race, or religion and the actual logic of genocide, the concern with objective criteria is misplaced and creates unnecessary confusion. The Nazis persecuted Jews according to Nazi ideas of Jewishness—ideas that were at their core an incoherent combination of race, ethnicity, and religion. It mattered little how Jews self-identified; in fact, many western and central European Jews were largely irreligious and saw themselves primarily in nationalist terms (French, German, Austrian) and only secondarily as ethnically or religiously Jewish. Eastern European Jews tended to be more religious and less integrated, but wide variation existed. But the Nazis believed they could identify Jewish identity precisely and exclusively. The 1935 Nuremberg race laws are especially instructive on this point. People with four German Aryan grandparents were defined as “German or kindred blood,” whereas Jews were defined as having three or four Jewish grandparents. So-called mischling Jews, or mixed bloods, were Jews with one or two Jewish grandparents (a biological or racial marker) who also practiced Judaism (a religious marker) or were married to another Jewish person (a religious or ethnic marker). Thus, under some criteria, Jewishness was racial; under others, it was a combination of race, ethnicity, and religion.40 What was the up-

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shot? The Nazis eventually abandoned legal efforts at defining Jewish identity and expanded their persecution against anyone they considered Jewish, regardless of the victim’s self-identification or any other preexisting objective criteria. Some observers fear that a highly subjectivist approach is too expansive, since any group could theoretically be a victim of genocide. The concern over subjectivism run amok is overblown. Perpetrators are unlikely to completely invent ethnic, religious, or other groups to exterminate. Given that genocidal ideologies must have at least some broader societal resonance to mobilize popular support, groups targeted for extermination are normally the victims of a long history of stigmatization and “othering,” though reframed as existential threats to the nation. What matters is not whether Tutsis, Jews, and Armenians are objectively identifiable groups, but how radical elites define them and how leaders draw the boundaries of group identity—thus the boundary between life and death. This question is ultimately partly empirical and cannot be resolved a priori. In any case, the debate over objective and subjective tests is ongoing, although the international courts have seemed to move (in a tortured fashion) in the direction of a moderate subjectivism, where a number of objective factors are considered, but perpetrator definitions are given added weight. Judges will likely sharpen their evaluative criteria for group identity as more cases come before the courts. Intent

Legal interpretations of the UNCG draw a distinction between intent and motive. The law requires that perpetrators act intentionally—that is, purposefully—to be held liable for genocide, but their motives or goals can be varied. Thus, perpetrators may commit genocide in order to create a new ethno-national identity by eliminating “impure” minorities, as part of a counterinsurgency campaign to eliminate a perceived security threat, or as part of a colonial project of conquest and economic enrichment, among other motives. The motives are irrelevant; what matters is whether destruction of the targeted group is intentional. Intent is perhaps the most vexing component of the definition of genocide.41 The UNCG’s stipulation that the perpetrator must intentionally seek to destroy the group is not found in the other two major human rights crimes: war crimes and crimes against humanity. Genocidal intent has two broad components: this first is knowledge, or an awareness that the acts in question will result in destroying the group. The second is specific (or special) intent (dolus specialis), a narrow concept that re-

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quires a prosecutor to show that the perpetrator specifically seeks to destroy the group as such. William Schabas quotes the ICTR definition of dolus specialis: “Special intent of a crime is the specific intention, required as a constitutive element of the crime, which demands that the perpetrator clearly seeks to produce the act charged,” and thus “the offense is characterized by a psychological relationship between the physical result and the mental state of the perpetrator.”42 The specific intent requirement has proven problematic for genocide law and preventive policy. The first problem is that this concept holds for individuals, not groups. This approach is, of course, appropriate given that legal criminal culpability attaches to particular individuals for the specific acts they commit, and entire collectives—such as ethnic or racial groups—should not be held criminally liable for genocide. The focus on individuality allows us to avoid superficial and dangerous accusations, such as the charge that all Bosnian Serbs or Rwandan Hutus are guilty of genocide. However, excessive reliance on dolus specialis has the inverse problem of providing a sociologically (and empirically) misleading account of genocide responsibility because it frames intentionality as purely an individual phenomenon. By emphasizing individual intentionality, the current law treats genocide as reducible to individual intentions and downplays broader contextual elements. Given this approach, the ICTR not surprisingly stated that “intent is a mental factor which is difficult, even impossible, to determine.”43 In practice, however, genocide is committed by states or similarly well-organized entities that follow general plans or policies, even if these emerge only over time and in response to changing circumstances. Requiring proof of individual specific intent individualizes what is in fact an organized and collective endeavor. The intent requirement places an added burden of proof on analysts and prosecutors, because it necessitates marshaling sufficient explicit evidence showing that perpetrators actively seek to destroy a group, rather than only prove that they know their policies or behavior would result in widespread and systematic destruction and continue to carry them out regardless. Unsurprisingly, perpetrators do not often explicitly acknowledge their genocidal intentions. Most genocides leave very little incontrovertible documentary evidence of the intention to exterminate victims, relying instead on the widespread use of euphemisms (“cleansing,” “clearing,” “action,” “solution”), oral orders, or compartmentalized orders and procedures that separate destruction into many parts, thus seemingly diluting individual intentionality, even if a broader contextual understanding of events points to purposeful destruction as part of an overall plan. In-

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tention must be inferred and reconstructed from the dynamics and patterns of atrocities, but the high threshold of legal proof can make this difficult.44 The decontextualized dolus specialis requirement is not only a problem for prosecutions; it has also affected policy. For instance, in 2005 the UN Security Council commissioned a study to investigate whether Sudan was committing genocide in Darfur. The study found that two elements of the crime of genocide were evident: the first was the presence of two identifiable different groups, “Africans” and “Arabs,” that constituted ethnic groups for the purposes of the UNCG; the second was evidence of the “material acts” of violence described in Article II of the convention, including killing, causing bodily or mental harm, and inflicting conditions to bring about the physical destruction of “African” Darfuris. However, the report declared that genocide was not occurring: “The Commission concludes that the Government of Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide,” because “one central element appears to be missing, at least as far as the central Government authorities are concerned: genocidal intent.”45 The problem with the commission’s finding was its expectation of discovering clear and explicit proof of consistent and uniform intent among all major decisionmakers in Khartoum. As Martin Shaw has noted, the adoption of legal understandings of strict intentionality into policymaking has led to the problematic assumption of a “singular, heavily value-laden original intention that informs all the actions of a perpetrator organization over a whole historical period.”46 This assumption belies the complex ways in which ideology, values, and strategic interests frame the options that leaders think are available to them, and how policy radicalizes over time in the face of changing circumstances. As historians and sociologists have amply documented, genocide is rarely the first policy that leaders pursue; instead it develops over time and across territories as leaders feel that prior strategies have failed in some manner. Finding a single decision signaling the intention to exterminate a group once and for all is rare.47 Policymakers seeking to prevent or stop genocide do not have the benefit of retrospectively reconstructing genocidal intentionality because they operate and make decisions in the present, when killings are ongoing and information on perpetrators’ purposes is difficult to decipher, may appear contradictory, or is simply not available. Rather than apply legal expectations of genocidal intent, then, policymakers may more usefully analyze perpetrators’ capacity to inflict violence and their actual behavior and use this information to assess intentionality. Capac-

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ity concerns the quantity and quality of the perpetrator’s lethal resources (such as weaponry) and its organizational ability to mobilize those resources. Behavior includes at least three dimensions: (1) level of lethality (to what extent violence is destructive rather than repressive of the group); (2) degree of coordination (how systematic, coordinated, and sustained lethal violence appears to be, such as the use of similar destructive tactics in a wide area); and (3) scope (to what extent coordinated lethal violence is applied against all or a substantial part of a victim group). Barring clear orders or statements calling for extermination, we can infer an intentional plan to destroy a group to the extent that violence becomes more lethal, appears coordinated and sustained over time, and targets an increasingly wider proportion of the victim group. This approach certainly does not meet the legal threshold of strict intentionality for individuals, but it roughly captures the onset and diffusion of genocide, and may be more useful to policymakers when atrocities are ongoing.

Debates in Scholarship

The many problems with the UNCG’s definition of genocide have prompted numerous scholarly responses with the aim of providing greater clarity and coherence to the concept. These efforts, of course, serve a somewhat different purpose than the convention; rather than establish the elements of legal culpability, most scholars seek to develop a definition that can capture the complex social phenomenon of group destruction across cases and over time. A number of these alternative definitions have been quite sophisticated, but nevertheless no consensus on the term exists in current scholarship, which has some specific consequences for policymaking (as I note further below).48 The lack of consensus is evident in the dimensions of violence that scholars choose to emphasize: several scholars have adopted a restricted definition of what counts as genocide and focus on cases in which physical destruction was driven by an explicit ideology of purification, or violence targeted a specific type of group, like an ethnic community.49 Others deemphasize ideology and explain large-scale extermination by focusing on the destruction of groups, regardless of victim identity or perpetrator motivation.50 Still others have preferred to create complex categorizations of violence that include urbicide, politicide, classicide, democide, ecocide, femicide, gendercide, fratricide, cultural genocide, linguicide, omnicide, ethnic cleansing, murderous cleansing, and auto-

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genocide to analyze various violent phenomena that seem to have some family resemblances. Adam Jones’s extensive but nonexhaustive survey of the field counts over twenty scholarly definitions of genocide as well as many more cognates.51 These definitional battles have preoccupied genocide scholarship for over twenty years and are unlikely to disappear. The definitional debates do carry consequences, however. Wide variation in genocide conceptualization means that scholars choose different cases based on their definitions, and thus their theories are difficult to compare.52 The “core” modern accepted cases include Armenia, the Holocaust, and Rwanda, with Cambodia, Bosnia, and Darfur somewhat more contested, and many more cases on the boundaries (for instance, Bangladesh [1971], Biafra [1968–1970], Indonesia [1965–1966], Tibet [1959], etc.). 53 Variation in case selection is evident in some of the most sophisticated recent studies of genocide: Mark Levene provides a rich discussion of France’s Vendée massacres, European colonial extermination, the Armenian and Jewish genocides, Stalin’s attack on kulaks, and Cambodia and Rwanda, among other cases. 54 Ben Kiernan traces similarities across cases ranging from Sparta to Darfur, using the UNCG to connect all of these conceptually.55 Manus Midlarsky, however, uses a restricted definition of genocide and thus develops a theory that focuses on three contemporary cases: Armenia, the Holocaust, and Rwanda, while excluding Cambodia and other cases of “politicide” (the targeting of political groups); Michael Mann provides an inclusive theory of “murderous ethnic cleansing” and genocide that includes genocidal democracies in the New World, the Ottoman Empire, the Holocaust, a variety of communist regimes, Yugoslavia, and Rwanda. 56 Eric Weitz focuses on genocide and ethnic cleansing, and includes the Holocaust, Soviet kulaks, Cambodia, and Bosnia, but not Rwanda, while Benjamin Valentino combines “mass killings” and genocide in his analysis of not only the Holocaust and Rwanda, but also Guatemala, Afghanistan, the Chinese communist revolution, and a number of other cases.57 This conceptual variation means that different theories are explaining somewhat different outcomes, since the theories have different objects of study. Comparing various causal mechanisms, processes, and explanatory accounts thus becomes difficult. Certain policy implications follow: depending on how genocide is defined, policymakers look for different processes of escalation, causal dynamics, and patterns of violence diffusion, which may well generate different genocide prevention or intervention policy recommendations. Given any particular operative

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definition and the causal theories it supports, analysts and decisionmakers risk missing (or otherwise downplaying) cases that do not fit the definitional and thus causal theoretical framework. This confusion is evident in the variety of definitions that the policy community employs. Whereas the UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide employs the UNCG definition, the Albright-Cohen Genocide Prevention Taskforce terms genocide as “large-scale and deliberate attacks on civilians,” which opens many more cases to policy scrutiny (and emphasizes a different set of accelerators and triggers), while the Will to Intervene report uses the capacious term “mass atrocities” to include genocide and major violations against civilians.58 Often, civil society and advocacy organizations define genocide according to the convention but apply it more widely, probably in recognition of the term’s limitations. The Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention has recently focused on Kenya and the Baha’is of Iran and is developing sophisticated early warning software that seems to account for various forms of political violence.59 Other advocacy groups such as Enough! and the International Crisis Group also use “genocide” in a variety of ways, while defining it according to the UNCG.60 No neat solution exists to this problem of definitional proliferation, and asking scholarship and advocacy to center on one account may be too much to expect. Genocide definitions serve different functions, depending on context: they may be legal, normative, social scientific, or policy oriented. And rather than demand one definition, conceptual and theoretical variation may allow us to recognize important similarities, linkages, and differences across cases that might otherwise be missed.61 The key is to be clear about our assumptions and presuppositions in defining and explaining genocide. We also need to be wary of the ways in which leaders skirt political responsibility by relying on tendentious interpretations of the convention—so evident, for instance, in the Clinton administration’s appalling terminological acrobatics on Rwanda.62 Greater clarity, precision, and reflexivity should not support political apathy. The proliferation of definitions and theories reflects an obvious but challenging fact: genocide overlaps with a variety of other kinds of violence, and sorting it from these other phenomena is difficult. In the following section I discuss several of these kinds of political violence. I begin with a brief overview of the two other dominant legal crimes, crimes against humanity and war crimes, and then move on to a consideration of how genocide relates to the sociological categories of war and ethnic cleansing.

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Genocide and Other Forms of Political Violence

Current human rights law distinguishes genocide from crimes against humanity and war crimes. The law on crimes against humanity has evolved over the past century and domestic and international laws continue to show some variation.63 The International Criminal Court (ICC) statute, which provides one of the more expansive understandings, includes under its rubric murder; extermination; enslavement; deportation or forcible population transfers; imprisonment and similarly severe deprivations of liberty in violation of international law; torture; rape and other forms of extreme sexual violence; persecutions on political, racial, religious, and other grounds of collective identity; enforced disappearances; apartheid; and “other inhumane acts” that cause great suffering.64 Some of these acts also fall under genocide, but unlike the latter, crimes against humanity are not dependent on an intentional effort to destroy a group, nor are victim categories limited to nationality, ethnicity, race, and religion. Rather, crimes against humanity are widespread or systematic attacks against civilian populations. Given the wide array of admissible acts and the lack of an explicit intentionality requirement, many legal scholars consider genocide to be a subset of crimes against humanity with a reduced scope of applicability. War crimes constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law or the law of armed conflict. International humanitarian law originated as customary rules regulating warfare between states and over time became codified as law, and now incorporates the 1949 Geneva Conventions and its additional protocols. This body of law originally applied only to international war, but today applies to domestic conflicts as well. Its current formulation in the ICC statute is especially expansive and includes murder, starvation, the ill treatment or forced removal of civilian populations, the destruction of populated civilian areas not justified by military necessity, the ill treatment and killing of prisoners of war, and the use of various weapons, among other elements.65 Unlike genocide, war crimes do not have an intentionality requirement, nor are they restricted to a limited class of victim groups. Over the past fifteen years, prosecutors in international courts have tended to focus on war crimes and crimes against humanity, with genocide charges less common because of their limited scope and the evidentiary challenges of proving intentionality. International law does not recognize genocide as “worse” than either crimes against humanity or war crimes, and one could certainly argue that the important point is to secure accountability for major perpetrators regardless of whether they are found guilty of crimes against humanity or genocide. However,

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genocide is still seen as the “crime of crimes” in media representations and policy circles, and unfortunately some victims feel cheated when their suffering is prosecuted as “only” a crime against humanity and not genocide.66 Given these popular understandings of genocide and the convention’s explicit demand for prevention, genocide will likely continue to command greater attention in international politics.67 As noted earlier, no single definition of genocide is commonly accepted among social scientists. Nevertheless, some commonalties across social scientific definitions do exist: most researchers treat genocide as the deliberate (intentional) destruction of a group, even if “group” and “intent” are open to an array of interpretations, and disagreements continue over which cases fall under the genocide label. Genocide is distinguished from other forms of violence, notes Scott Straus, by being “group selective” (not only combatant selective or indiscriminate) and “group destructive” (rather than only harmful, for instance).68 Specific acts of violence—such as massacres, torture, and rape—may constitute genocide if they are group selective and destructive over time. Empirically, genocide is most evident when violent acts are consistently lethal (whether immediately or over time), systematic and coordinated, and applied against all or a significant part of the target group. Genocide is therefore a macrolevel phenomenon comprising numerous violent acts and processes that, when viewed together, are selective and destructive of a group. It is thus distinguishable from other macrolevel violent phenomena, such as war. Genocide and war both include similarly violent acts but differ in that the latter concerns high levels of lethality between organized armed combatants, rather than lethal violence against the members of a particular group, armed and unarmed; furthermore, war is not necessarily driven by group destruction. In practice, of course, most genocides have occurred in contexts of war.69 This fact is not too surprising: war gives popular sanction to the use of extreme violence, increases fear and hatred, and facilitates the mobilization and coordination of military resources for killing. In the context of war, violence is multidirectional and includes a host of armed and unarmed actors, with variations in level, organization, and types of violence across space and time. The Rwandan genocide is illustrative: the radical Hutu government simultaneously fought an insurgent Tutsi rebel army, massacred Hutu opponents, and sought to exterminate all Tutsi civilians. In other words, it was engaged in a civil war, politicide (the killing of political enemies), and genocide, highlighting the complexity of large-scale political violence. Of course, not all wars are genocidal: the key is identifying the conditions and processes of violent

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escalation that explain how war or large-scale political violence may become genocidal.70 Because genocide is a macrolevel phenomenon, a variety of violent policies may fall under it. Counterinsurgency campaigns, for instance, may become genocidal if state forces move from combating rebel forces to targeting for destruction the civilian groups that ostensibly support the rebellion. These campaigns may begin by killing individual political opponents; move on to selective massacres, forced relocations, and widespread and indiscriminate killings of their supporters; and eventually coalesce into policies of systematic and deliberate destruction of the group. Counterinsurgency campaigns and genocide are not mutually exclusive—campaigns may become genocidal under certain conditions. Genocide is also distinguishable from ethnic cleansing, a troubling euphemism that gained popular currency during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s.71 In its most basic form, ethnic cleansing refers to the forced removal of a population from some territory, though the perpetrators’ motives may vary: economic, security, ethnic purification, and so forth. The ICTY has occasionally referred to ethnic cleansing in its decisions and placed it under the category of forced population transfer and thus crimes against humanity. The UN Commission of Experts on the Yugoslavia Wars has stated that ethnic cleansing may also qualify as a war crime. Nevertheless, the term does not have a clear legal meaning, nor do scholars and policymakers use it in a consistent fashion.72 Ethnic cleansing runs along a spectrum of violent acts, and may include anything from coercive but nonlethal removal of populations to the use of selective massacres and terror, uncoordinated killings, and even organized and systematic killings of a substantial part or all of a group. At the far end of the spectrum, ethnic cleansing and genocide essentially overlap: to the extent that an intentional effort exists to remove a population from a territory through the use of large-scale killing or the destruction of its means of existence, cleansing is genocidal (some scholars, such as Michael Mann, categorize genocide as a subset of “murderous ethnic cleansing”).73 Unsurprisingly, people with long histories in a community rarely leave peacefully, and consequently ethnic cleansing often degenerates into significant violence, especially when carried out against the backdrop of ongoing war. History has shown that disease, starvation, exposure, and outright killings often accompany cleansing, and many cleansings have themselves been genocidal. The combination of the modern nationstate, which has at its disposal incredible means of violence in pursuit of rapid economic transformations, and ideologies of ethnic or class homogeneity has given us even more violent cleansings than in the past.74

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In this brief overview of forms of political violence, I’ve shown that genocide shares a number of features with other kinds of mass atrocity, but also differs in distinct ways. A clearer understanding of their similarities and differences, especially in terms of the conditions and dynamics that result in various types of collective violence, can aid in developing more robust early warning programs and risk indices. The following two chapters address the factors that predict the likelihood and onset of genocide and related violence for prevention and intervention purposes.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I’ve sought to sketch the conceptual foundations of genocide as well as some of the continued challenges that the concept raises in law and scholarly research. Many of these issues continue to be debated and sharpened as conflicts end, new ones emerge, and trials multiply around the world. The goal, of course, is not conceptual clarification as its own end; rather, clarification aids in developing more accurate accounts of the onset and progression of genocidal violence and its relationship to other forms of mass atrocity, with the ultimate goal of prevention. The world is still a long way off from developing—and implementing—robust preventive measures and regimes, but the past few decades have shown increasingly sophisticated understandings of genocide and massive human rights violations and what it may take to stop them. Whether prevention receives the attention it deserves remains an open question.

Notes An earlier version of this chapter was presented at the Political Theory Colloquium at the University of Notre Dame. Special thanks to Ruth Abbey, Eileen Hunt Botting, Matthew Hall, Mary Keys, Phillip Muñoz, Dana Villa, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, and members of the colloquium. I am also grateful to Adam Lupel, Simon A. Robins, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments. 1. A useful corrective to this trend is the special section on Lemkin in Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, “From the Guest Editors: Raphael Lemkin: The ‘Founder of the United Nations Genocide Convention’ as a Historian of Mass Violence,” Journal of Genocide Research 7, no. 4 (2005): 447–452. 2. Raphael Lemkin, Acts Constituting a General Transnational Danger Considered as Crimes Under International Law (Paris: A. Pedone Publishers, 1933), www.preventgenocide.org.

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3. Ibid. 4. Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (New York: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 79. 5. Ibid. 6. Cultural genocide includes eliminating a group’s language, restrictions on education, outlawing artistic and literary activities, and destroying or confiscating the cultural patrimony of the group (libraries, museums, artifacts, etc.) (ibid., pp. 84–85, 89). The moral dimension includes attacks “attempting to create an atmosphere of moral debasement through promoting pornographic publications and motion pictures, and the excessive consumption of alcohol” (p. xii). 7. Ibid., 79. 8. Lemkin understood that genocide had historically taken many forms; Axis Rule in Occupied Europe provides a sweeping historical overview of extermination. Nevertheless, the key analytical components of genocide are strongly tied to the Holocaust and thus perhaps assume too strong a connection between genocidal policies than may occur in other contexts. 9. The crimes listed in the International Military Tribunal’s mandate were crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. What Lemkin understood as genocide was subsumed mostly under crimes against humanity. For the Nuremberg tribunal, see Charter of the International Military Tribunal, Section 1, Article 6 (1945); for the Tokyo tribunal, see Charter of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Section 2, Article 5 (1946). 10. The Allies carried out several additional trials under Allied Control Council Law no. 10 (CC10). In the Justice case, genocide was termed “the prime illustration of a crime against humanity under the Council Law,” and the RuSHA case on Nazi racial policies in Eastern Europe found thirteen defendants guilty of crimes against humanity through a “systematic policy of genocide” aimed at “the destruction of foreign nations and ethnic groups.” See Justice, US Military Tribunal TWC 3/1 (1947), and RuSHA US Military Tribunal TWC 4/599 (1948). Poland prosecuted several Nazis for genocide in its domestic courts as well. See the UN War Crimes Commission, Law Reports of Trials of War Criminals, Volumes IX–XV (Buffalo, NY: William S. Hein, 1997), p. 200. 11. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, UN General Assembly Resolution 260 (III) (December 9, 1948), www.un.org. 12. During the drafting of the International Criminal Court’s statute, a number of parties sought to modernize the definition of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. These modest efforts failed (United Nations, “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Establishment of an International Criminal Court,” UN Document A/50/22, para. 61). 13. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article I. 14. Ibid., Article IV. 15. Rape and sexual violence qualified legally as genocide only very recently. See Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR paras. 711–712, 598; Musema TC (2000) ICTR para. 156; Kelly Dawn Askin, “Holding Leaders Accountable in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for Gender Crimes Committed in Darfur,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 1 (July 2006): 13–28; Christoph

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Schiessl, “An Element of Genocide: Rape, Total War, and International Law in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Genocide Research 4, no. 2 (2002): 197–210. 16. Krsti´ c TC (2001) ICTY para. 513 defines the qualifying harm as resulting “in a grave and long-term disadvantage to a person’s ability to lead a normal and constructive life.” 17. Kajelijeli TC (2003) ICTR para. 815. 18. Sheri P. Rosenberg, “Genocide Is a Process, Not an Event,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 7, no. 1 (2012): 16–23. 19. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR paras. 508, 598. 20. Krsti´ c AC (2004) ICTY para. 28. 21. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR para. 508. 22. The convention does not define “children,” although international law normally defines them as persons under the age of eighteen. 23. Rutaganda TC (1999) ICTR paras. 53, 55. 24. Australia’s formal policy of forcibly removing Aboriginal children from their families and communities to be raised as “civilized” whites would thus constitute genocide, but the Australian High Court rejected this finding on rather tendentious grounds. See Kruger (1997) Australian High Court 126 ALR 126. 25. Claudia Card, Confronting Evils: Terrorism, Torture, Genocide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Christopher Powell, “What Do Genocides Kill? A Relational Conception of Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 9, no. 4 (2007): 527–547. 26. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR para. 512. 27. This differs from the common distinction in the social sciences between “nation” and “state,” where a particular nation-state may have numerous national minorities within it. Kurds and Québécois, for example, are not national groups for the purposes of the legal definition of genocide. 28. V. P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 29. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR para. 516. On Rwandan identities, see Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2009). 30. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR para. 514. 31. Julie Flint and Alex de Waal, Darfur: A New History of a Long War (London: Zed Books, 2008); Gerard Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 32. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR para. 515. 33. Norman Naimark and Ben Kiernan have attempted to show how these and other cases qualify as genocide under current international law. See Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 34. Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). 35. See Chapter 4 by Barbara Harff in this volume.

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36. Krsti´ c TC (2001) ICTY para. 557. 37. Rutaganda TC (1999) ICTR para. 56. 38. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR para. 702. Also see Kayishema TC (1999) ICTR paras. 522–526. 39. Jelisi´ c TC (1999) ICTY para. 61. 40. Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (London: Franklin Watts, 1982), pp. 110–115. 41. Alexander Zahar and Goran Sluiter, “Genocide Law: An Education in Sentimentalism,” in Alexander Zahar and Goran Sluiter, International Criminal Law: A Critical Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 155–196. 42. William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). An extensive discussion of criminal intentionality in genocide appears in Johan D. Van der Vyver, “Prosecution and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide,” Fordham International Law Journal 23, no. 2 (1999): 285–356; a sophisticated philosophical treatment is found in Card, Confronting Evils, pp. 257–261. 43. Akayesu TC (1998) ICTR para. 523. 44. There is mixed evidence that the courts have moved in the direction of a broader conception of intent. See Schabas’s discussion of intent in Akayesu, in Genocide in International Law, pp. 254. 45. UN International Commission of Inquiry, “Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Violations of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Law in Darfur,” UN Doc. S/2005/60, 2005, para. 518. 46. Martin Shaw, What Is Genocide? (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2007), p. 84. For an extended critique of the Darfur Commission, see Jerry Fowler, “A New Chapter of Irony: The Legal Implications of the Darfur Genocide Determination,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 1 (2006): 29–39. 47. Cascading radicalization is apparent even in the Holocaust, normally taken as the paradigmatic example of explicit intentional extermination. See Christopher Browning, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); Peter Longerich, Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). On comparative case studies regarding cascading radicalization of elite policy, see Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Benjamin Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004). 48. On various attempts at redefining genocide, see David Scheffer, “Atrocity Crimes and Genocide,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 1, no. 3 (December 2006): 229–250; Shaw, What Is Genocide?; Mark Osiel, Making Sense of Mass Atrocity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Larry May, Genocide: A Normative Account (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 49. On ideological theories, see Kiernan, Blood and Soil; Jacques Sémelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacre and Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007); Eric Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005). On eth-

Debating Definitions

45

nic identity, see Bradley Campbell, “Genocide as Social Control,” Sociological Theory 27, no. 2 (May 2009): 150–172. 50. Valentino, Final Solutions; Helen Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (London: Sage, 1993); Vahakn N. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 2003). 51. Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 16–20, 26–29. 52. Scott Straus, “Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide,” World Politics 59, no. 3 (2007): 476–501; Ernesto Verdeja, “Clarifying Concepts and Causes of Cruelty,” Review of Politics 72, no. 3 (2010): 513–526. 53. Alexander Hinton, “Critical Genocide Studies,” in Joyce Apsel and Ernesto Verdeja, eds., Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives (New York: Routledge, 2013). 54. Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005). 55. Kiernan, Blood and Soil. 56. Manus Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Mann, Dark Side of Democracy. 57. Weitz, Century of Genocide; Valentino, Final Solutions. 58. UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, www.un.org; Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen, “Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers” (Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Academy of Diplomacy, and US Institute of Peace, December 2008); Frank Chalk, Roméo Dallaire, et al., Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2010). 59. Sentinel Project for the Prevention of Genocide, http://thesentinel project.org/. 60. For Enough!, see http://www.enoughproject.org/blog_posts/Genocide; for the International Crisis Group, see www.crisisgroup.org. Also see United to End Genocide (formerly Genocide Intervention Network and Save Darfur Coalition), www.endgenocide.org/; the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network, www.gpanet.org. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have traditionally kept closer to the UNCG definition, as evident in their early abstention on calling the violence in Darfur genocide and instead framing the violence as crimes against humanity and war crimes. 61. Ernesto Verdeja, “The Political Science of Genocide: Outlines of an Emerging Research Agenda,” Perspectives on Politics 10, no. 2 (2012): 307–321. 62. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002), pp. 321–390. 63. On the origins and development of crimes against humanity and its relation to genocide, see M. Cherif Bassiouni, Crimes Against Humanity: Historical Evolution and Contemporary Application (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Richard Vernon, “What Is a Crime Against Humanity?” Journal of Political Philosophy 10, no. 3 (2002): 231–249. 64. Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, Article VII. 65. Knut Dörmann, Elements of War Crimes Under the Rome Statute of the

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International Criminal Court: Sources and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). 66. Patricia Wald, “Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity,” Washington University Global Studies Law Review 6, no. 3 (2007): 621–633. 67. The convention states that genocide “is a crime under international law which [contracting parties] undertake to prevent and to punish” (Article I). The responsibility-to-protect principle that has emerged over the past decade underscores the importance of preventing crimes against humanity and war crimes in addition to genocide, although the principle’s legal standing remains unsettled. See Alex J. Bellamy, “The Responsibility to Protect: Five Years On,” Ethics and International Affairs 24, no. 2 (2010): 143–169. 68. Scott Straus, “Destroy Them to Save Us: Theories of Genocide and the Logics of Political Violence,” Terrorism and Political Violence 24, no. 4 (2012): 544–560. 69. Martin Shaw, War and Genocide: Organized Mass Killing in Modern Society (Cambridge: Polity, 2003); Paul Bartrop, “The Relationship Between War and Genocide in the Twentieth Century,” Journal of Genocide Research 4, no. 4 (December 2002): 519–532. 70. Barbara Harff and Frances Stewart examine these questions in this volume. 71. Power, A Problem from Hell, pp. 443–474. 72. Krsti´ c TC (2001) ICTY para. 562; UN Commission of Experts, “III:B Ethnic Cleansing,” Final Report of the Commission of Experts (New York: United Nations, 1994), S/1994/67. 73. Mann, Dark Side of Democracy, p. 12; Douglas Singleterry, “Ethnic Cleansing and Genocidal Intent: A Failure of Judicial Interpretation?” Genocide Studies and Prevention 5, no. 1 (2010): 39–67. 74. Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in TwentiethCentury Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001).

3 The Causes of Civil War and Genocide: A Comparison Frances Stewart

T

he UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG) defines “genocide” as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial, or religious group as such.” Genocide is different from civil war: it usually involves deaths on a much larger scale and invariably targets particular groups—mostly civilians—often with the aim of exterminating them. Typically in genocide—in contrast to civil wars—violence is one-sided; fortunately, genocide is a much rarer phenomenon than civil war. While genocide appears to most people as peculiar, psychopathic, and incomprehensible, civil war is often regarded as more “normal,” involving a more mundane pursuit of political and economic objectives. However, as I review below, as in the case of civil war, one can detect underlying political and economic patterns that make genocide more likely. Civil war typically lasts much longer than genocidal episodes, but generally involves fewer deaths, although here, too, the civilian population is often targeted. Some overlap, however, does exist between these two types of violence. In part, this overlap is definitional; categorizing particular episodes as best described as civil war or genocide is not always possible. The violence in Darfur is an example that could appear in either category. Moreover, as I show, genocide often occurs in a context of civil war. Historians often claim that each civil war and genocide event is unique and can only be understood sui generis. Yet, for both categories, social scientists have sought to find patterns in the conditions that give rise to these deadly episodes. For the most part, however, social scientists have pursued two distinct strands of investigation: studies of the economic and political causes of “normal” civil war, and studies of genocide. 47

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In this chapter, I contrast some findings from the quantitative investigations of the two strands of study. Much of the literature on both civil war and genocide consists of historical studies, drawing on psychology, political science, and economics. Quantitative studies have become more prevalent over the past few decades, especially in the study of civil war. In the study of genocide, quantitative approaches are rarer— partly because the events are regarded as representing an abnormal pathology that is unlikely to display regular patterns, and partly because there are fewer episodes and exploring statistical regularities is more difficult. Indeed, in genocide studies, one can safely conclude that quantitative approaches form only a small part of the massive literature.1 Nonetheless, I focus here on a comparison of quantitative studies of the two types of events to uncover any differences or similarities in this arena. The comparison of quantitative studies is itself highly ambitious. Comparing the whole literature would be impossible (certainly for me), but I believe that if we can derive insights from a comparison of quantitative studies, we will have a useful beginning that an exploration of the wider literature can test.

Definitions

First, we need to differentiate civil war from genocide. Numerous definitions have, of course, been put forward for both types of violence. Civil war consists in violent conflict between groups involving significant numbers of deaths within a country. The role of intergroup violence in civil wars is one difference between civil wars and criminality.2 Data sets and corresponding investigations, however, vary in their assessment of what counts as a civil war. In some investigations, the required death rate for a conflict to count as a civil war is 1,000 p.a. (per annum), but others set a much lower bar (e.g., 25 deaths p.a.). The Center for Systemic Peace uses a lower limit of 500 deaths directly due to the conflict for an event to count as a major episode of violence.3 The studies I draw on here include a range of scale limits. In many data sets, civil wars are defined to occur only where the state is one party (e.g., Uppsala conflict data).4 However, this approach excludes many communal conflicts. Finally, some data sets (e.g., the Correlates of War project) deliberately exclude genocide.5 This exclusion is also true of the Uppsala data on civil war, which requires that the violence be inflicted and suffered by both sides (with at least 5 percent of the fatalities occurring on each side of the conflict). My preferred definition of civil wars would include communal as well as state-involved conflicts, and a cut-

The Causes of Civil War and Genocide

49

off rate of 500 deaths per year. But in practice I adopt the varying definitions of the respective studies. As noted, the UNCG definition of genocide excludes the mass killing of people on the basis of their class or politics, whereas many would argue that class-based genocide occurred in the Soviet Union in the 1930s and in Cambodia in 1975–1979, and that a politics-based genocide (with an ethnic dimension) took place in Indonesia in 1965–1966. I therefore follow Barbara Harff in including “politicides” when considering genocides.6 Some analysts suggest that the UN definition makes the state a necessary perpetrator,7 yet nonstate actors carry out systematic killings of others based on their ethnic or class characteristics as well, as in many of the ethnic cleansing episodes in the former Yugoslavia. In other cases, the state is strongly suspected to be involved, but little hard evidence is available, as in Darfur. A strong element in the UN definition and in popular conception is that genocide involves the intent to destroy a particular identity group. This point is clearly important, but how much it adds to the definition of genocide is not clear. If a group appeared to have the intent to destroy another group but in fact killed very few, no genocide episode would have taken place. Conversely, no written or oral evidence of intent may be available, yet the systematic killing of many from a particular group could be sufficient to infer such an intent. My preferred definition of genocide is of systematic killings of members of a group based on their ethnicity, race, religion, class, or political beliefs, perpetrated by the state or another group.8 However, as with civil war, I draw on a variety of studies that have adopted different definitions, albeit all within this broad perspective, and I adhere to those definitions as applicable. For example, Rudolph Rummel uses the concept of “democide” as “the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.”9 Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, et al. refer to “mass killings” as “the intentional killing of a massive number of non-combatants,” and William Easterly et al. adopt Israel Charny’s definition of genocide as mass killing: “the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defenselessness and helplessness of the victims.”10 However, their listing of events that count as mass killings include some involving rather small numbers of victims. Democide and mass killings as interpreted by these authors can include some killings that would not strictly qualify as being based on group identity or political beliefs.11

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Responding to Genocide

Differences in definitions of civil war and genocide are not always clear-cut, as the two categories can overlap. Relevant differences include the following: 1. Scale. Civil wars can involve quite low rates of death; indeed, as noted earlier, some researchers classify civil wars as events involving more than twenty-five deaths per year. Deaths in genocidal events are generally much higher, the size depending on the size of the group targeted, even though some people have described events as genocidal, or as mass killings, that involved relatively few deaths. Moreover, civil wars can involve very high death rates even when no particular group is targeted for elimination (e.g., the Biafran war in Nigeria). 2. Role of the state. The state, or agents of the state, are generally the prime agent in genocide. Some definitions of civil war also require the state to be a participant, but in some civil conflicts (often described as “communal”), the state is not a clear participant (for example, the violence in the middle belt of Nigeria, or in northern Ghana). 3. Motive. According to the UN definition, the intent to eliminate a particular group is a defining characteristic of genocide regardless of specific motive, although some classifications include events with other motives—for example, the motive might be economic development, and the deaths of large numbers of a particular group might be the consequence, rather than the intent. In civil wars, neither intentional group destruction nor particular motive need be present, and a variety of motives are possible. 4. One-sidedness. Genocides are often one-sided, typically with the state targeting a particular group, while civil wars always involve at least two warring parties.12 5. Geographic arena. Civil wars are defined as being within a nation, although actors outside the nation often play an important part. Most genocides are also internal, but genocides can reach outside the nation to eliminate the targeted group in other countries. Every one of these differences has to be qualified, and consequently the distinction between the two is not always clear, especially when civil war involves very high rates of killing targeted at particular groups—as with civil wars among different ethnic groups. Despite the impossibility of arriving at a clear categorization dividing civil war from genocide, different groups of scholars have investigated causes of the two types of violence.13 Differences in the conclusions aris-

The Causes of Civil War and Genocide

51

ing from these two literatures may thus reveal differences of approach and methodology, in addition to actual differences between the two types of violence. Some of the variables hypothesized to explain the root causes of the violence are common to both sets of investigations, and some differ. In the next section I review the major hypotheses put forward to explain civil war and some major findings, and I do the same in the following section in relation to genocide. Then I compare the findings and conclude with implications for policies aimed at preventing these violent events.

Civil Wars

Global trends in armed conflict show a rise from 1950 through the 1980s and a decline thereafter (see Figure 3.1). Within this period, civil war, or intrastate conflict, accounts for the majority of conflict. The peak came in 1990, just about at the end of the Cold War, and has declined quite sharply since then. An increasing proportion of civil wars have been presented as ethnic conflicts (see Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.1 Global Trends in Armed Conflict, 1946–2010

Warfare totals

Societal warfare

Interstate warfare

Source: Calculated from Center for Systemic Peace, List of Major Episodes of Political Violence, www.systemicpeace.org/warlist.htm. Note: Episodes are coded on a scale of one to ten according to an assessment of the full impact of their violence on the societies that directly experience their effects, and the data above sums these magnitudes.

52

Responding to Genocide Figure 3.2 Trends in Ethnic Conflict, 1945–2004

Ethnic conflict as a proportion of total conflict

80% 70%

Incidence

60% 50% 40%

Magnitude

30% 20% 0%

1946 1949 1952 1955 1958 1961 1964 1967 1970 1973 1976 1979 1982 1985 1988 1991 1994 1997 2000 2003 2006 2009

10%

Source: Calculated from Center for Systemic Peace, List of Major Episodes of Political Violence, www.systemicpeace.org/warlist.htm. ! ! '

'

' '

'

'

'

( ! ! ! to seek ! ! ! ! ! ! often! present, ! While the ! temptation a! single cause is in!! depth investigation of any particular case reveals that a combination of ! conditions precipitates civil war. Scholars have suggested three categories of causes—demographic, socioeconomic, and political—and I discuss these separately. But as multivariate analysis proves, the combination generally makes these causes lethal.

Demographic Composition

Much contemporary conflict occurs between ethnic or religious groups. Consequently, some researchers attribute contemporary conflicts to fundamental differences arising from ethnicity or religion. 14 Such a conclusion leads easily to the notion that ethnic or religious differences cause wars. One would then think that the greater societal heterogeneity—the greater the number of groups or the greater the cultural difference between them—the higher the risk of conflict. Evidence, however, does not support this conclusion; beyond a point, conflict risk seems to decline as the number of groups increase, as measured by the ethnolinguistic-fractionalization index (ELF). 15 Conflict risk seems highest with a few large groups (i.e., an intermediate level of ELF), which makes intuitive sense: with many small groups, no one group can dominate, and collaboration becomes essential. This intuition has been formalized in the demographic polarization index, which is higher the more nearly the population is divided into two

The Causes of Civil War and Genocide

53

equal sized groups.16 While evidence exists that conflict risk is higher with a higher demographic polarization index, the conflict-causing aspects of demography seem to depend on political and economic factors being present. Most research suggests that the demographic composition as such does not matter, but the composition combined with other factors raises the risk of conflict.17 One fundamental criticism of a simple ethnic-demographic explanation is that ethnicity is not an independent variable: in short, “Ethnicity does not explain anything, it needs to be explained.” 18 Ethnic categorizations are fluid and constructed. Indeed, those leaders who mobilize people according to their ethnicity generally start by enhancing ethnic consciousness. However, while ethnic (and indeed some religious) distinctions are created, at any one time people inherit perceptions of ethnic difference that make ethnicity an independent as well as a dependent variable. As Graham Brown and Arnim Langer state, “Although quantitative studies of ethnic diversity are inherently problematic because they require the reduction of ethnicity into exhaustive and mutually exclusive ethnic groups (something sophisticated theories of ethnicity militate against), as long as the interpretation of results is cognizant of the limitations of this kind of categorization, quantitative analysis can provide a useful systematic form of comparison.”19 Nonetheless, ethnic differences are evidently an insufficient explanation of violent conflict, as the vast majority of multiethnic societies are at peace.20 Many multiethnic or multireligious societies sustain peace over a long period—Ghana or Tanzania, for example—while others remain at peace for decades before experiencing conflict. Conflict occurs when particular demographic, political, or socioeconomic conditions are present in association with ethnic differences. As Abner Cohen stated, “Men may and do certainly joke about or ridicule the strange and bizarre customs of men from other ethnic groups, because these customs are different from their own. But they do not fight over such differences alone. When men do, on the other hand, fight across ethnic lines it is nearly always the case that they fight over some fundamental issues concerning the distribution and exercise of power, whether economic, political, or both.”21 Another demographic factor to which conflicts are attributed is the so-called youth bulge. The hypothesis holds that when young men form a particularly large proportion of the population, conflict is more likely because mobilization for conflict is an attractive option for this age group, especially if they have few other opportunities.22 Implicit in this

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Responding to Genocide

hypothesis is not only a bulge in the number of youths, but a dearth in employment opportunities. Socioeconomic and Political Causes of Civil War

Conflict occurs in conditions that offer a combination of motives and opportunity (or feasibility).23 People may be motivated to fight, especially when they have strong grievances that they cannot solve in other ways, but they do not do so because they lack resources or they face a highly repressive state apparatus that makes fighting virtually impossible. Thus, both motive and feasibility need to be present. Individual motivation and group motivation are both relevant to understanding conflict, since people have multiple motives and act out of loyalty to a group or an ideology as well as from the perspectives of their individual advantage. Consequently, on the socioeconomic side, the factors making conflict likely can be differentiated into those primarily concerned with individual motivation and those concerned with group motivation. Both distinguish between two kinds of motives: grievance and greed; the latter is concerned with maximizing incomes and material status. However, whereas greed may be an accurate description of the elite seeking control over government, contracts, and resources, the description is hardly fair or accurate for poor individuals who may fight because it is their only means of survival. In general, it is helpful to differentiate the motives of the leaders of any conflict group and the followers, or those who actually carry out the fighting, as well as those who provide more or less active support, such as the provisions of shelter and food. Motives can differ between each of these categories. In most instances of prolonged conflict, all three support the conflict, since effective fighting requires their cooperation. However, Jeremy Weinstein has pointed to differences between situations where resources are readily available to fund a conflict and situations where there are not.24 In the former, soldiers can be enlisted and fed through mercenary means and without mass support for the conflict; in the latter, however, enlistment and subsistence depend on local support, and then ideology and group loyalties play a much larger role. Individual motivation. People who fight are, of course, individuals

with their own private motivation as well as being members of a group. War gives some people benefits as well as imposing heavy costs. Political sociologists such as David Keen and Mark Duffield, and economists such as Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler have emphasized private

The Causes of Civil War and Genocide

55

or individual motivation as the fundamental cause of conflict.25 This approach has its basis in rational choice economics, arguing that, for some individuals, the net economic advantages of war motivate them to fight.26 From this standpoint, group identities are not regarded as an independent factor but are instruments, used and even created to help fulfill the private motives of those who fight, especially leaders. Keen lists many ways in which war confers individual benefit on particular categories of people: for example, it permits people, especially uneducated young men, to gain employment as soldiers. War also offers opportunities to loot, to profiteer from shortages and from aid, to trade arms, and to carry out illicit production and trade in drugs, diamonds, timber, and so on. Where alternative opportunities are few—because of low income and poor employment opportunities—and the possibilities of enrichment by war are considerable, wars are likely to be more numerous and longer. Conflicts may persist because some powerful actors benefit through the manipulation of scarcity, smuggling, and so forth, and have no interest in resolving the conflict. The youth bulge hypothesis noted earlier relates to individual motivations for conflict among the young who lack employment opportunities or other ways of making a living. The existence of large numbers of young, particularly males, who lack satisfactory employment provides a pool of people who can readily be mobilized and who may gain individually from joining a militia or government forces—in terms of material advancement, their own security, and their psychological well-being.27 While generally not a sufficient explanation of conflict, expected rewards sometime play a role in the decision to rebel. As Collier notes, citing the cases of Aceh (Indonesia), Biafra (Nigeria), and Katanga (Zaire), separatist rebellion often emerges in resource-rich areas of a country, leading him to conclude that rebellion is “the rage of the rich.”28 However, some separatist movements are formed in regions with poor resource endowment—for example, the Muslim rebellion in Thailand, the Tamils in Sri Lanka, or the cases of Eritrea and Bangladesh, where grievances dominate. Moreover, even in resource-rich areas, leaders may not gain. In the case of Colombia, for example, often depicted as a greedmotivated conflict, interviews with leaders and those who were mobilized to fight show that their economic position typically worsened as a result of participating in the conflict. Most put forward ideological reasons for their involvement, including the issue of land reform.29 Numerous econometric cross-country investigations of these individualistic theories have taken place. These show the following factors are associated with a higher probability of civil war:

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Responding to Genocide

• Low national per capita incomes, supporting the view that poor opportunities for survival tend to be associated with more conflict; this factor can also be interpreted as relating to feasibility, since governments in low-income countries may lack the ability and resources to suppress rebellion effectively. • Recent economic decline, also supporting the hypothesis about poor alternative opportunities.30 This factor could also be interpreted in terms of Ted Gurr’s view that relative deprivation raises the risk of conflict, where relative deprivation is interpreted as occurring where opportunities are below expectations.31 • A youth bulge, again associated with poor opportunities for the young, especially where employment opportunities are scarce, although, because of weak data, no direct evidence exists about unemployment or underemployment.32 • Some association with abundance of oil resources.33 However, this finding depends on the model specification and exclusions of outliers.34 This finding could be interpreted as due to the high gains from success in controlling the government, when abundant oil resources are present. • A disputed association with the presence of natural resources as a whole. This finding of Collier and Hoeffler has not been reproduced, according to James Fearon and other researchers.35 Natural resources may provide both an incentive and finance for warring parties to fight. • Highly ambiguous evidence on a relationship between higher inequality—vertical, i.e., among individuals—and conflict risk. For example, Collier and Hoeffler, and James Fearon and David Laitin find no such association, but Juha Auvinen and Wayne Nafziger do find a relationship.36 These findings are consistent with some of the individual motivations posited, but also can be interpreted in terms of the feasibility of fighting. Fearon and Laitin, as well as Laitin and Collier in later work, emphasize the feasibility aspect.37 Group motivation. Organized political conflicts, in contrast to most forms of criminality, consist in fighting between groups—groups that wish to gain independence or take over the state and others that resist such rebellions, aiming to preserve their power and the integrity of the nation.38 The groups that fight unite under a common banner, with broadly common purposes or group motives. While individual motivation is important, group mobilization and group motivation appear to underlie most civil wars.

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57

Groups engaged in internal conflicts are often united by a common ethnic or religious identity. Such conflicts may present as religious (e.g., the Philippines or Thailand, where, in both cases, the rebels are Muslims and the national government non-Muslim) or ethnic (as in Rwanda or Burundi); ethnic and religious identities provide a powerful source of mobilization and unity. Yet, as noted above, many multiethnic and multireligious societies live relatively peacefully; in many situations, most people don’t view ethnic or religious identities as of overriding importance. Hence we need to look beyond religion or ethnicity, as such, to find the causes of what is often portrayed as ethnic conflict. One plausible hypothesis is that where access to economic or political resources differs significantly between groups, leaders and followers both have a strong motive to fight, and ethnic or religious differences can then lead to violent mobilization. Gurr terms such group differences “relative deprivation,” and I define differences in groups’ access to economic, social, and political resources as “horizontal inequalities,” in contrast to the traditional “vertical” inequality that ranks individuals in measures such as the Gini coefficient.39 The horizontal inequalities explanation of conflict is based on the view that if cultural differences coincide with economic and political differences between groups this can cause deep resentments that may lead to violent struggles. These inequalities may involve regional differentiation, in which case they often lead to separatist movements (as in Aceh, Indonesia, and the Tamil regions of Sri Lanka), or the different identities may occur within the same geographic space (such as in Rwanda, Northern Ireland, or Uganda), when political participation and economic and political rights are at stake. Horizontal inequalities (HIs) are multidimensional, involving access to a large variety of resources along economic, social, and political vectors or dimensions. HIs seem to be more provocative where inequalities are felt consistently across the different dimensions—in particular, the political and economic dimensions. Economic and social HIs generate conditions that lead to general dissatisfaction among group members, consequently giving rise to the possibilities of political mobilization, but political exclusion is more likely to trigger a conflict, by giving group leaders a powerful motive to organize and mobilize in order to gain power. While horizontal inequalities give rise to political movements, they are not necessarily violent. Whether they become violent depends on whether the political system can accommodate their demands or whether the movements meet resistance. Relatively rich or poor groups may instigate conflict. The relatively rich do so to preserve their riches

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or power for themselves, while the relatively poor do so out of a sense of injustice with the intention of achieving some redistribution. Econometric research from cross-country and intracountry data shows that higher socioeconomic horizontal inequalities are associated with a greater probability of civil war. For example, • Gudrun Østby’s analysis across fifty-five countries for 1986–2003 reveals a significant rise in the probability of conflict in nations with severe economic and social HIs.40 The effect of HIs is quite high: the probability of conflict increases threefold when variables with average values rise to values where horizontal inequality of assets among ethnic groups is in the 95th percentile.41 • Lars-Erik Cederman and his colleagues, using cross-country evidence and the G-Econ data set for 1991 to 2005, show that “groups with wealth levels far from the country average are indeed more likely to experience civil war.”42 This finding holds whether the group is wealthier or poorer than the average. • Graham Brown has come to a similar finding when investigating the determinants of separatist conflicts.43 He covers thirty-one countries, from eastern and western Europe, North and South America, and South and East Asia. Again, the likelihood of a separatist conflict increases the richer or poorer a region is in terms of GDP per capita, compared with the national average. • In addition, intracountry studies demonstrate a positive relationship between the level of HIs and the incidence or intensity of conflict. Luca Mancini, for example, uses district-level data to examine the connection between HIs and the incidence of conflict in districts of Indonesia, finding that horizontal inequality in child mortality rates and its change over time are positively and significantly associated with the occurrence of deadly ethnocommunal violence.44 • Studies in other conflict-affected countries have shown a relation between HIs and conflict intensity. For example, conflict likelihood in the Philippines and in Nepal is related to regional and district inequalities.45 • Perceptions, of course, motivate people to action. Matthew Kirwin and Wonbin Cho, investigating perceptions in seventeen African countries covered by the Afrobarometer, found that, among other factors, “Group grievances are strongly associated with both popular acceptability of political violence and higher levels of participation in demonstrations,” with “group grievances” measured by how often a respondent’s ethnic group is seen to be treated unfairly by the government. 46

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While the evidence shows that higher HIs are correlated with a higher risk of conflict, not all violent mobilization in high-HI countries is primarily identity-driven, at least in terms of discourse. In some ethnically ranked systems, mobilization by class may alternate, complement or substitute for mobilization by ethnicity. Examples are some of the conflicts in Latin America, such as in Peru and Guatemala.47 Political Motivation and Constraints

Apart from specific political events and circumstances, research into longer-term political motivations has focused on three areas: (1) the opening of political structures; (2) the type of regime, whether authoritarian or democratic or somewhere in between—the in-between state being clearly related to the opening of political structures; and (3) the inclusiveness of the political system, in design and in practice.48 The political system: Political crisis and change. The opening of political structures—through revolution, external wars, or coups—gives rise to intense political competition and potentially to civil war. “Changing opportunities and constraints . . . provide the openings that lead resource-poor actors to engage in contentious politics.”49 As political structures open, the feasibility of violence increases; people have more opportunity to organize, while the state’s capacity to suppress rebellion is weakened. Kristian Gleditsch and Andrea Ruggeri investigate the role of the opening of political structures statistically, taking “irregular” transitions as a measure of such opening.50 They find “strong support to the claim that political opportunities, as measured by irregular political leader changes, indeed appear to be associated with civil war onset.”51 Similarly, H˚avard Hegre et al. find that political transition from one regime to another offers an opening in which conflict is most likely to occur.52 Regime type. Classifying regimes on a continuum between autocracy and democracy, considerable evidence has accumulated that countries with intermediate regimes—neither completely authoritarian nor completely democratic—have the highest propensity to conflict.53 According to Håvard Hegre and his colleagues, “Coherent democracies and harshly authoritarian states have few civil wars, and intermediate regimes are the most conflict-prone.”54 This conclusion is not surprising since authoritarian regimes can suppress potential conflict, while established democracies generally have ways of settling disputes peacefully. In other words, in authoritarian states, strong motives for violence may

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exist, but there is limited feasibility for carrying it out. In contrast, in democracies the feasibility of violence is greater, but the motive tends to be less as grievances can be settled in peaceful ways. The political system: Constitutional design. Analysts have argued forcefully that a federal constitution, on the one hand, offers a federal bargain that allows regions and ethnic groups relative autonomy and is consequently likely to be less conflict prone than unitary constitutional systems because of the power-sharing involved.55 On the other hand, federalism has been blamed for separatist conflicts in Nigeria (Biafra), the Soviet Union, and the former Yugoslavia.56 Similarly, while some suggest that decentralization (within unitary states) is likely to reduce conflict because of the sharing of power, others suggest that decentralization may reduce conflict at the national level, but increase it locally.57 In Indonesia, for example, the competition for political office in the ethnically and religiously diverse districts of areas such as Sulawesi and Maluku was a driving factor in the emergence of communal conflicts during democratization.58 Yet in the same country, decentralization and democratization seem to have contributed to the ending of separatist conflicts in Aceh and Papua New Guinea. Systematic empirical evidence on the impact of federalism and decentralization on conflict propensity is somewhat ambiguous. Gerald Schneider and Nina Wieshomeir find that “controlling for the presence of the ethnic structure of a country, more inclusive arrangements pacify intrastate relations.”59 Federalism can reduce conflict propensity, but much depends on its design. Kristin Bakke and Erik Wibbels conclude that “copartisanship” between central and subnational governments, which implies shared political power (regionally) and consequently lower political HIs, significantly reduces the chance of conflict.60 Decentralization of power to local levels within a unitary state has been argued to reduce national-level conflicts, but often at the expense of increasing local ones.61 Empirical research suggests that the design of federal systems is critical. Nigeria presents a case in point. The initial five-state federalism, with boundaries drawn broadly around ethnic groups, promoted rather than reduced conflict. After the end of the Biafran war, a new constitution created many more states, designed to cross ethnic boundaries, and at the same time introduced explicit rules for power-sharing at the central level. Since then there has been no national-level conflict, but recurring local conflicts remain. Some evidence also shows that “many of the world’s stable and durably democratic majoritarian federations have been so because they have a dominant people.” 62 Another

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important feature of stable federations includes power-sharing at the central level, as in Nigeria. Taking these qualifications into account, federalism and decentralization generally seem to reduce conflict compared with centralized unitary constitutional design. Political HIs and political exclusion. Exclusion from political power

leads to protest, and often—where there is no way of overcoming this exclusion—violent conflict. As noted earlier, political horizontal inequalities are an important dimension of horizontal inequalities. In the presence of political HIs, leaders of groups have strong motives to mobilize, since they are excluded from power. This mobilization also acts as an incentive for followers who will tend to receive fewer benefits from the state if their leaders are excluded from power. Research suggests that political HIs, or political exclusion as such, raise the risk of civil wars; the risk is especially high with both political and socioeconomic HIs. With high political HIs, leaders have a motive to mobilize people, while with large socioeconomic HIs, people in large deprived groups are more likely to join military rebellions. Conversely, where political HIs favor one group and socioeconomic HIs another, conflict is less likely since the potential leadership of the economically deprived group is incorporated in power, and may indeed take action to correct the socioeconomic inequalities. Malaysia presents an example. The data limitations on political HIs are even more severe than for socioeconomic HIs. However, cross-country empirical investigations support these conclusions: • Andreas Wimmer, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Brian Min compiled a global database for 1946–2005 and show that countries with high degrees of political exclusion are more likely to experience armed conflict.63 • Cederman, Weidmann et al. show that political HIs (defined as exclusion from political power of major groups) add to economic HIs in raising the risk of conflict.64 • Østby does not find an independent influence of her measure of political exclusion on conflict onset, but she finds a strong interaction effect between HIs in regional assets and political exclusion with a rise in the likelihood of conflict, for a given level of HIs, if there is political exclusion.65 All econometric investigation of the determinants of conflicts finds that having had a conflict in the recent past increases the likelihood of a

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new conflict emerging,66 perhaps partly because the factors that contributed to the initial conflict continue to be present. But this seems to be only part of the explanation. Having had a conflict, as one might expect, makes future conflict more likely by hardening divisions and generating revenge motives.67 To summarize, as far as socioeconomic motives are concerned, the evidence indicates that low incomes per capita, a recent fall in per capita income, proportionately large petroleum resources, and high horizontal inequalities raise the risk of conflict, while countries that have a large population of young people are more at risk. Political conditions that raise the risk of civil war include being in a state of political transition where the opportunity structure is open, being in an intermediate regime (neither thoroughly authoritarian nor an established democracy), and having an exclusionary political system, especially if combined with socioeconomic inequalities. Federalism and decentralization tend to reduce the risk of conflict, and conflict risk is higher if a conflict has occurred in the recent past. Globalization as a constraint or cause of civil war? Arguments on the impact of globalization differ: Robert Snyder, and Katherine Barbieri and Rafael Reuveny, argue that globalization enhances development, in turn reducing the risk of conflict. Globalization may also reduce the size of the state and thus reduce the benefits of state takeover.68 Moreover, it may increase international communication and preventive action by the international community.69 On the other hand, David Held and his colleagues argue that globalization contributes to rising inequality, and Duffield further argues that globalization also provides finance for governments as well as rebels.70 Econometric investigation by Barbieri and Reuveny suggests that flows of trade and investment have no significant impact on conflict onset, but they are negatively associated with conflict presence.71 This conclusion suggests that causality may go from conflict to trade and investment rather than the other way around.

Empirical Research into the Determinants of Genocide

Genocide (including politicide) occurs less frequently than civil war, but typically involves many more deaths, usually in quite a short period of time. As a broad indicator of magnitudes, Table 3.1 records major episodes of mass killings since 1956, not all of which would necessarily be classified as genocides, depending on the definition adopted.

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Table 3.1 Large-Scale Killing Episodes, Since 1956 Country Sudan South Vietnam Indonesia China Guatemala Pakistan Uganda Angola Cambodia Afghanistan Uganda Sudan Iran-Iraq War Bosnia Rwanda Democratic Republic of Congo Iraq

Nature of Killing (main apparent motive)

Date

Estimated Killed

1956–1972 1965–1975 1965–1966 1965–1975 1978–1996 1971 1972–1979 1975–2001 1975–1979 1978–1992 1980–1986 1983+ 1980–1988 1992–1995 1994

400,000–600,000 400,000–500,000 500,000–1,000,000 400,000–850,000 60,000–200,000 1,000,000–3,000,000 50,000–400,000 500,000 1,700,000 1,800,000 200,000–500,000 2,000,000+ 438,000–1,300,000 100,000–225,000 500,000–1,000,000

Ethnic and religious Ideological Ideological and ethnic Ideological Ethnic and ideological Political Ethnic and political Ethnic and ideological Ethnic and class Ideological Ethnic and political Ethnic and religious Religious and nationalist Ethnic and religious Ethnic and political

1998–2004 2003–2010

2,000,000–5,400,000 150,000+

Ethnic and political Ethnic/religious and political

Sources: Barbara Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder Since 1955,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 57–73. For DRC, International Rescue Committee, available at www.theirc.org/special-report/congo-forgotten-crisis.html?gclid =CIT44_Gs4ZcCFUoa3godghl2CQ; for Iran-Iraq War, see Rudolph Rummel, “Lesser Murdering States, Quasi-States, and Group Estimates, Sources, and Calculations,” available at www.hawaii.edu/powerkills /SOD.TAB15.1D.GIF; for Iraq during the 2003–2010 period, see “Iraq Body Count,” available at www.iraq bodycount.org/analysis/numbers/warlogs.

Numerous attempts have been made to develop typologies of genocides.72 These typologies are mostly based on the major motive underlying the genocide. For example, Helen Fein suggests a fourfold classification: developmental genocide, where the perpetrator destroys those who stand in the way of economic exploitation of resources; despotic genocide, where the aim is to eliminate real or potential opposition; retributive genocide, where the aim is to destroy a long-term enemy; and ideological genocide, where the group to be destroyed is presented as evil. A typology is helpful because some determinants may apply to some types but not others. But in practice, a mixture of objectives often exists, and classifying the genocide uniquely into a particular type is not easy. Much of the vast literature on genocide and its causes investigates particular episodes, explores historical antecedents, and aims to understand the psychology of mass killings. A major strand of the literature is

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concerned with analyzing genocidal ideology.73 Some argue that each episode needs to be understood as such, and no generalizations can be made. Like the civil war literature, much writing on genocide does not consider underlying economic or social causes, or does so in relation to a particular case. However, attempts to identify common patterns and to explore political and socioeconomic determinants have been increasing. According to Harff, “All cases have unique properties but also share some discernible patterns with others from which social scientists can identify some common sequences and outcomes.”74 Here I focus on studies exploring common causes, especially econometric/statistical exercises that attempt to uncover some of the common patterns across countries, akin to the literature surveyed above in relation to civil wars. This approach clearly does not do justice to the literature on genocide, but is confined to a quantitative subset. To facilitate comparison with civil wars, I again differentiate demographic, socioeconomic, and political factors. Demography

Genocides commonly occur in plural societies—that is, societies containing distinct ethnic or religious groups. Indeed, the UN definition of genocide—“to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial, or religious group”—implies the existence of more than one group. However, by extending the definition to class killings and politically motivated ones, such events may, in principle, occur in fairly homogeneous societies. Thus, much of the Soviet killing in the first half of the twentieth century was class-based, not ethnic; also, in Cambodia in the late 1970s, class formed the basis for mass killing, although an ethnic element has also been suggested.75 In contrast to the civil war literature, there seems to have been little reference to the age composition of the population in the general statistical literature on genocide, although some researchers have suggested that economic difficulties, including high youth unemployment, may be a predisposing condition in relation to particular cases.76 As with civil war, researchers have hypothesized that the number and size of different religious or ethnic groups in a society might affect the likelihood of genocide. However, Rummel found no relationship between ethnic or religious diversity and the onset of democides.77 Harff investigated whether genocide was more likely in the presence of numerous distinct groups, or of a small minority in otherwise homogeneous societies.78 She found no relationship between demographic composition and the incidence of genocide, independently of political and economic cleavages between groups. Easterly et al. investigated the de-

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terminants of mass killings over two centuries and found a quadratic relationship between ethnic fractionalization and the incidence of mass killings in an equation including the level of GDP per capita and the extent of democracy, but not a relationship between the magnitude of killings and demographic factors.79 According to this study, the greatest danger of genocide appears to be when a population is divided into two equal-sized groups, supporting the civil war findings that polarization makes conflict more likely. Taken as a whole, these investigations suggest little independent influence of demographic composition and the incidence of genocide or mass killings. These findings are broadly similar to the findings about civil war. Economic Sources of Genocide

In the manifold classifications of genocide, some include a specific economic objective, and thus implicitly an economic motive. For example, Vahakn Dadrian defines utilitarian genocide (one of four types) as using mass killings in order to obtain control over economic resources; Fein describes developmental genocide (also one of four types), where perpetrators destroy peoples who stand in their way in relation to the exploitation of resources; Roger Smith also refers to utilitarian genocide, which is motivated by material gain, and includes colonial killings and postcolonial developments devastating aboriginal groups.80 Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn differentiate motives for genocide, one (of four again) being to acquire economic wealth.81 These motives are akin to the rent-seeking motives argued to underlie the motives of many actors, particularly leaders, in mobilizing for civil wars. In line with this, Sang Hoo Bae and Attiat Ott argue that mass killings (not specifically genocide) are motivated by leaders’ expectations of gain.82 Again, in common with some findings on civil war, some researchers have pointed to economic depression as predisposing to genocide.83 For example, in the Holocaust, the depression of the 1920s and 1930s was an important factor behind Hitler’s popularity, and thus an indirect cause of the genocide. Ervin Staub, reviewing four genocidal episodes, concludes that “hardship” or “difficult life conditions,” which may be economic or social or cultural, cause frustrations that could lead to intergroup violence.84 While almost all research on civil war shows that the incidence is higher when the national per capita income is lower, this finding does not appear to hold for genocide or mass killings. As Figure 3.3 shows, the frequency is similar across the first three quartiles, and drops off markedly only in the top quartile of country gross domestic product

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(GDP) per capita. However, according to Easterly et al., the average number of victims does fall as GDP per capita rises. They suggest “an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita incomes and killings,” with killings peaking at per capita income of $1,300.85 Frank Wayman and Atsushi Tago find that per capita income, proxied by per capita energy use, is not significantly related to democide, but is negatively related to politicide, although they do not test whether this relationship is reversed at higher levels of per capita income.86 A common explanation, particularly associated with Leo Kuper, is the existence of social cleavages: “Social cleavages are defined variously with reference to unusually deep ethnic, cultural, religious or class divisions, high levels of overt or de facto discrimination, political or economic exclusion and distrust or hatred between groups.”87 “Social cleavages polarize society, increasing the likelihood of intergroup conflict.”88 The definition of “social cleavages” combines distinct factors—economic and political inequalities among groups as well as a high state of distrust between them. Social cleavages then encompass horizontal inequalities, which are risk factors for civil war, as noted above. Some scholars of genocide have adopted a dynamic approach to inequalities—that the changing position of particular groups during modernization is a factor.89 This approach is in tune with Gurr’s notion of relative deprivation applied to rebellions, which includes deprivation relative to expectations.90

Mass Killing Frequency

Figure 3.3 Mass Killing Frequency (number of events per decade) at Different Quartiles of Development (log GDP per capita)

Development Quartiles

Source: William Easterly, Roberta Gatti, and Sergio Kurlat, “Development, Democracy, and Mass Killings,” Journal of Economic Growth 11, no. 2 (2006): 135. Notes: Frequency is a measure of the number of events per decade. Development reflects log GDP per capita.

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The second element in the definition—“distrust or hatred between groups”—is also present in the civil war literature, but rather than taking it as a given independent determinant of conflict, the civil war research has been devoted to the underlying causes of such distrust, including contact between groups; inequalities between groups, which can create distrust; or past conflict.91 Some argue that such distrust or hatred is as much a consequence as a cause of conflict.92 Some researchers also argue that in genocide, too, leaders who have strategic motives— economic or political—create the distrust and hatred instrumentally, rather than such conditions being an independent cause.93 The existence of a genocidal ideology is a common finding from genocide studies, often brought about by conscious demonizing of the other—which also occurs prior to and in many civil wars.94 Political Factors State crises and political upheaval. A number of scholars have argued

that genocide frequently coincides with major political upheavals, defined by Harff as “an abrupt change in the political community caused by the formation of a state or regime through violent conflict, redrawing of state boundaries or defeat in international war.”95 In such situations, new, previously subordinate groups come to power, or there is uncertainty and competition for power. Such upheavals are said to provide “political opportunity structures” for genocide to occur, which may be associated with external wars, civil wars, decolonization, and extraconstitutional changes.96 Some examples are as follows: • Robert Melson, analyzing the Armenian genocide and the German Holocaust, argued that in each case revolutions brought to power new classes with a genocidal ideology, and that wartime conditions facilitated genocide, making it easier to conceal.97 • Manus Midlarsky, analyzing twentieth-century genocides, argues that genocide is more likely during war.98 • Mark Levene suggests that genocides are more likely during “systemic crises” that new states face.99 • Eric Weitz, after analyzing four genocidal incidents, concludes that moments of extreme societal crisis, resulting from war or revolution, are one of the three major conditions giving rise to genocide.100 The view that crises and changes in the political system provide the conditions for genocide is consistent with the strand in the civil war lit-

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erature suggesting that civil war is more likely during political transition and crisis. Statistical investigations have found that the level of upheaval is significantly related to the incidence of genocide.101 Indeed, Harff finds that “all but one of thirty-seven genocides and politicides that began between 1955 and 1998 occurred during or immediately after political upheavals,” making such upheaval a necessary but not sufficient condition for genocide to occur.102 This conclusion is much stronger than the findings in relation to civil war. Easterly et al. find that ongoing civil war is a significant correlate of genocide in all their specifications, after allowing for the impact of GDP per capita and the extent of democracy.103 Matthew Krain has the same finding.104 Krain also finds that the combined effect of the simultaneous presence of internal and external wars is much greater than either alone. Wayman and Tago also report that the presence of civil war is significantly and positively related to the incidence of both “democide” and “politicide,” and so, independently, are coups.105 Regime type. Concentration of power is argued to be a precondition of

genocide, with authoritarian governments most likely to commit genocide and democracies least likely. The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more it is diffused, checked and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.106 “The best way to account for and to predict democide is by the degree to which a regime is totalitarian along a democratic-totalitarian scale.”107 Statistical investigations show that regime type is, indeed, generally associated with genocide: • Fein finds that totalitarian states are most likely to commit genocides, and that revolutionary and authoritarian states are more likely to commit genocide than democratic ones.108 • Harff finds that the presence of an autocratic government increases the likelihood of genocide.109 • Easterly et al. find that the extent of democracy is significantly and inversely related to the incidence of mass killings.110 • In contrast, Wayman and Tago conclude that “important regime effects either appear or disappear depending on the data set used, with regime type generally having a significant effect on the onset of demo-

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cide but not having a significant effect on onset of geno-politicide,” and “autocratic regimes, especially communist, are prone to mass killing generally, but not so strongly inclined (i.e., not statistically significantly inclined) toward geno-politicide.”111 A contrast exists here in the findings with respect to civil war and to genocide. In the former, intermediate regimes are most prone to violence. But with genocide, autocratic governments dominate. Constitutional design. The concentration of power argued to be associ-

ated with genocide depends not only on regime type but also constitutional checks and balances and the extent of decentralization.112 However, there tends to be a strong association between autocracy and concentration of power, and researchers have made very few attempts to separate them in investigating associations with genocide. One such researcher is Krain, who uses a Polity II measure of power concentration, which is a composite indicator based on ten variables including regulation of participation and of executive recruitment, competitiveness of executive recruitment, constraints on the executive, and centralization.113 In most of his models, he finds no influence of power concentration, independently of autocracy, on the determinants of genocide. Marginality from the world system. Other countries’ governments may

potentially act as a check on genocide. Consequently, the relevance of marginality in the world system has been argued, on the basis that fewer international checks would take place in such a situation.114 However, the evidence is conflicting. Harff finds evidence that genocide probability is greater when a country’s ratio of exports plus imports to GDP is lower, but Krain, who measures marginality as a country’s exports plus imports as a proportion of world exports, finds no association.115 Political exclusion and dominance. Political exclusion is an important

cause of civil war, especially when such exclusion occurs along identity lines. Consistent with this conclusion, Kuper argues that genocide is most likely to occur in a plural society “in its extreme form . . . by a superimposition of inequalities,” in which one ethnoclass rules over a subordinate ethnoclass—for example, as in the case of horizontal inequalities and civil war, where socioeconomic inequalities between ethnic groups coincide with political dominance.116 Fein has also argued that political exclusion and political discrimination on the basis of ethnic hierarchy are factors conducive to geno-

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cide. She shows a high probability of genocide in states with high “discrimination or exclusion of an ethnoclass.”117 Similarly, Harff found that the presence of a dominant ethnic group together with an exclusionary ideology raises the risk of genocide.118

Civil War and Genocide Findings: A Comparison

Table 3.2 brings together the conclusions from my review of quantitative findings in the two cases. Three major differences between civil war and genocide are apparent from Table 3.2: (1) while countries with low per capita incomes present the highest risks for civil war, intermediate levels of income are most strongly associated with genocide; (2) autocratic/totalitarian regimes are most likely to initiate genocide, while intermediate regimes are most likely to be associated with civil wars; and (3) a major predisposing condition for genocide is the existence of civil war, which obviously is not the case for the onset of conflict. Some similarities also exist between the conditions that give rise to civil war and genocide. In both cases, a past history of civil war or genocide is a predisposing condition. In neither case are demographic factors—in particular, the ethnic composition of the population— strongly associated with either condition; but in both cases, the midrange of ethno-linguistic fractionalization (or having a few large groups) seems statistically most dangerous. However, in the case of genocide, case studies suggest that a relatively small group is often the target and sometimes the orchestrator of the violence. In both cases, horizontal inequalities between salient groups—in either economic or political dimensions—raise the risk of conflict, and the risks seem to rise where the two occur simultaneously, but the evidence for economic inequalities is more limited for genocides. More research is needed here.

Policy Conclusions

Even though civil wars have many well-known adverse effects on human well-being and the economy, we cannot always assume that their effects are totally negative.119 In some cases, violence may be the only way of achieving political change in very adverse political conditions; violence may also release social and economic constraints and lead to some societal improvements (e.g., with respect to the role of women).

71 Table 3.2 Causal Factors for Civil War and Genocide: A Comparison of Findings Contributory Factors

Civil War

Demography Fractionalization

Little evidence as an independent factor, but most conflict occurs at intermediate levels of fractionalization High proportion of youth Correlation, probably associated with lack of employment opportunities

Economic factors Economic stagnation Low national per capita incomes Rent-seeking opportunities Horizontal inequalities

Political factors Opportunity structure and political upheaval Regime type

Constitutional design (checks and balances and decentralization) Marginality from the world system

Political horizontal inequalities/ political exclusion History of past conflict/ genocide

Argued, little evidence Strong evidence that raises risks Argued, but evidence not strong Strong evidence of association

Strongly argued and some evidence, including irregular transitions Most incidence in intermediate regimes and regimes in transition Some (mixed) evidence that more decentralization reduces conflict propensity No association with conflict onset, but greater global integration associated with lower probability of conflict presence; direction of causality in question Strong evidence, especially if associated with socioeconomic inequalities Strong statistical evidence (not summarized above)

Genocide, Politicide, Democide, and Mass Killings Same

Not investigated

Same Intermediate levels of per capita income more risky Same Suggested and some evidence, but not investigated very systematically Systematic evidence, including ongoing civil war Most incidence in authoritarian regimes No evidence

Some evidence shows that more marginality increases conflict, but other evidence shows no relationship

Evidence from case histories and some econometric evidence Strong statistical evidence (not summarized above)

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In contrast, genocides appear to be purely evil, with totally negative effects. This contrast is relevant when it comes to policy, particularly for external actors. In general, while the aim must be to prevent conflicts and genocides, prevention of genocide has absolute priority. When it comes to civil war, one needs to consider first what the war is about. It might indeed even be about preventing genocide. Policies to Prevent Genocide

Since civil war itself is one of the predisposing conditions that can give rise to genocide, policies that effectively prevent civil war should also contribute to preventing genocide. Moreover, many of the policies that are likely to prevent civil war also are likely to reduce the risk of genocide. Yet, as with research into causes, different scholars and practitioners have been concerned with policy analysis. Harff has led the way in policy analysis for prevention of genocides, with a particular emphasis on risk assessment.120 A large literature on policies is aimed at the prevention of civil war.121 I focus here on those policies that seem appropriate in relation to my analysis and conclusions in this chapter. Countries at risk of genocidal episodes are likely to be authoritarian and centralized, with very few checks on power; they are also likely to exclude significant groups in society from power and from fair terms with respect to economic and social resources. In such situations, the government in power is almost certainly not amenable to the sort of policy change intended to make conflict and genocide less likely. Similarly, countries in the midst of civil war may find it difficult, or be unwilling, to undertake preventive policies. The policies I consider here, then, are more likely to be acted upon in “normal” countries, which are not (yet) of the extreme type just described. The hope is that in such normal times, good policies are instituted which then prevent countries from falling into conflict or becoming genocidal. In countries already on the brink of civil war or worse, more short-term emergency action may be needed. Socioeconomic Policies

1. Economic growth and fluctuations. For civil war, increasing per capita income reduces the risks, which does not seem to be the case for genocide—where risks are highest at intermediate levels of per capita income. However, analysts of civil war and genocide both agree that for any level of income, slumps tend to raise risks; both agree that high youth unemployment is likely to do so, too. Hence, policies that avoid major fluctuations in economic activity and which are employment-

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creating are likely to be helpful. In practice, recent economic history shows a poor record in both these areas, even though known policy remedies could be adopted. Relevant policies include global and domestic schemes to insulate the economy from global fluctuations in commodity prices and financial flows, countercyclical aid and government expenditure, and a variety of employment schemes.122 2. Inclusive socioeconomic policies. The most important set of socioeconomic policies to prevent conflict and genocide are those directed toward reducing socioeconomic HIs. A major source of support for violent mobilization is a sense of unfairness in the allocation of resources across groups—particularly those directly controlled by the government. Policies to correct this perceived unfairness include antidiscrimination laws, balanced regional investments, monitoring of all government contracts and government employment, and taking action—including affirmative action, if necessary—to correct inequalities.123 While these policies are essential, they can also be provocative if introduced insensitively. The groups that lose can resist, even violently, if action is taken too rapidly and without securing national support. Yet leaving major inequalities in place, including cases in which minority groups are considerably richer than the rest of the society (such as the Jews in prewar Germany or Tutsis in Rwanda), as well as cases in which the groups are much poorer (such as indigenous peoples in Guatemala or Peru), risks civil war and even genocide. 3. Equality of cultural recognition. Inequalities in cultural recognition can provoke resentment and bind people together as a group. Such inequalities in cultural recognition may also be a source of economic and political inequalities. For example, in Sri Lanka, the recognition of Sinhalese as a national language and not Tamil or English (spoken by the Tamils) was a source of immense resentment among the Tamils and also a cause of unemployment among them, as many did not speak enough Sinhalese to get government jobs. Recognition and respect for the cultural rights of different groups in society is important in reducing intergroup hostility as well as contributing to greater socioeconomic equality. Included are treatment of language, religious practices, and cultural practices and behavior. 4. The ideology of hatred. Observers commonly argue that genocidal episodes often exhibit genocidal ideologies, which include the idea that the target group is subhuman and potentially contaminating. 124 Leaders may assume this type of ideology instrumentally, as an effective way of mobilizing support; the ideology is then deliberately propagated to the mass of the population, systematically and over a prolonged

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period. This type of education for hatred is not confined to genocidal situations but is also found prior to and during civil wars.125 Making such hate propagation illegal is an important element in any preventive policy. Monitoring such activities may also be useful in providing early warning indicators of violent mobilization. Political Policies

1. Inclusive government. In the political realm, a critical requirement both for preventing civil war and genocide is that governments are inclusive in multiethnic and multireligious societies. Although this requirement sounds obvious and commonsensical, it is not part of the structure of majoritarian democratic systems, nor is it built into the constitutions of most multiethnic countries. A majoritarian, winner-takes-all democracy is liable to exclude even sizeable minorities from political power. This exclusion may lead minorities to seek power by force, and may lead majorities to suppress and even to eliminate minorities. One example is the situation leading to the Rwandan genocide, when Tutsis were excluded from power by the Hutu majority, and the violent reactions of Tutsis from their base in Uganda was used by Hutu leaders as a reason or excuse for the genocide. Inclusive governments can occur through informal convention, as in Ghana; through formal consociational arrangements, as in Lebanon and Bosnia, where major groups have constitutional rights to a share of government jobs; or through some combination of formal and informal arrangements, as in Nigeria. Voting systems that encourage powersharing, such as proportional representation, and measures of decentralization can support each of these solutions. Most types of formal powersharing have disadvantages—for example, the ethnicization of politics and, often, the exclusion of small groups, as has occurred in Nigeria. Yet reliance on informal convention may not be enough, since such conventions can readily be overthrown: an example is Cote d’Ivoire where Félix Houphouet-Boigny followed an inclusive, albeit authoritarian policy that successfully sustained peace, but the exclusive policies that his successors adopted led to civil war. A strong international norm in favor of inclusivity needs to be accepted and promoted, for developed as well as developing countries. Inclusivity is more important than the much-vaunted advocacy of democracy in multiethnic societies. 2. Checks to executive power. Unbridled power allows governments to initiate genocidal action, especially under the cover of civil war, which can dilute internal and external checks. Examples have occurred

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around the world—in Europe, Germany; in Latin America, Guatemala; in Asia, Cambodia; and in Africa, Rwanda. In such situations, the executive controls the media, the police, the law, and above all the army; opposition is suppressed, and people who resist are killed. The government may keep killing at arm’s length by employing militias. Checks to executive power can be built into the constitution—for example, dividing power between the executive and the legislative, establishing an independent judiciary, and allowing freedom of the media. Ruthless leaders can, of course, overturn all these measures, but establishing them in normal times and building up strong norms and traditions in their favor may prevent such action, or at least make it more difficult. 3. Human rights. Human rights conventions need to be incorporated into countries’ constitutions so that people have legal entitlements and redress. The institution of an ombudsman can help poor groups claim their rights, as is beginning to occur in Peru.126 International human rights agreements provide an opening for external monitoring and indeed interventions when such rights are flouted. 4. Regime type. From the perspective of preventing genocide the worst types of regimes are authoritarian ones, but intermediate regimes are worst in terms of the risks of civil war. During a transition from an authoritarian regime, elections are often the occasion for the outbreak of violence, as events in Côte d’Ivoire and Kenya have shown. Authoritarian regimes can suppress and prevent violent opposition; countries in transition have lost this power of suppression, yet not gained the traditions of respect for democratic processes that usually allow for unproblematic transfer of power in consolidated democracies. Moreover, the nature of politics and power in poorer multiethnic societies means that securing or losing power has strong implications for particular groups. Groups gain jobs, contracts, and other privileges when their leaders are in power and lose them when not, which ethnicizes politics and makes it especially difficult for losing groups to accept democratic decisions. This situation presents a dilemma: Should countries stick with authoritarian regimes, thereby reducing the risk of civil war? Or should countries proceed to intermediate regimes, where the risk of civil war rises but that of genocide falls—although having a civil war is another major risk factor for genocide? The answers are likely to lie in the nature of the transition. Ultimately, an established democracy is the best system from the perspective of civil wars and genocide, and getting there from authoritarian regimes undoubtedly requires a transition. But much more caution is needed than has been the case in terms of the nature of the transition. Norms of inclusion and respect for human rights, and for checks and bal-

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ances and diffusion of power, are far more important than the multiparty democracy beloved of the West and should precede the institution of democratic processes. We should not assume that such norms will follow automatically once democratic institutions are in place.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have reviewed and contrasted some quantitative research into the root causes of civil war and genocide. Some conditions liable to cause these two deadly events are held in common, notably exclusive political and socioeconomic policies and outcomes as well as a history of previous such events. But some differences also exist: the incidence of civil wars tends to be higher in low-income countries and in intermediate regimes, whereas genocides tend to be higher in low- and middle-income countries and in authoritarian regimes. Genocide and civil war, however, are both more common during political upheaval and transition. In the case of genocides, civil wars themselves are one important predisposing condition. As a result, policies to prevent civil wars may also contribute to preventing genocide. Once a situation has evolved with high risks or actual episodes, any policy advice about preventive action is likely to fall on deaf ears. Appropriate policies should be in place in every society to keep high-risk situations from emerging.

Notes I am grateful to Annette Idler for research assistance, and to Annette, Graham Brown, and two anonymous referees for insightful comments on an earlier draft to which I certainly have not done justice. 1. Israel W. Charny, Alan L. Berger, et al., Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review (London, Mansell, 1988); Israel W. Charny, ed., Encyclopedia of Genocide (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1999); Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 2. Criminal acts may be carried out by groups, but criminals target people because of their assets, not because they are members of a particular group. 3. Center for Systemic Peace, “Global Conflict Trends,” www.systemic peace.org. 4. See, for example, Uppsala Conflict Data Program, www.pcr.uu.se. 5. Melvin Small and J. David Singer, Resort to Arms: International and Civil Wars, 1816–1980 (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982). 6. “The concept of politicide is used here to encompass cases with politically defined victims” (Barbara Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holo-

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caust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder Since 1955,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 [2003]: 58). 7. “The Genocide Convention does not take into account the possibility that nonstate actors can and do attempt to destroy rival ethnic and political groups” (ibid.). 8. This broadly follows Harff’s definition, but omits the “intent”; “Genocides or politicides are the promotion, execution, and or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents . . . that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politized ethnic group” (ibid.). 9. Rudolph J. Rummel, “Democracy, Power, Genocide, and Mass Murder,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 39, no. 1 (1995): 3–26. 10. Benjamin Valentino, Paul Huth, et al., “Draining the Sea: Mass Killing and Guerrilla Warfare,” International Organization 58, no. 2 (2004): 375–407; Charny, Encyclopedia of Genocide, p. 7. 11. Staub suggests that mass killing is different from genocide because it is not aimed at eliminating a whole group. See Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 12. Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 13. Ted Gurr is an exception here. He has worked both on civil war and genocide. 14. See, e.g., Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 22–49. 15. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War,” Oxford Economic Papers 56, no. 4 (2004): 563–595; James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (February 2003): 75–90. 16. José Montalvo and Marta Reynal-Querol, “Ethnic Polarization, Potential Conflict, and Civil Wars,” American Economic Review 95, no. 3 (2005): 796–816. 17. Joan Estaban and Debraj Ray, “Conflict and Distribution,” Journal of Economic Theory 87, no. 2 (1999): 379–415. 18. Martin Doornbos, “Linking the Future to the Past: Ethnicity and Pluralism,” in Ethnicity and the State in Eastern Africa, edited by Margaret A. Mohamed Salih and John Markakis (Uppsala, Sweden: Nordic Africa Institute, 1998), p. 19. 19. Graham Brown and Arnim Langer, “Conceptualizing and Measuring Ethnicity,” Oxford Development Studies 38, no. 4 (2010): 415. 20. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, “Explaining Interethnic Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 4 (1996): 715–735. 21. Abner Cohen, Two-Dimensional Man: An Essay on the Anthropology of Power and Symbolism in Complex Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), p. 19. 22. Henrik Urdal, “A Clash of Generations? Youth Bulges and Political Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2006): 607–630. 23. This section of the chapter draws on work of the author with Graham Brown. See Frances Stewart and Graham Brown, “Motivations for Conflict: Groups and Individuals,” in Leashing the Dogs of War, edited by Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2007), pp. 219–241.

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24. Jeremy M. Weinstein, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 25. David Keen, The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); Mark R. Duffield, “The Political Economy of Internal War: Asset Transfer, Complex Emergencies, and International Aid,” in War and Hunger: Rethinking International Responses to International Emergencies, edited by Joanna Macrae and Anthony Zwi (London: Zed Books, 1994), pp. 50–69; Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” 26. Jack Hirshleifer, “The Dark Side of the Force: Western Economic Association International 1993 Presidential Address,” Economic Inquiry 32, no. 1 (January 1994): 1–10. 27. David Keen, “Sierra Leone: War and Its Functions,” in War and Underdevelopment, edited by Frances Stewart and Valpy Fitzgerald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Yvan Guichaoua, “The Making of an Ethnic Militia: The Oodua People’s Congress in Nigeria,” Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security, and Ethnicity Working Paper 26, Oxford: Queen Elizabeth House, November 2006; Guichaoua, “Who Joins Ethnic Militias? A Survey of the Oodua People’s Congress in Southwestern Nigeria,” Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security, and Ethnicity Working Paper 44, Oxford University, March 2007. 28. Paul Collier, “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy,” Oxford Department of Economics, Oxford University, 2000. 29. Francisco G. Sanín, “Criminal Rebels? A Discussion of Civil War and Criminality from the Colombian Experience,” Politics and Society 32, no. 2 (2004): 257–285. 30. Juha Auvinen and E. Wayne Nafziger, “The Sources of Humanitarian Emergencies,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 43, no. 3 (1999): 267–290. 31. Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). 32. Econometric evidence across countries for 1950–2000 support the youth bulge hypothesis. “The results are consistent both with an expectation that youth bulges provide greater opportunities for violence through the abundant supply of youths with low opportunity costs, and with an expectation that stronger motives for violence may arise as youth bulges are more likely to experience institutional crowding, in particular unemployment” (Henrik Urdal, “A Clash of Generations? Youth Bulges and Political Violence,” International Studies Quarterly 50, no. 3 [2006]: 607). Cramer shows that the evidence is complex and weak on the relationship between unemployment and conflict (see Christopher Cramer, “Unemployment and Participation in Violence,” World Development Report 2011 Background Paper, Washington, DC: World Bank, 2010). 33. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” 34. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; Macartan Humphreys and Ashutosh Varshney, “Violent Conflict and the Millennium Development Goals: Diagnosis and Recommendations,” Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development (CGSD), Working Paper Series (New York: Columbia University, June 2004). 35. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War”; James D. Fearon, “Primary Commodity Exports and Civil War,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 49, no. 4 (2005): 483–507.

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36. Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War”; Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; Auvinen and Nafziger, “Sources of Humanitarian Emergencies.” 37. Fearon and Laitin, “Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War”; Collier, “Economic Causes of Civil Conflict and Their Implications for Policy.” 38. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Ted R. Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 1993). 39. Gurr, Why Men Rebel; Frances Stewart, “Horizontal Inequality: A Neglected Dimension of Development,” WIDER Annual Development Lectures no. 5, Helsinki: UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research, 2002. 40. Gudrun Østby, “Inequalities, the Political Environment and Civil Conflict: Evidence from 55 Countries,” in Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies, edited by Frances Stewart (London: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 136–159. 41. In the case of interregional HIs, the probability of conflict increases 2.5 times as HIs rise from the mean value to the 95th percentile value. See also Østby (2003) “Horizontal Inequalities and Civil War: Do Ethnic Group Inequalities Influence the Risk of Armed Conflict?” Thesis, Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. 42. Lars-Erik Cederman, Andreas Wimmer, and Brian Min, “Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel: New Data and Analysis,” World Politics 62, no. 1 (2010): 24. 43. Graham Brown, “Horizontal Inequalities and Separatism in Southeast Asia: A Comparative Perspective,” in Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies, edited by Frances Stewart (London: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 252–284. 44. Luca Mancini, “Horizontal Inequality and Communal Violence: Evidence from Indonesian Districts,” in Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies, edited by Frances Stewart (London: Palgrave, 2008), pp. 106–135. 45. Federico V. Magdalena, “Intergroup Conflict in the Southern Philippines: An Empirical Analysis,” Journal of Peace Research 14, no. 4 (1977): 299–313; S. Mansoob Murshed and Scott Gates, “Spatial-Horizontal Inequality and the Maoist Insurgency in Nepal,” Review of Development Economics 9, no. 1 (2005): 121–134; Quy-Toan Do and Lakshmi Iyer, “An Empirical Analysis of Civil Conflict in Nepal,” Center on Institutions and Governance Working Paper no. 12, Berkeley: Institute of Governmental Studies University of California, March 2006. 46. Matthew Kirwin and Wonbin Cho, “Weak States and Political Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa,” Afrobarometer Working Papers no. 111, Legon-Accra, Ghana, 2009, p. 1. 47. Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict, p. 22. 48. Sidney G. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 49. Ibid., p. 20. 50. Kristian S. Gleditsch and Andrea Ruggeri, “Political Opportunity Structures, Democracy, and Civil War,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 3 (2010): 299–310. 51. Ibid, p. 308.

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52. Håvard Hegre et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War, 1816–1992,” American Political Science Review 95, no. 1 (2001): 33–48. 53. James DeNardo, Power in Numbers: The Political Strategy of Protest and Rebellion (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985); Edward Muller and Erich Weede, “Cross-National Variations in Political Violence: A Rational Action Approach,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 34, no. 4 (1990): 624–651; Valerie Bunce, “Federalism, Nationalism, and Secession: The Communist and Postcommunist Experience,” in Federalism and Territorial Cleavages, edited by Ugo M. Amoretti and Nancy Bermeo (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), pp. 417–440. 54. Hegre et al., “Toward a Democratic Civil Peace?,” p. 17. 55. See, e.g., William H. Riker, Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1964). 56. Bunce, “Federalism, Nationalism, and Secession.” 57. Kristin M. Bakke and Erik Wibbels, “Diversity, Disparity, and Civil Conflict in Federal States,” World Politics 59, no. 1 (2006): 1–50; Elliott Green, “Decentralization and Conflict in Uganda,” Conflict, Security, and Development 8, no. 4 (2008): 427–450; John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “Must Pluri-National Federations Fail?” Ethnopolitics 8, no. 1 (2009): 5–25; Rachael Diprose, “Decentralization, Horizontal Inequalities, and Conflict Management in Indonesia,” Ethnopolitics 8, no. 1 (2009): 107–134. 58. Diprose, “Decentralization.” 59. Gerald Schneider and Nina Wiesehomeir, “Rules That Matter: Political Institutions and the Diversity-Conflict Nexus,” Journal of Peace Research 45, no. 2 (2008): p. 198. 60. Bakke and Wibbels, “Diversity.” Suberu shows how federalism in Nigeria has contributed to solving difficult and potentially conflict-provoking issues, such as the role of Sharia law. See Rotimi Suberu, “Religion and Institutions: Federalism and the Management of Conflicts over Sharia in Nigeria,” Journal of International Development 21, no. 4 (May 2009): 547–560. 61. Green, “Decentralization and Conflict in Uganda”; Diprose, “Decentralization”; Jean-Pierre Tranchant, “Fiscal Decentralization, Institutional Quality, and Ethnic Conflict: A Panel Data Analysis, 1985–2001,” Conflict, Security and Development 8, no. 4 (2008): 491–514. 62. John McGarry and Brendan O’Leary, “Must Pluri-National Federations Fail?” Ethnopolitics 8, no. 1 (2009): 12. 63. Andreas Wimmer, Lars-Erik Cederman, and Brian Min, “Ethnic Politics and Armed Conflict: A Configurational Analysis of a New Data Set,” American Sociological Review 74, no. 2 (2009): 316–337. 64. Lars-Erik Cederman, Nils B. Weidmann, et al., “Horizontal Inequalities and Ethno-Nationalist Civil War: A Global Comparison,” American Political Science Review 105 no. 3 (August 2011): 478–495. 65. Østby, “Inequalities”; Østby defines political exclusion according to the nature of the political system, not by evidence on actual exclusion as in Wimmer et al. 2009; Lars-Erik Cederman, Andreas Wimmer and Brian Min, “Why Do Ethnic Groups Rebel: New Data and Analysis,” World Politics 62, no. 1 (2010): 87–119; Lars-Erik Cederman, Nils B. Weidmanm, and Kristian S. Gleditsch, “Horizontal Inequalities and Ethnonationalist Civil War: a

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Global Comparison” American Political Science Review 105, no. 3 (2011): 478–495. 66. Auvinen and Nafziger, “ Sources of Humanitarian Emergencies”; Collier and Hoeffler, “Greed and Grievance in Civil War.” 67. Stathis N. Kalyvas and Matthew A. Kocher, “Ethnic Cleavages and Irregular War: Iraq and Vietnam,” Politics and Society 35, no. 2 (2007): 183–223. 68. Robert Snyder, “The End of Revolution,” Review of Politics 61, no. 1 (1999): 5–28; Katherine Barbieri and Rafael Reuveny, “Economic Globalization and Civil War,” Journal of Politics 67, no. 4 (2005): 1228–1247. 69. Jeff Goodwin, “Is the Age of Revolution Over?” in Revolution: International Dimensions, edited by Mark N. Katz (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2001), pp. 272–283. 70. David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perraton, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, Culture (Cambridge: Polity, 1999); Duffield, “Political Economy of Internal War.” 71. Barbieri and Reuveny, “Economic Globalization and Civil War.” 72. Hervé Savon, Du Cannibalisme au Génocide (Paris: Hachette, 1972); Vahakn N. Dadrian, “A Typology of Genocide,” International Review of Sociology 5, no. 2 (1975): 201–212; Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981); Roger Smith, “Human Destructiveness and Politics: The Twentieth Century as an Age of Genocide,” in Genocide and the Modern Age, edited by Isidor Walliman and Michael N. Dobkowski (New York: Greenwood, 1987), pp. 21–40; Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Helen Fein, Genocide: A Sociological Perspective (London: Sage, 1993). 73. Savon, Du Cannibalisme au Génocide; Dadrian, “Typology of Genocide”; Kuper, Genocide; Smith, “Human Destructiveness and Politics.” 74. Barbara Harff, “Recognizing Genocides and Politicides,” in Genocide Watch, edited by Helen Fein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), p. 30. 75. Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 76. Staub, Roots of Evil. 77. Rummel, “Democracy,” pp. 3–4, uses this term to denote “intentional killing of people by the government,” including not only group-based killings (defined as genocides) but also “starving civilians to death by a blockade; assassinating supposed sympathizers of antigovernment guerrillas; purposely creating a famine; executing prisoners of war; shooting political opponents; or murdering by quota.” 78. Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?” 79. William Easterly, Roberta Gatti, and Sergio Kurlat, “Development, Democracy and Mass Killings,” Journal of Economic Growth 11, no. 2 (2006): 129–156. 80. Dadrian, “Typology of Genocide”; Helen Fein, “Accounting for Genocide After 1945: Theories and Some Findings,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 1, no. 2 (1993): 79–106; Smith, “Human Destructiveness and Politics.” 81. Chalk and Jonassohn, History and Sociology of Genocide. 82. Sang Hoo Bae and Attiat F. Ott, “Predatory Behavior of Governments: The Case of Mass Killings,” Defense and Peace Economics 19, no. 2 (2008): 107–125.

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83. Benjamin Valentino, “Final Solutions: The Causes of Mass Killing and Genocide,” Security Studies 9, no. 3 (2000): 1–59. 84. Staub, Roots of Evil. 85. Easterly et al., “Development,” p. 143. 86. Frank W. Wayman and Atsushi Tago, “Explaining the Onset of Mass Killing, 1949–87,” Journal of Peace Research 47, no. 1 (2010): 3–13. 87. Valentino, “Final Solutions,” p. 8. 88. Ibid., p. 9. 89. Robert Melson, “Revolutionary Genocide: On the Causes of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 and the Holocaust,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4, no. 2 (1989): 161–174; Melson, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Manus Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 90. Gurr, Why Men Rebel. 91. Gordon W. Allport, The Nature of Prejudice (Cambridge: Addison-Wesley, 1954); Ashutosh Varshney, Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002). 92. Kalyvas and Kocher, “Ethnic Cleavages and Irregular War.” 93. Valentino, “Final Solutions.” 94. Kuper, Genocide; Herbert Hirsch and Roger W. Smith, “The Language of Extermination in Genocide,” in Genocide: A Critical Bibliographic Review, edited by Israel Charny and Alan L. Berger (New York: Facts on File, 1991), pp. 386–403. 95. Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?,” p. 62. 96. Matthew Krain, “State-Sponsored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocides and Politicides,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41, no. 3 (1997): 331–360. 97. Melson, “Genocide in the 20th Century.” 98. Midlarsky, Killing Trap. 99. Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005). 100. The other two conditions are the presence of an ideology emphasizing ideas of race or nation, and the presence of a revolutionary regime with utopian ambitions (Weitz, A Century of Genocide). 101. Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?”; see Wayman and Tago, “Explaining the Onset of Mass Killing.” 102. Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?,” p. 62. 103. Easterly et al., “Development.” 104. Krain, “State-Sponsored Mass Murder.” 105. Democides are mass killings, and data about them are derived from Rummel, “Democracy,” while politicide data are derived from Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?,” and refer to “geno-politicide.” The latter refers to killings with specific intent against particular groups, while the former is a broader data set referring to any deliberate mass killings. See Wayman and Tago, “Explaining the Onset of Mass Killing.” 106. Rummel, “Democracy,” p. 1. 107. Ibid., p. 25. 108. Fein, “Accounting for Genocide After 1945.”

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109. Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?”; Harff, “How to Use Risk Assessment and Early Warning in the Prevention and De-Escalation of Genocide and Other Mass Atrocities,” Global Responsibility to Protect 1, no. 4 (2009): 506–531. 110. Easterly et al., “Development.” 111. Wayman and Tago, “Explaining the Onset of Mass Killing,” pp. 3, 13. 112. Rudolph J. Rummel, Death by Government (New Brunswick, NJ: Transactions Publishers, 1994). 113. Krain, “State-Sponsored Mass Murder.” 114. Ted R. Gurr and Barbara Harff, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (Oxford: Westview, 1994), p. 359. 115. Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?”; Krain, “State-Sponsored Mass Murder.” 116. Kuper, Genocide, p. 58. 117. Fein, “Accounting for Genocide After 1945.” 118. Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?” 119. Frances Stewart and Valpy Fitzgerald, eds., War and Underdevelopment, vol. 1, The Economic and Social Consequences of Conflict (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); Paul Collier and World Bank, “Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy,” in A World Bank Policy Research Report (Washington, DC: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. xv, 221. 120. See the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network, www.gpanet.org. 121. Collier, Breaking the Conflict Trap; Department for International Development, “Fighting Poverty to Build a Safer World,” London, 2005; Frances Stewart, Graham Brown, et al., “Policies Towards Horizontal Inequalities,” in Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies, edited by Frances Stewart (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 301–326; World Bank, World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security and Development, (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2011). 122. Frances Stewart, “Employment Policies and Horizontal Inequalities in Post-Conflict Situations,” in Horizontal Inequalities and Post-Conflict Development edited by Arnim Langer, Frances Stewart, and Rajesh Venugopal (London: Palgrave, 2011). 123. A full discussion of policies to correct HIs appears in Stewart, Brown, et al., “Policies Towards Horizontal Inequalities.” 124. Smith, “Human Destructiveness and Politics”; Staub, Roots of Evil; Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?” 125. Francis Akindès, “Mobilization, Identity, Horizontal Inequality, and the Sociology and History of Political Violence in Côte d’Ivoire,” CRISE Internal Paper, Oxford: Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security, and Ethnicity, Oxford University Press, 2007. 126. Thomas Pegram, “Weak Institutions, Rights Claims, and Pathways to Compliance: The Transformative Role of the Peruvian Human Rights Ombudsman,” Oxford Development Studies 39, no. 2 (2011): 229–251.

4 Detection: The History and Politics of Early Warning Barbara Harff

I

n this chapter I briefly trace the history and evolution of risk assessment and early warning (EW) of genocide and political mass murder (politicide). Both risk assessment and early warning are widely and sometimes interchangeably used. Risk assessment is based on the analysis of a country’s background or structural conditions—ethnic divisions, type of political system, international status, and so forth—that determine its risk of genocidal violence. Thus, risk assessment can tell us that—given the presence or absence of certain factors—countries are at high, medium, or low risk of genocide. What the model cannot tell us is whether genocide is likely to occur. That is the focus of early warning. Early warning models by necessity focus on dynamic factors such as changes in political ideology, strategy, and capacity that make the onset of killing campaigns imminent. The question we typically ask here is, What has changed in the constellation of structural combined with dynamic factors that have pushed a country at risk over the brink into genocide? Group-specific variables may play a significant role. Although some analysts have developed and tested early-warning dynamic models purporting to forecast genocide, results were mixed. Reliable early warning in genocide research does not exist at present. Thus, so-called early warnings are more often late warnings of ongoing atrocities, some of which may or may not resemble genocides. What the policy community is looking for, to quote Madeleine Albright and William S. Cohen, “is a reliable process” (i.e., using scientific analysis) “for assessing risk and generating early warnings of potential atrocities . . . It means getting critical information to policymakers in time for them to take effective preventive action.”1 Albright and Cohen use my risk model as an example of the types of models needed. 85

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As to the reliability of risk assessment, skeptics abound. The most often asked questions are: How good or accurate are the assessments? Do they just confirm something that we already know? How politicized is this type of research, and who uses or misuses it? The easy answer to the first question is that if all early warners, including scholars who provide risk assessment, would use reliable data and accepted quantitative methods, accuracy could easily be evaluated using standard analytical tools. As the key to the acceptability of findings in any scientific community, replicability can be achieved with good data and standard methods, which are necessary requirements for forecasting models. Approaches that rely on personal observation and expertise—for example, qualitative analysis— complement systematic analysis but are not susceptible to falsification, and thus can be used to further political or ideological agendas. The second question is more difficult to answer. First, forecasts can be misused. In the worst-case scenario, warnings might actually trigger genocide. Imagine Rwanda weeks before the first mass murders: if the international community had credible prior warnings about the type and dimension of the catastrophe, the regime may have preempted potential international action by quickly escalating violence. Again, people who claim that we had ample warnings in the case of Rwanda could not and did not tell us what type of conflict they had envisioned or when it was likely to begin; most warnings came in when the killings were well under way, with the possible exception of General Roméo Dallaire’s reports. A second issue for scholars is misuse of data, information, and analysis. Researchers have a responsibility to stay clear of ideologically slanted misinterpretations of findings, even if the underlying motives and intention are to further a pro–human rights agenda. A question that one should always ask is whether good risk assessment is sufficient to prompt action. Again quoting Albright and Cohen, “Effective early warning does not guarantee successful prevention, but if warning is absent, slow, inaccurate, or indistinguishable from the ‘noise’ of regular reporting, failure is virtually guaranteed.”2 Thus, reliable EW that enables us to forecast geno/politicides is a prerequisite to preventing atrocities. But a word of caution: Even solid early warnings are apt to fail to attract the attention of the policy community if not accompanied by suggestions on how to deal with emerging crises in a timely and effective manner. More on that later. I argue that our ability to do solid risk assessment exists, but then why is there so little support for systematic warnings? Attempts past and present have been made to monitor antecedents to genocide, but no global system exists that systematically focuses on geno/politicide. Un-

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fortunately, international support for the quantitative EW tracking system and the equally systematic FAST system (Early Analysis of Tensions and Evidence), which was started in 1998 by the Swiss Peace Foundation, has since ceased. We now have only less systematic attempts to monitor escalation to genocide. Given the increasing international malaise and apathy about responding to ongoing atrocities, the US and European policy communities are likely even less interested in warnings about yet another genocide in the making. Increasing malaise may well be due to poorly organized, ineffective, and politically unpopular involvements in current and past genocidal situations. Surely policymakers have reasons to be skeptical about the utility of multinational efforts. What should be done in order to prevent or mitigate international conflicts that are likely to escalate to genocide? We need to develop better preventive tools that have some promise of success in pregenocidal situations. We need to determine what strategies have worked in other conflicts, compare and contrast them with situations that evolved into mass atrocities, and learn how, when, and why the international community became involved or remained absent. But a word of caution: We should not treat past successes as panaceas to all evolving genocides. Sensitivity to local context is a must. Despite what I’ve already said, I remain cautiously optimistic, and why not? As a longtime member of the community of genocide scholars I am proud of what we have achieved in some forty years of research. We see a flurry of international activities in pregenocidal situations, such as UN peacekeeping forces in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and postgenocidal Sudan, and are witness to private efforts—for example, the nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) actively pursuing humanitarian agendas in countries at risk. The mere existence of the office of the UN special advisor on the prevention of genocide supports my contention that applied genocide research has received some of the attention needed to prevent future Holocausts. This research has evolved beyond our expectations. Consider that during the late 1970s, fewer than a dozen people worldwide identified themselves as genocide scholars. Fast forward to the first international conference on genocide—the 2003 International Stockholm Forum on Preventing Genocide—that brought together fifty-five heads of state, foreign ministers, and ambassadors pledging to prevent genocide. Genocide is now a familiar concept and often is part of the curriculum in high schools and universities. Policymakers pay at least lip service to emerging situations, and the International Criminal Court’s (ICC) existence makes it

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clear that genociders cannot count on getting away with mass killings of their fellow citizens. With the emergence of the new responsibility-to-protect (R2P) principle, international support for action is gaining momentum. Last, despite its still dubious legal status, the concept of politicide, a term I coined to describe mass murders in which victims are defined by their political affiliation, is gaining greater acceptance in the scholarly and policy communities. Why is this significant? Given that a large number of mass-murder victims are not members of ethnic, racial, or religious groups, their killers could not be easily brought to justice under the Genocide Convention. In the past, their victimization has been buried in the annals of atrocities that happened during war, revolutions, or ethnic conflicts.

The History of Risk Assessment and Early Warning

The idea of early warning in international politics seems to have started during the Cold War when policymakers in the West faced the existential threat of a nuclear first strike. Early warning of such an attack depended on espionage, spy plane and satellite observation of Soviet launch sites, missile tracking systems, and so forth. Later the concept was much more widely used to refer to systems for alerting policymakers to risks of civil wars, regime instability, gross human rights violations, famine, population displacement, and similar crises that call for national and international responses.3 One of the most reliable and widely used early warning systems was developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in the mid-1970s to anticipate food shortages. The FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS) systematically tracks data on country and regional food production and supplies, rainfall, and government food policies, and uses the information to prepare country briefs and issue warnings about the magnitude and onset of food crises.4 Another example is the Humanitarian Early Warning Service (HEWS), established by the World Food Program and operated in cooperation with a large number of international organizations concerned with tracking and responding to humanitarian crises. Whereas GIEWS systematically collects and analyzes specific kinds of economic data, the HEWS system compiles more disparate information on crises ranging from earthquakes to civil wars to epidemics from affiliated organizations. HEWS provides country assessments but seems not to do any rigorous analysis (see www.hewsweb.org). Invariably a large flow of current information needs to be gathered and analyzed for any usable early warning system. The nature and

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causes of the phenomena to be warned about determine what information is needed for early warning. Analysis is the key. Moving beyond the soft interpretations of observers and desk officers requires explanations that are grounded in empirical social science research, which is what I mean in this chapter by “systematic research.” The quest for better early warning has prompted concerted efforts to improve the validity of social science models of political instability in its various manifestations. The Political Instability Task Force (formerly the State Failure Task Force) was established by the US government in 1994, at the request of then–vice president Al Gore. Since that time it has designed and carried out ever-more-sophisticated data-based analyses of the conditions that precede, by two years, the onset of serious episodes of political instability. Initially the project focused on a heterogeneous set of state failures that included abrupt, adverse regime changes; ethnic and revolutionary wars; and genocides and politicides. The research was specifically designed to provide the US government’s foreign policy community with risk assessments that could be used for policy planning. In later analyses the task force developed separate models for the major forms of instability, including the geno/politicide model that I describe in detail later in this chapter. Most strikingly, the models that the task force developed make it possible to ascertain with 80 to 90 percent accuracy which otherwise similar countries have had major instability events during the last half-century, and when, and which have not. When applied to new data, the models generate risk assessments of instability for US intelligence and military agencies and for others who have access to the models and new data.5 In view of the intense preoccupation of most Western governments with preventing terrorism, especially since the 2001 attacks in the United States, one would expect more systematic research on terrorism risk assessment and early warning. Some for-profit consulting firms prepare lists of terrorism risk for various countries and targets, but their methodology is unknown. A cursory review of the relevant literature, as well as consultation with experts, shows little evidence of scholarly research analogous to that done for political instability. Most empirical research on the subject focuses on the individual or group level, although some of it looks at deep background conditions such as government legitimacy and democracy.6 Some applied research is aimed at identifying the US sites and cities most likely to be targeted, but for the purpose of assessing insurance risks. In addition, a large, discursive literature exists on the Islamist threat to the West. Most promising, perhaps, a serious effort was made in 2008 to get social scientists to identify systematic research ap-

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proaches that might make it possible to anticipate rare events, such as terrorists’ use of weapons of mass destruction. Whether any of these ideas are being implemented for policy purposes, we do not know.7

The History of Genocide Risk Assessment

One cannot talk about risk assessment and early warning without tracing the scholarship that led from the identification of cases to identifying potential causes via case studies. First, we need to define “genocide” before assessing its risk of occurrence. Second, we need to know how many cases occurred in the twentieth century (the larger the number of cases, the better we can identify common causes). General or scientific explanation, after all, rests on procedures that enable us to differentiate between common and unique characteristics. I derived the risk assessment described here from theoretical speculations transformed into hypotheses that were tested using standard statistical tools. I have always suggested that arguing about the merit of using systematic vs. qualitative approaches in the social sciences is unproductive. I think both are needed, but neither should be used exclusively. The argument of critical nonbehavioralists that human behavior cannot be quantified is unpersuasive. This debate is futile, given that on every level of analysis, systematic research provides solid answers as to why atrocities such as genocides occur. We now know enough about why and under what circumstances genocides and politicides occur, although some scholars may not agree with my argument.8 During the late 1970s, genocide research focused on definitional boundaries of the concept and individual case studies. For most of us, the Holocaust provided guidance for dealing with both issues. But who could forget the argument that the Holocaust was unique and therefore defies comparison with other cases, such as Cambodia? The underlying logic of that argument has always eluded me, but others were not so sure. My assurance came from the source. Yes, Raphael Lemkin coined the term for “the Holocaust,” but he was quite aware of the Armenian genocide and thought such horrors could happen again. What message do we send when we say that a case is unique? Are we not saying that it could not happen again? By the late 1980s, genocide scholars largely agreed that most cases have a combination of unique and common characteristics. If we are serious about explaining phenomena, we need to compare and contrast. Case studies can teach us a lot about a specific case, but only through comparison do we determine what is unique about particular cases and what is common to all.

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The Trouble with Identifying Cases and Causes

The realization struck all of us as researchers that aside from the Armenian genocide and a few colonial cases, little or no work had been done to identify the universe of cases in the twentieth century. I was trained in quantitative analysis and knew full well that generalization derived from observed phenomena depends on information about a substantial n of cases. The number is debatable, but a minimum of ten to twenty cases are essential for statistical comparison and empirical generalizations. During the late 1970s I began collecting information on cases after the Holocaust and published a list of forty-six in 1988.9 This data set became part of the problem set of state failures used by the Political Instability Task Force. And again, the task force has done innumerable analyses of the preconditions of political instability for the US government and accumulated a huge data set on economic, social, demographic and political variables—all posted at http://globalpolicy.gmu .edu. This task force and the interest of the US government allowed me to design the first systematic analysis of the structural antecedents of historical cases of genocide. First, as mentioned above, we need to have an understanding of what constitutes genocide. A clear definition provides us with answers not just on what happened but also on why it happened. Though most perpetrators are states or regimes, it is quite possible for nongovernmental groups to commit genocide, as in the DRC, where Kabila-led rebels with Rwandan support massacred Hutus, mostly refugees from Rwanda, in 1996–1997. Such an outcome is especially likely in failed states whose regimes have little authority. But data based on state action has its limitations. In some instances, identifying victims presents us with challenges; Cambodia was a case in point. The majority of the victims of the Khmer Rouge (1975–1979) belonged to the same ethnic group as the perpetrators—thus, no genocide in the classic sense. That dilemma led some to misidentify the case as a massacre or civil war, or to use the curious concept of autogenocide (a fuzzy and thus far unique category). Cambodia was my main motivator for coining the concept of politicide to describe situations in which victims are primarily, though not always exclusively, members of a political group or movement, or a socioeconomic class. Among the forty-six cases, most were politicides or mixed cases in which victims were members of an ethnic, racial, or religious group as well as a political group, such as victims of the “dirty wars” in Argentina and El Salvador (politicide) or Indonesia (a mixed case). How could we not call Cambodia a genocide just because the UN Genocide Convention ignores the victimization of politi-

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cal groups? The history of that exclusion should be familiar to all of us and has little legitimacy. But the debate is apparently still open. Although political victims can move in and out of such groups as distinct from ethnic victims, in the eyes of perpetrators, past political affiliations can be as worthy of a death warrant as a present affiliation—as has happened in many cases.

From Case Studies to Modeling Genocide: Theoretical Development

I was often asked why my data set focused on cases after World War II. The answer is quite straightforward. The world changed dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s. Former colonies became independent and some committed genocide. Thus, blaming former colonial masters for what occurred postindependence became common. Though most of these masters wielded little influence over former subjects, they left, as some scholars argued, conditions that carried the seeds of civil wars, terror, and genocide. Underdevelopment, illiteracy, the preferred treatment of some ethnic group over others, arbitrary boundaries, corruption, and exploitation began to be cited as causes in the general conflict as well as genocide literature. Yet neither the Nazi regime nor the Young Turks— perpetrators of the Armenian genocide—had much in common with postcolonial regimes. Holocaust scholars focused on the role of ideology, the history of anti-Semitism, the type of regime that emerged after World War I, and the multiple layers of German society. Ample information was available for us theorists. My theoretical propositions focused on structural components partially because some of the less tangible and situation-specific components cannot be operationalized on a global scale. Moreover, I wanted to know how much of the variance structural factors alone could explain. I focused on structural factors such as regime ideologies (those promoting exclusionary forms of nationalism, or religious and racial intolerance), type of regime, elite structures, past ethnic discrimination, history of conflict, and societal divisions—such as level of education, divided by race, religion, or ethnic group. Yet these factors did not necessarily explain the behavior of murderous regimes in newly independent countries. Could there be parallels, or was this altogether a new phenomenon? Some additional factors were tested in our final model. For example, Did past colonial injustices spill over into the new system, or was ethnic/tribal intolerance at the root of the problem? If the latter, how widespread was it? As mentioned

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above, the Armenian genocide provided some guidance. Turkey emerged as the heir of the Ottoman Empire with the burdens of a former colonizer and a population much less multiethnic than before, greatly reduced territory, and strong Turkish-only nationalist leadership. Yet another historic event seldom mentioned but intriguing by implication was the 1905 genocide against the Hereros committed by the forces of Imperial Germany, an episode that gave credence to the argument that the iron-fisted policy of colonial regimes combined with exploitation of resources and preferential treatment of some ethnic groups are incendiary policies that may contribute to postcolonial conflicts. Note that the Herero case should not be considered a practice run for the Holocaust. It has much more in common with the general practice of European colonial powers of the time—oppressive, racist, and exploitative. Thus, for me there were few surprises relating to all probable antecedents of genocides and politicides in postcolonial regimes or in other cases. Genocides and politicides are the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents— or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities—that are intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group. In genocide, the victimized group is defined by the perpetrators primarily in terms of their communal characteristics. In politicides, in contrast, groups are defined primarily in terms of their political opposition to the regime and dominant group. My data set provided all the necessary information to put the model to a systematic test. Data collected included information on types of victim, identity of the perpetrators, when and where episodes happened, how people were killed, and how many. The original case coding sheets further identified ethnicity, religion, race, and region of residence of victims and perpetrators. Also recorded was information on the historical relationship between the ruling elite and victims, questions about policy and tactics, questions as to who was involved at which level, and information on postgenocide relations. Each case was essentially a mini–case study. In retrospect, two of the toughest hurdles were identifying the beginning and end of an episode and estimating the numbers of victims, which of course goes to the heart of the definitional debate. As to dating an episode, when do we call it genocide or “just” an isolated massacre? How many people have to be killed, or in what time frame? I did not include victims of mental harm, nor those who were raped, but I included all those who died as a direct and indirect results of genocidal policies, including deaths as a result of deliberate starvation, as was the case in Biafra, or rape victims who died. Why? Because “-cide” means killing,

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not harming a people. Numbers of victims matter—from a moral as well as definitional perspective. Having exact information on numbers of victims remains extremely difficult and fraught with ambiguities. Numbers are sometimes inflated by survivors and typically minimized by perpetrators. The best estimates are somewhere in the middle. Demographic studies help, as were available for Cambodia. We also need to assess intent and motive. Did people die as a matter of design, or was death randomly caused by mob violence? Was some other mechanism at work, such as vigilante groups or militias committing genocide—and if so, working on whose behalf? Debates about motive and intent are not as difficult as criminal lawyers would have it. I argue that the question of motive is not crucial; intent matters most. Let’s look at the Holocaust: although Nazi ideology provided the rationale (motive) to exclude groups from the universe of moral obligation (so well phrased by Helen Fein), action based on motive needs planning and willing executioners. Ideology was a crucial component in many cases; it had to be operationalized by the would-be perpetrators. Instructing and indoctrinating potential executioners was a must: thus, specific information was needed as to who should do the killing and how, in addition to providing justification, rationale (indoctrination), and state resources to establish the killing machine (incentives and capacity). Intent can be discovered by looking at who does the killings, on what authority, how they are done, and who is targeted. In other words, actions on the ground provide the answer to questions of intent. For early warners, here is the major problem. What preparatory actions tell us that a genocide is in the making, rather than a massacre, ethnic conflict, or something else? Again we see the need to identify structural as well as dynamic antecedents of genocide.

Factors Used in the Current Risk Assessment Model

My current risk assessment model is based on the model presented in my 2003 article “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?”10 That earlier model identified six causal factors that jointly differentiate with 74 percent accuracy the thirty-six serious civil conflicts that led to episodes of genocidal violence between 1955 and 2002 and ninety-three others that did not. Case-by-case inspection of false negatives and false positives suggested, first, that several false positives could easily have escalated into genocide or politicide, as in Mozambique in 1976, where Renamo rebels carried out widespread killings but did not target specific communal groups. Second, most of the false negatives were due to ambiguity

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about when to date the onset of genocide, or problems with the lag structure used to estimate the model. Accuracy increased to nearly 90 percent when temporal inconsistencies in the data were taken into account. The current risk assessment model, which I present below, uses seven causal factors as well as a Summary Risk Index Score that is the sum of the weighted causal factors. I describe these factors and scores in the following sections. This assessment is also posted on the GPANet website (http://GPANet.org) with a technical appendix that explains more precisely the technical procedures used to rate countries on each risk variable and how the factors were weighted. 1. Prior genocides and politicides. This is a dichotomous variable indicative of whether a genocide or politicide has occurred in the country since 1945. Three cases have been added to the original data set and are taken into account in the current risk assessment. The cases are as follows: Nigeria during the Biafran civil war (1967–1969), where the federal government’s deliberate blocking of international aid and basic foodstuffs led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians; Zimbabwe and the state-sponsored killings of thousands of Ndbele in the mid-1980s; and in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997, where Kabila’s revolutionary movement systematically killed tens of thousands of Hutu refugees. 2. Ethnic character of the ruling elite. A dichotomous variable indicative of whether the ruling elite represents a minority communal group, such as the Tigrean-dominated regime of Ethiopia. 3. Ideological character of the ruling elite. A dichotomous variable indicative of whether leaders adhere to a belief system that identifies some overriding purpose or principle that justifies efforts to restrict, persecute, or eliminate certain categories of people. Although Somalia has no effective central government, Islamist groups have imposed strict Shariah-based directives on the people they control. 4. Type of regime. Autocracy and democracy were indexed using the Polity global data set’s 0-to-10 scales based on coded information on political institutions. Full autocracies have a democracy-minus-autocracy score of –7 to –10, and partial autocracies have a score from +1 to –6. 5. Trade openness (export plus imports as a percentage of GDP). Trade openness serves as a highly sensitive indicator of state and elite willingness to maintain the rules of law and fair practices in the economic sphere. Risks have been highest in countries with the lowest openness scores, 45 or less, with a weight of +2.5. Medium scores are 46 to 70, with a weight of +1.

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6. State-led discrimination. Although not used in the original analysis, this indicator proved to be more significant than the magnitude of political upheaval used previously. Here state policies and practices deliberately restrict the economic or political rights of specific minority groups. Ted R. Gurr developed this indicator and analyses by scholars using the Minorities at Risk data established its significance (see the University of Maryland website, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar/). 7. Instability risks. Major instances of instability, either internal war or abrupt regime changes, preceded almost all historical episodes of geno/politicide. Therefore I use J. Joseph Hewitt’s estimates of the likelihood of future instability in a country. Countries with scores greater than 20 are weighted 3, those between 10 and 20 are weighted 2, and those between 5 and 10 are weighted 1.11 8. The summary risk index score. All risk factors are weighted based on empirical results. For example, past genocide was a more important factor than exclusionary ideology by a ratio of 3.5 to 2.5. Each country’s risk index score is the sum of the weights of all seven risk factors. (The score is listed in the first column below, following the country’s name). Table 4.1 shows the seven risk factors for genocide in summary form for each high-risk country, listed in descending order of risk scores. Syria, Burma (Myanmar), Sudan, and Pakistan top the list. Neither Burma nor Sudan is a surprise, either because they committed recent genocides and/or engaged in extreme repression. China is less worrisome because of its low potential for future instability, a factor that in its absence is likely to offset future genocidal risks. I consider internal war or abrupt regime change as a partial trigger for genocidal violence. Hewitt’s instability scores do not address the major upheavals throughout the Arab world, which may also affect non-Arab Muslim countries such as Pakistan. Syria is representative of the convulsions that have gripped the Maghreb, Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula as well as Bahrain and Jordan. Syria is coded as highly unstable, but unlike previous coding, its ideological position is not exclusionary, given its secular and mixed socialist system and its support for Shia causes (Hezbollah/Iran). Rwanda is still at risk, an example of a country in which the greatest threat comes from the exclusionary ideology of challenging groups—in this case, the anti-Tutsi ideology of armed Hutu militants. Whereas systematic risk assessment is better than what we had before, we cannot say precisely when genocidal violence is likely to begin. What high-risk profiles tell us is that a country is in the latter stages of upheaval that may result in genocide, which alone should be

Table 4.1 Country Risks for Genocide and Politicide, 2011 Country, Risk Index Score Syria, 17

Genocides/ Targets Politicides Minority Exclusionary Regime Type Trade Openness of State-led Risks of Future Since 1955 Ethnic Elite Ideology 2009 2009 Discrimination Instability 2011 (weights +3.5 or 0) (weights +2.5 or 0) (weights +2.5 or 0) (weights +3.5 to 0) (weights +2.5 to 0) (weights +2 or 0) (weights +3 to 0) Yes: 1981–1982 +3.5

Yes: Alawites dominate +2.5

No

Full autocracy +3.5

Very low +2.5

Political opponents, Kurds +2

Very high (low in Hewitt) +3

Yes: 1978 +3.5

Yes: Burmans +2.5

Yes: Burman nationalism +2.5

Full autocracy +3.5

Very low +2.5

Kachin, Karen, others +2

Low

Yes: 1956–1972, 1983–present +3.5

Yes: Arabs dominate +2.5

Yes: Islamist +2.5

Partial autocracy +2

Very low +2.5

Darfuri +2

Low

Pakistan, 13.5

Yes: 1971, 1973–1977 +3.5

Yes: Punjabis dominate +2.5

No

Partial democracy

Very low +2.5

Ahmadis, Hindus, Baluch +2

Very high +3

Ethiopia, 13.5

Yes: 1976–1979 +3.5

Yes: Tigreans dominate +2.5

No

Mixed regime

Very low +2.5

Oromo, Anuak +2

Very high +3

Rwanda, 12.5

Yes: 1963–1965, 1994 +3.5

Yes: Tutsis dominate +2.5

No

Partial autocracy +2

Very low +2.5

Hutus +2

Low

Burma/ Myanmar, 16.5 Sudan, 15

(continues)

Table 4.1 continued Country, Risk Index Score Zimbabwe, 12

Genocides/ Targets Politicides Minority Exclusionary Regime Type Trade Openness of State-led Risks of Future Since 1955 Ethnic Elite Ideology 2009 2009 Discrimination Instability 2011 (weights +3.5 or 0) (weights +2.5 or 0) (weights +2.5 or 0) (weights +3.5 to 0) (weights +2.5 to 0) (weights +2 or 0) (weights +3 to 0) Yes: 1983–1987 +3.5

Yes: Shona dominate +2.5

No

Partial autocracy +2

High

Shona, Europeans +2

High +2

Yes: 1950–1951, 1959, 1956–1975 + 3.5

No

Yes: Marxist +2.5

Full autocracy +3.5

High

Turkomen, Tibetans +2

Very low

Iran, 11.5

Yes: 1981–1992 +3.5

No

Yes: Islamic theocracy +2.5

Full autocracy +3.5

High

Kurds, Bahais, Turkomen +2

Very low

DRC, 11

Yes: 1964–1965, 1977, 1999 +3.5

No

No

Partial democracy

Very low +2.5

Tutsis +2

Very high +3

Somalia, 10.5

Yes: 1988–1991 +3.5

No (no governing elite)

Islamists yes +2.5

No effective regime

Very low +2.5

None (no effective state)

High +2

None

Yes: Sudairi clan dominates +2.5

Yes: Wahabism +2.5

Full autocracy +3.5

High

Shi‘is +2

Very low

China, 11.5

Saudi Arabia, 10.5

Sri Lanka, 10

Yes: 1989–1990 +3.5

No

Yes: Sinhalese nationalism +2.5

Partial democracy

Low +1

Tamils +2

Medium +1

Nigeria, 9.5

Yes: 1967–1969 +3.5

No

No

Partial democracy

Medium low +1

Ogani, Ejaw +2

Very high +3

Cameroon, 9.5

None

Yes: Christian southerners +2.5

No

Partial autocracy +2

Medium low +1

Westerners, Bamileke +2

High +2

Central African Republic, 9

None

Yes: +2.5

No

Partial autocracy +2

Very low +2.5

None

High +2

Yes: 1971–1979, 1980–1986 +3.5

No

No

Partial autocracy +2

Medium low +1

None

High +2

None

No

Communism +2.5

Full autocracy +3.5

Very low +2.5

None

Very low

Guatemala, 8

Yes: 1978–1990 +3.5

Yes: Ladinos +2.5

No

Full democracy

Medium low +1

None

Medium +1

Uzbekistan, 8

None

No

Yes: Uzbek nationalism +2.5

Full autocracy +3.5

High

Tajiks, Islamists +2

Very low

Uganda, 8.5

North Korea, 8.5

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enough to focus on preventing escalation. Given risk assessments, less costly approaches may still work, such as financial or humanitarian aid or rescue operations combined with subtle or not-so-subtle political pressures. For Syria that time has passed. In Bahrain and Yemen, international actors may yet have a chance to offset the worst, provided that the current regimes either relinquish power or introduce major reforms that would include equal rights for all minorities—or majorities, as is the case in Bahrain.

An Alternative to the Genocide Model?

Aside from my systematic effort to test structural explanations, we have a multitude of case studies and a quantitative comparative study by Matthew Krain12 that provide answers at different levels of analysis. In 2006 the Political Instability Task Force revisited the question of the causes and forecasting of mass killings using new data and a different research procedure. The events to be explained were 120 mass killing events worldwide from 1945 to 2006—all events in which state agents deliberately killed 1,000 or more noncombatants in a period of sustained violence. The victims did not have to be targeted because of their membership in particular ethnic or political groups, as in my operational definition of geno/politicide. The variables in the mass killing model—an inductively driven exercise, not theory-driven—include analogues of several variables that were significant in my genocide models: armed conflict, state-led discrimination, and membership in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization (the analogue of an indicator of trade interdependence, a measure of international interconnectedness). Other variables in the mass killing model are leadership instability (rather than autocracy), nonviolent protest, and infant mortality rates. In other words, mass atrocities in the last half-century were most likely to occur in poor and politically unstable countries with high levels of both nonviolent and violent conflict, active discriminatory policies against minorities, and weak international linkages. Notably missing are three genocide model variables: past genocides, exclusionary elite ideology, and minority elite status.13 A theoretical interpretation would be that elite ideology and minority status combine to make the difference between a weak regime’s decision to initiate genocide as a systematic policy of group destruction, or to carry out a more limited policy of mass killings against real or suspected opponents. The classification accuracy of the mass killing model

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is 78 percent, slightly better than the 2003 version of my model. Both models thus can be—and probably are—used to generate risk assessments for US government agencies.

Genocide Early Warning Efforts: Past and Present

We already know that the United Nations was one of the first international organizations to use systematic early warning models, albeit for food crises and the environment. Dynamic modeling was and is equally well established in epidemiology. In the social sciences, dynamic modeling of conflict data flourished for a time with the advent of behavioralism. However, dynamic modeling was limited by the lack of sophistication in both theory and the analytical tools commonly used. Although correlational analysis of time-series data was established, it proved to be difficult to use when it came to dynamic models. Early warning efforts should be done in a systematic fashion using theoretically tested models—quantitative analysis—not just untested theory or experts’ insights. Why not follow the lead of the natural sciences that oblige scholars to test and retest and rely on others’ replication and data? The social sciences cannot afford to depend on insiders’ knowledge or hunches and then cry “wolf” when there is no solid evidence that we are facing an imminent genocide rather than some other violent event. A selective review of current efforts on conflict risk assessment and EW follows. These recent examples are promising. FAST used a model-based conflict early warning system for the Swiss Foreign Ministry in collaboration with the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland. For a number of years FAST was supported with grants from other governments, but lost its support and is all but defunct. The NGO Fund for Peace (http://fundforpeace.org) is now a well-supported effort to assess the risk of genocide and related conflicts for the US government. It is anchored in the general conflict literature, but not specifically in genocide studies, and lacks visibility in the academic realm. In addition, its analysts use a narrow definition of genocide and base their model on only a few historical cases. Their strength is similar to the FAST system in that they have local people reporting to their network of analysts. Greg Stanton of Genocide Watch (http://genocidewatch.org) uses an eight-stage model of the genocidal process. It is a scholarly but nonsystematic effort that interprets current information on high-risk cases. An-

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chored in the literature but not formally tested, it is nevertheless useful in assessing specific cases. FEWER (Forum for Early Warning and Early Response; http://fewer -international.org) is a monitoring organization that is not systematic but is effective in gathering information. FEWER promotes partnership with academic institutions, NGOs, and governmental agencies, and is connected to David Nyheim’s International Conflict and Security (INCAS) consulting firm. International Alert (IA; http://www.international-alert.org) is a wellfunded European effort focusing on peacebuilding and conflict prevention. It is not genocide specific but due to its presence in at least twenty countries, IA has been effective in building international coalitions. IA’s five-factor model borrows heavily from the generic conflict literature, and one would be hard pressed either to gather comparative data or do any systematic analyses of such information. Los Angeles–based Jewish World Watch (Naama Haviv; http://jewish worldwatch.org) uses the Harff model and current data to develop its own risk assessments. It is systematic and innovative, complementing its risk assessments with case studies of high-risk countries. The UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide uses a combination of risk and early warning indicators (with some input from me and other scholars) to track countries at risk (http:// www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/adviser/). It is a broadly comparative yet nonsystematic effort, but with further support and encouragement its staff has the know-how to develop a more sophisticated system. The Genocide Prevention Project (http://preventorprotect.org) headed by Jill Savitt is a small NGO that advocates prevention of genocides and mass atrocities. This NGO seems capable of doing systematic research and has posted comparisons of existing nonsystematic and systematic risk analyses on its website. International Crisis Group (http://crisisgroup.org) is a heavily funded international NGO that focuses on tracking conflicts. Though not genocide specific, it is a rich source for country-specific information. Its assessment of countries in crisis, prepared by its regional offices, are widely circulated.

Revisiting Early Warning Models

How useful are early warning models, given the abundance of information available? Information always needs structure for interpretation.

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Government analysts have a hard time filtering important information from anecdotal accounts, especially given the typically short attention span and political orientation of policymakers. To recapitulate, the risk assessment model presented above is good enough to tell us that a country is at high, medium, or low risk of genocide, but it cannot tell us much about the process that leads to mass killings. Early warning efforts as of yet cannot pinpoint the exact time when a genocide is to begin, but can provide a likely scenario. Why is it more important to learn about which combination of factors escalate violence to genocide rather than focusing on exactitude as to the onset of an episode? We could use specific information on accelerating factors to turn back the clock and prevent a genocide from occurring by focusing on eliminating them. For example, if hate propaganda is a key to incitement, then jamming radio stations could halt further deterioration of a situation. Something similar happened in Côte d’Ivoire, when a mission by Juan Mendez (the first UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide) prompted the regime to stop hate propaganda and thus check further escalation. On a more skeptical note, how do we really know whether some other mechanism was also at work that helped deescalate the situation? Halting hate propaganda was the visible accomplishment, but other factors, such as diplomatic engagement by the French government, may have played a role. There is no absolutely sure path to certainty; we may never know fully why some situations in which genocide seems imminent just fizzled out, whereas others developed along the predicted path. We have some good ideas, however, that are worth retesting. The following indicators were selected to compliment the theoretically based risk assessment model I presented earlier. Event categories were operationalized to reflect the dynamic nature of the indicators. For example, I postulated that the arming of rebels was important, but it surely made a difference whether arms were delivered in ever-greater numbers or delivery declined, and if so, to what degree. In another example, if government-led discrimination against specific ethnic groups increased, what forms did it take and how severe was it? And if some nonstate groups engaged in extrajudicial killings, were they tolerated or actively supported by the governing elite? If so, what attracted others to join such groups? The model had ten variables operationalized into roughly seventy indicators. In addition, the model identified accelerating and deaccelerating factors or events that, because of their importance, could affect the severity of conflict development or deescalation.

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Early Warning Indicators

The perpetrators. We tracked discriminatory or restrictive actions (such as life integrity violations) by the government against preidentified groups. We assessed changes in government capacity—measured, for example, by allegations of corruption—and decline in currency value. We further looked at changes in elite cohesion and ideological commitment, whether hate propaganda increased, and whether other coercive entities such as militias were linked to the government. Threats of external involvement against the ruling elite were also tracked. The potential victims. We tracked opposition groups’ capacity/ cohesion/ideology as well as their actions and reaction to government policies. In addition, we coded kindred activities and support for groups—for example, whether there was an inflow of fighters and arms for the group from neighboring countries. We wanted to know whether targeted groups engaged in criminal activities such as killings, torture, or kidnappings. Lastly, what is the capacity of groups to mobilize? Are they in control of territory or scarce resources, and do they enjoy international support? What could not be built into the accelerator model was the location and extent of territorial control by opposition groups; we could only code expanding control of existing territory. A simple structural variable could be developed for these specific cases. Triggers and deaccelerators. Triggers are conflictual events; deaccelerators are cooperative events. These factors are manifestations of the general political climate in which perpetrators and potential victims both operate. Typically these single events are capable of changing the direction of a crisis. Examples of trigger events include natural disasters that provide opportunities to rebel groups to increase antigovernment actions; assassinations of key leaders; expulsion and evacuation of foreigners; and terrorist attacks, all of which exacerbate existing tensions. Examples of deaccelerators that help defuse tensions include lifting restrictions on the press, release of political prisoners, governments’ and rebels’ acceptance of mediation, dismissal of corrupt leaders, and repatriation of refugees.

Early Warning: What We Have Learned

Why do governing elites sponsor genocidal violence, and who are their henchmen? Given the right kind of incentives and the perception of existential threats, people can and will kill. Though some killers are social deviants, most genociders are normal people. But normal people belonging to extremist groups are different. Mutual reinforcement, manip-

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ulation by leaders, and rewards and punishment are used to secure their compliance. Motives vary as to why elites choose genocide as a policy instrument. In most cases, governments are ideologically committed to exclude targeted groups from the universe of obligation. In some countries, such groups are perceived as threatening the survival of the governing elites. Some are thought to stand in the way of political consolidation or to control scarce resources; some are simply unwanted minorities for a multitude of reasons, such as religious beliefs or ascriptive characteristics, or because they have been historically scapegoated for adverse events. A related question is, How can elites activate latent public hostilities? Here we envision a scenario in which government agents spread propaganda, myths, and conspiracy theories, thus elevating prejudice to race or class and a justification for action. Enabling tactics are manifold. From brutalization of future perpetrators to building reward structures, by creating role expectations and strengthening obedience to authority, we see the process evolving from isolated violent incidents to genocide. The final step toward genocide may be the process of dehumanization of potential victims. Here we may see a rapid increase in hate speech and propaganda that blame targeted groups for everything imaginable, comparing them to cockroaches (Rwanda), dandruff (Cambodia), or subhuman carriers of disease (Nazi Germany).

The Political Context of Crisis and Instability Early Warnings

Crisis and instability early warnings usually are politically highly sensitive. Consider three examples. First, a successful one: The GIEWS system for monitoring food security is well funded and widely recognized for its use of objective data and transparent procedures for providing neutral and independent assessments. Yet as Abdur Rashid and others point out, reliable data may be missing for the most vulnerable countries.14 Potential donors and affected countries both may have political and economic reasons for either exaggerating or minimizing needs. Donor fatigue may reduce or slow the provision of aid. Civil warfare may impede the provision of help, or worse, recipient governments may use relief aid as a weapon, awarding it to allies and denying it to adversaries. But the utility of the assessments outweigh the negatives. Unlike assessments that point to impending political crises and killings, they are not usually threatening or embarrassing to red-flagged countries and their governments.

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An instructive failure was the short life span of the Humanitarian Early Warning System established in 1993 by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Its small staff used funds from donor governments to gather and organize a large database of quantitative and qualitative information on countries vulnerable to humanitarian crises. They were well-positioned, by interpreting this information in a simple analytic framework, to identify emerging crises. But reportedly they were neutered because, in the politicized bureaucracy of the UN system, they could not initiate reports that implied a need for action. Rather, they could only respond to requests from officials for analyses of specific situations. After a few years, funding was withdrawn and the system closed down.15 The third example is the work of the Political Instability Task Force. US officials are much concerned that their internal assessments of other governments remain confidential; consider the outraged reactions to the 2010–2011 Wikileaks of US diplomatic correspondence. In the early days of the task force, Secretary of State Warren Christopher reportedly said that task force reports and results had to be classified because their release could make the conduct of US foreign policy difficult. Fortunately one of his successors reversed this decision. Clearly, risk assessments—and early warnings, if any—based on task force research are potentially useful, but potentially embarrassing. High-risk regimes do not want to be publicly identified as such, least of all in accessible international documents. As a result, this kind of researchbased risk assessment or early warning is done and attended to, but not made public or—as far as we know—shared with other governments. In short, some systematic risk assessment and early warning of political crises are being done, and they can be considerably useful for policy planning and response. The GIEWS and Political Instability Task Force (PITF) systems in particular appear credible and reliable, but their results do not necessarily translate directly into effective action, for the reasons mentioned above. Once again we need to consider that political apathy sometimes is a result of not knowing what works best in crisis situations.

Using Risk Assessments and Early Warning Indicators: Political Considerations Matter

Risk assessment buys time for would-be interveners that should allow for better planning once states decide to engage. And here is the key: any form of active involvement by international actors is inevitably driven by national interest and capacity, or what Samantha Powers calls

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political will.16 I would argue that the concept of political will is fuzzy and not measurable, and thus not very useful in getting to the reasons that states opt for inaction or disengagement. Typically, security concerns and economic interests guide international involvement. Policymakers usually make rational calculations, balancing costs and opportunities that could come from inaction versus engagement. Capacity often is the driver, but states sometimes act despite lack of material resources. Why? In some instances states may be hindered or encouraged by history, law, and public pressure to engage. How can we persuade governments to take action? First, we should devise sample response scenarios. For example, as we know, the structural model identifies multiple risk factors that external actors can manipulate. Take the variables of state-led discrimination, type of polity, and trade openness; the international community can affect policies in seemingly intransigent regimes through pressures and incentives (development aid, sanctions, mediation, food, energy supplies, education, medical support)—all low-level responses that have a modicum of success. Whereas risk assessment buys time, early warning holds the key to short-term planning. In cases that are precariously close to full-fledged violence, international engagement is usually under way; at this juncture we need to be concerned with measures that enhance short-term as well as long-term stability. Policy coordination is imperative. All too often, though, UN efforts are at odds with NGOs or individual states that are pursuing strategies based on organizational imperatives and national preferences. Early warning tracking models surely can provide some guidance about what may work in many situations. Our effort taught us that arming rebels may not be the best way to stop government repression; instead, provide mediation, incentives (such as aid), and security assurances to both parties. Stop hate propaganda through shaming or a mixture of threat and positive measures. Encourage a more equitable distribution of public resources to all citizens. Promote measures that fight corruption, establish programs for fair and equitable adjudication, provide for education and rehabilitation for former child soldiers, and repatriate refugees. We also have learned that policies applied in a coordinated fashion that transcend distinct policy spheres are most likely to succeed. Some efforts are under way in mapping stabilization operations in several countries. One instance is a December 2010 conference sponsored by the Folke Bernadotte Academy, a Swedish policy research institute; the Centre for Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding (CCDP); the Social Science Research Council (SSRC); and the Humanitarian Policy Group at the

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Overseas Development Institute (HPG/ODI) in New York. The conference brought together bilateral partners, UN practitioners, and policy experts to review findings of recent stabilizing operations in Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, and Timor-Leste.

Facing Genocide Today: Where We Are Heading

More and more donor governments in the developed world are engaged in high-risk countries in the less-developed world. Why? Some states are concerned with the threat that potentially failing states pose to neighbors and the world at large. These concerns range from transnational terrorism to nuclear proliferation. Other states have more altruistic motives, although none is likely engaged for purely normative reasons. Even old democracies are sometimes pressured into unpopular actions driven by multiethnic constituencies that may favor foreign policies based on narrowly defined interests. Some success stories in heeding warnings may tell us that greater involvement could become the norm. Several hundred peacekeepers along with intense diplomatic pressures kept the Balkan War from widening to Macedonia (in 1992 and 2001). Australian troops brought a halt to the massacres of East Timorese. And in Côte D’Ivoire, warnings (from me and others) led UN Special Adviser Juan Mendez to engage in quiet diplomacy in order to halt hate propaganda. The United Nations and its agencies and member states have come a long way in trying to protect civilian populations in violent regions. International efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and Haiti demonstrate a heightened concern for the security of noncombatants. Another important ongoing effort by UN agencies and member states is exemplified by a meeting on July 14, 2010, to discuss strengthening the United Nations’ Early Warning Capabilities (a discussion that originated in the 2005 World Summit) and its implication for R2P. Members of the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network, of which I am a member, participated, as they did at other international meetings. International consultations have snowballed. I had the pleasure to consult with the Swedish Foreign Ministry in planning the Stockholm International Forum to Prevent Genocide in 2004. As mentioned earlier, top-level representatives of fifty-five states pledged to prevent genocide on behalf of their governments, and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced that he would establish the Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. In 2009–2010 the governments of Switzerland, Argentina, and Hungary sponsored conferences and were actively

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engaged in promoting agendas aimed at preventing genocide. And in June 2010, diplomats from Tanzania joined forces with their counterparts from Switzerland and Argentina to sponsor a regional forum in Arusha on preventing genocidal violence in East and Central Africa. More than ninety representatives of thirty-one states, NGOs, and international and regional organizations participated in the forum.17African states now are willing to share information on lessons learned and have pledged to prevent future occurrences. Interestingly, one key part of their commitment is opposition to all forms of discrimination; they thus proscribe all propaganda based on racial, religious, or ethnic superiority. Is greater international involvement becoming the new norm? Only time will tell. If it is, risk assessment and early warning models must continue to be developed in a systematic manner, so that when international actors respond, they do so based upon the best available information.

Notes 1. Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen, “Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers,” Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Academy of Diplomacy, and US Institute of Peace, December 2008. 2. Ibid. 3. A dated but still useful overview of such early warning efforts is Heather S. McHugh, “Annotated Bibliography: Early Warning Systems of Political Disasters,” paper prepared by the Office of Development Information of the US Agency for International Development, March 1996. 4. See FAO, Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS), at www.fao.org/giews. A useful overview of the system and the challenges it has faced is Abdur Rashid, “The Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture,” in Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems, edited by John L. Davies and Ted Robert Gurr (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 185–193. 5. Current risk assessments based on task force models are not done by the task force and are restricted to government use only. The task force’s work itself is not classified. Its data and pre-2008 reports are available at a George Mason University website, http://globalpolicy.gmu.edu/political-instability -task-force-home. For an overview of the models that the task force developed, and their competitive evaluation against alternative models, see Jack A. Goldstone, et al., “A Global Model for Forecasting Political Instability,” American Journal of Political Science 50, no. 1 (2010): 190–208. 6. Gary LaFree and Gary Ackerman, “The Empirical Study of Terror: Social and Legal Research,” Annual Review of Law and Social Sciences 5 (2009): 347–374. 7. See reports by the RAND Corporation on terrorism and insurance risks from 2005 to 2010, for example, Henry H. Willis et al., Estimating Terrorism

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Risk (Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation, 2005). An example of a detailed, discursive analysis is from the Center for Security Policy, “Shariah: The Threat to America: An Exercise in Competitive Analysis,” Washington, DC, 2010. The November 2008 effort is reported in US Department of Defense, “Anticipating Rare Events: Can Acts of Terror, Use of Weapons of Mass Destruction, or Other High-Profile Acts Be Anticipated?” Topical Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) Multi-Agency/Multi-Disciplinary White Papers in Support of CounterTerrorism and Counter-WMD, Arlington, VA: Director, Defense Research and Engineering, US Office of the Secretary of Defense, November 2008. 8. For an alternative perspective on the novelty of recent research, see Scott Straus, “Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide,” World Politics 59, no. 3 (April 2007): 476–501. 9. Barbara Harff and Ted R. Gurr, “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases Since 1945,” International Studies Quarterly 37, no. 3 (1988): 359–371. The latest update of the list is posted at http://GPANet.org. 10. Barbara Harff, “No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder Since 1955,” American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 57–73. 11. A recent analysis by Joseph Hewitt identifies five factors that point to future instability: high infant mortality, high militarization, armed conflict in neighboring countries, regime inconsistency (countries with mixed democratic and autocratic features have the highest scores), and low economic interdependence. The last is similar to one factor in the original genocide risk model; the other four are new. Hewitt’s results are used to rank countries according to instability risks from very high to very low. See J. Joseph Hewitt, “The Peace and Conflict Instability Ledger: Ranking States on Future Risks, 2008–2010,” in Peace and Conflict 2010, J. Joseph Hewitt, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, and Ted R. Gurr (Boulder, CO, and London: Paradigm Publishers, 2009), pp. 5–18. 12. Matthew Krain, “State-Sponsored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocides and Politicides,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41, no. 3 (1997): 331–360. 13. Jay Ulfelder and Benjamin Valentino, “Assessing Risks of State-Sponsored Mass Killing,” Science Applications International Corporation, February 2008. 14. Rashid, “The Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture,” pp. 185–193. 15. The UN-based system is described briefly by Adeel Ahmed and Elizabeth Voulieris Kassinis, “The Humanitarian Early Warning System: From Concept to Practice,” in Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems, edited by John L. Davies and Ted R. Gurr (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), pp. 203–211. The circumstances in which it operated and was shut down are from private conversations. The Humanitarian Early Warning Service established by the World Food Program is in some respects a successor. 16. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002). Note especially her conclusions, p. 308. 17. A summary is Andrea Bartoli, “Preliminary Notes on Genocide Prevention and the United Nations,” Arlington, VA: Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, August 2010.

5 Mediation and Diplomacy in Preventing Genocide I. William Zartman

I

n this chapter, I address the role that mediation and diplomacy can play in preventing genocide and mass atrocities. Among the questions I ask are: What is to be done? Who is to do it? And how is it to be accomplished? Mediation refers to nonviolent third-party involvement in a conflict between other parties. It is the essence of the second pillar of the responsibility to protect (R2P), where external (third) parties have the duty to help a state take measures to protect and provide for its population. As articulated by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, R2P has three pillars: first, the state has the principal responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing; second, the international community ought to assist the state to honor that responsibility; third, if a state is manifestly failing to live up to its responsibility to protect, the international community has a corresponding responsibility to take timely and decisive action.1 As such, mediation stands between pillars two and three, in function as well as in place, because mediation can take place either in cooperation with and on the bequest of the state in question—to help it carry out pillar-one responsibilities for the state to protect its own citizens—or against the wishes of the state, more in the spirit of pillar-three responsibilities of other states to intervene. Thus, the challenge for the mediating parties is to make the second type of involvement feel more like the first, where the mediated state and its internal antagonists actually welcome the mediation, rather than the third, where the involvement is resented interference. In any case, mediation cannot take place if refused by the conflicting parties, and particularly if refused by the sovereign state. The challenge for any mediation is thus to make the parties actually welcome the medicine that is offered. My discussion fo111

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cuses first on types of measures to be taken—what to do—and then on the agencies of operation—who is to do it. Genocide can be seen as the final stage of an escalating identity conflict that spirals from social friction to contentious politics, from politics into violence, and eventually into targeted mass killing, as analyzed in the preceding two chapters. Because this final stage is so rare in current history,2 it is important to look at its antecedents to discover similar cases that do not end up in genocide and determine why, so as to understand how to prevent it.3 Its agent can be a rebel movement seeking to break a dominant identity group’s grip on a society or, more frequently, a repressive government trying to prevent rebellion. Real examples of the first are infrequent (a close case might be the Tigreans’ bloody rebellion against Amharic rule in Ethiopia in the 1980s), but it was the fear of such an event’s perpetration by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) in the early 1990s that set the akazu and the Coalition for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) onto an actual genocide path. The example is telling, for the group ruling the sovereign state is most often the génocidaire, acting for fear of being exterminated themselves. Thus, genocide is generally not conceived as an aggressive but a defensive reaction, pathologically directed against a perceived existential threat.4 Fearful of contamination and ultimately destruction by one identity group, the other mobilizes to defeat and ultimately exterminate them; in a classical security dilemma, they themselves target the perceived threat for extinction. The scenario not only provides a simple, rational course of action; it also facilitates the recruitment of followers, creating defensive solidarity for aggressive action in support of their leadership for the pyromaniacs among the tinder. Whether this fear is realistic is irrelevant; often it is not, but often there is enough of a tinge of reality to make it credible. Sometimes the fear is accurate, because the other side may indeed harbor the same sorts of existential delusions. This description is not a caricature. The Nazis depicted this situation on behalf of the so-called Aryans toward the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, as have others. For example, • The Serbs against the Bosniaks in the 1990s • The Janjaweed ostensibly on behalf of the pastoral tribes against the Darfuri farmers in the 2000s • The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) on behalf of the Tamils against the Sinhalese (and especially Buddhists) in the 1980s–2000s • Various Ugandan groups and the government on behalf of various ethnic groups in the 1980s

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• The Khmer Rouge allegedly on behalf of the Cambodian people against the middle and upper classes—an ideologically, not ethnically, targeted enemy—in the 1970s • The akazu on behalf of the Hutu against the Tutsi and accomplices in Rwanda There are other theories about the outbreak of genocide.5 Some focus on structural causes, such as deep social divisions,6 dehumanizing exclusion,7 and chronic social stress.8 Others look at political programs such as social transformational designs,9 overcoming traumatizing losses,10 or destabilizing democratization.11 The US Political Instability Task Force, which also includes politicide along with genocide, originally focused on six risk assessment factors: history of genocide or politicide; political upheaval; trade openness; minority, ideological, and/or autocratic regime.12 None of these explanations are irrelevant, but most of them are too broad. The identity/fear approach is not immune from the same difficulties, although in involving the dynamic element of escalation in its explanation, it does allow a focus on triggers and turning points.

What Is to Be Done?

What is required to prevent this spiral from taking off is removing the fears of the identity groups, a blockage of the pyromaniacs’ possibilities for action, and a promotion and protection of identity diversity. Ultimately, this step requires a revival of “normal politics,” the ideal condition in which government responds to the fears, needs, and demands of all of its citizens, and citizens review regularly the record of the government to see if it adequately provides this response; normal politics is the situation encompassed in pillar one of R2P.13 If the motivating fears cannot be exorcized, then measures must be taken to disarm people who hold them and render such people incapable of causing damage. This challenge is necessarily intrusive, especially when the political entrepreneur is a government. Between the ideal and the intrusive is the helpful option of mediation, which is useful in bringing the two conflicting parties together into some sort of agreement but more profoundly so in removing those motivating fears that otherwise impel the parties into conflict. In so doing, mediation swims against the rising tide of conflict escalation. Mediation must arrest the current conflict heading toward genocide, but it must also reach into the parties themselves to overcome their de-

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fensive fears and feelings that underlie and rationalize their actions. Mediation, like any negotiation, carries with it the implication that a perceived legitimate grievance needs to be resolved and perceived legitimate interests need to be protected, and that none of the parties is seeking suicide. Recall that mediation here refers to any peaceful thirdparty involvement to deter the party moving toward genocide from its course and to bring the two parties together into a working—or at least cohabiting—relationship. What can such involvement do in such a situation to prevent conflict escalation? There are two types—or moments—of prevention: distant or generic, and immediate. The two are more distinct in concept than in practice, but they do indicate two different foci of preventive mediation. Third parties can intervene to prevent a conflict from escalating into genocide when early signs of identity conflict appear and when the fears of threat and the plans for reaction begin to materialize. Or third parties can intervene at the last minute, when the stage and attitudes are set for genocide and only the mass killing itself remains to be prevented. Yet the actions that the mediator can take fall into two functional types—structural and attitudinal—no matter when they are taken, and a functional division of analysis is more instructive than a temporal one. Structural measures change the situational relation between the conflicting parties in order to remove conditions that foster the perception of threat and the ability to act on that perception. Structural policies run from confidence-building measures to institutionalized cooperation and competition. The aim is to gradually put into place structures whereby neither party can threaten or dominate the other; the challenge becomes finding the agent for this. Who can intrude into the sovereign setting to institute such measures? Structural changes require establishing either a higher, neutral authority to guarantee the nonthreatening functioning of relations or a system of interlocking interdependence to ensure that each side’s welfare depends on its cooperation with the other. The first change removes supreme authority from the grasp and threat of either of the conflicting identities, whereas the second places the determination of each party’s welfare on its own behavior toward the other party. Structural solutions make it impossible to harm the other without harming oneself. They are distributed along a continuum from separation to integration, two extremes that appear opposite but that, like many opposites, overlap to some extent. Measures of separation reduce fear and prevent conflict by keeping the parties away from each other, whereas measures of integration bring the parties together as groups, working away at that fear and gradually reducing the notion of groupness itself.

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Separation is the most obvious structural measure to keep the parties out of each other’s realms while allowing space and time for developing more harmonious relations. Measures to pull the parties apart provide a place to breathe and room to reflect. Such measures aim at preventing the outbreak of a security dilemma, where intermingled groups take actions to improve their security and in so doing threaten the security of other groups, and on goes the spiral. Separations can occur in time—such as a pause or delay in impending precrisis developments such as a truce or ceasefire—or in space—as with a safe haven, buffer zone, disengagement in the midst of a conflict that threatens to escalate, or withdrawal and cantonments. The separations could be instilled by the original instigators of the conflict having come to their senses, or by a moderate faction that has taken over to lead the conflicting party—rebel group or government—into a more constructive direction. Such policy change is generally triggered by a sense of stalemate and rising costs on one or both sides in the conflict.14 But if the parties themselves do not take such steps, the external party is needed to help them see the need to do so. In such situations, separation requires thirdparty intervention, either to encourage moderate factions to develop and contest radical leadership, or to help the incumbents develop a sense of costly futility with the present course and a desire to take, and give, a breather. Such temporary separations need to be either institutionalized and rendered permanent, or employed transitionally to work out new relations between the conflicting parties. Separations such as a ceasefire are the essence of conflict management—moving a conflict from violent to political means of pursuit—rather than actual resolution. Conflict management is a temporary, procedural, and essentially unstable resting stage, carrying with it the implied promise of conflict resolution.15 The job of the mediator then continues into the next phase, to move management of the conflict toward substantive resolution by helping the parties deal directly with the perceptions and grievance that occasioned the original conflict and ensuing separation. Separation is not merely a preventive measure to begin the process of halting and winding down an escalation of hostility. It can also be useful as a longer-term solution in identity conflicts, to prevent their recurrence. In this case, it takes the form of autonomy or some other form of regional self-government. When identity conflicts move from substantive (grievance) to procedural (governance) issues—where the minority no longer believes that it can trust government with its fate—separation may be required to allow the targeted identity group to handle

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its own affairs, either within the state as autonomy, or in self-government outside the state as secession. Iraqi Kurds, Zanzibaris, Tatars, Sud Tyroleans, Catalans and Basques, Casamançais, and Acehnese have been led in negotiation to temper their original demands for independence and accept autonomous self-government, under whatever name, to end their identity conflict. Not all of these situations might actually reach the stage of genocide and mass killings, but that can be counted as success at prevention. The autonomy must be real and honored by the larger state party, or the ethnic group will return to conflict with a reaffirmed demand for nothing less than independence, as occurred in South Sudan and Eritrea, with an estimated million deaths in both cases. Some analysts claim that autonomy merely leads to secession, but the record shows rather that annulled autonomy leads to demands for secession, as in Eritrea, South Sudan, Biafra, and Kosovo—all cases where the escalated conflict came dangerously close to genocide, with deaths over a million in each case but the last.16 Special forms of separation have been put to a timely use in recent identity conflicts. Secessionist conflict was averted in Russia in 1994 when Tatarstan representatives agreed to be a state “united with” but not within the Russian Federation. Conflict was ended in Indonesia in 2007 when Aceh representatives, wary of “special autonomy” that had earlier proven inadequate, accepted a status of “self-government,” the editorial invention of special mediator Martti Ahtisaari. Institutional separation must be mediated or negotiated directly between the parties. Militias and military forces may be regrouped, as in El Salvador, and neighborhoods may be walled, as in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, and Palestine. When concerning whole populations, separation assumes preexisting geographic separation; forced separation of intermingled populations, particularly under harsh conditions, is ethnic cleansing, which can be an act of genocide. Although “gentle” ethnic cleansing has been presented as the only way to resolve and avoid identity conflicts using population transfers, it is merely a sanitized way of achieving ethnic conflict results.17 When the separation of conflicting parties needs reinforcement to keep the parties apart, third parties can provide peacekeeping forces (PKF) to prevent hostile contact and a resort or return to violence. PKFs are third-party mediators par excellence, for they stand between the conflicting parties, pulling them back from the line of conflict and monitoring their relations. Such forces can have a range of rules of engagement (ROE), from forcibly maintaining the separation, to acting as a tripwire and thus removing the excuse from either party that they are

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merely responding to the other’s provocation, to mere observation. ROEs for UN PKFs generally define a role on the lower end of interference, and so reduce their effectiveness considerably. UN doctrine also requires a ceasefire or other peace agreement before PKFs can be introduced, which eliminates a possible role in prevention before violence. PKFs provided an unusual example of precrisis interposition in Macedonia in 1992–1998 as the UN Preventive Deployment Force (UNPREDEP) and in 2001 as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces. There is room for a more active and creative role for PKFs in separating conflicting parties and preventing initial violence, escalation, or the recurrence of hostilities. Often, at some moment within a violent or not-yet-violent conflict, the parties pause, temporarily exhausted, leaving an opportunity to introduce separating PKFs before the parties can regroup, rearm, and pick up the offensive. A crucial occasion for a PKF in a mid-conflict moment of calm in Congo-Brazzaville in 1997 was turned down by the UN Security Council for lack of a formal peace agreement, and the Security Council ordered a study of African conflicts instead. More effective at local and early prevention than military PKFs is a normal police force with an evenhanded authority. Policing is a minimal function of government, and is often all that is needed to prevent hotheads and public passions from bursting into flame. Outbursts of civil violence usually involve a determined core of agitators and an inflammable mob—the arsonists and the tinder—and the job of the police is to separate the two, sending the first group to jail and the second back home. Since identity conflict and violence often begin with riots, effective policing is often all that is needed to check escalation of local animosities toward genocide. Policing can work if the ethnic conflict is the work of local communities and not the government; when the government is the agency or an accomplice, pressures for it to assume its responsibilities require more invasive measures on the part of the mediating third party. Even when the government is not the instigator or the tacit endorser of identity violence, the police often remain passive for fear of facing the inflamed crowds with insufficient forces, or of tarnishing a government’s human rights record or incurring political costs. Thus, adequate police forces dedicated to law and order constitute a basic element of prevention, to be provided by external intervention if not by the state. PKFs can also be tasked as adjuncts to police rather than acting as military forces and used preventively where the government does not fulfill its own policing responsibilities.

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Such forces were present in Anbar province in Iraq, where they dampened interethnic violence in the mid-2000s, among many other unsung places where demonstrations were carefully kept peaceful. The management of policing during South Africa’s transition from apartheid was a critical element in the process, and in some examples, police leadership was clearly able to move from the well-earned stereotype of being the repressive arm of the minority regime to leading peaceful resolutions of ethnically based confrontations—a transformation also accomplished gradually in Northern Ireland. Such forces were absent in Abidjan in the early 2000s, where ethnic violence was promoted by the Ivoirian government and its supporting militia, and civilians were harassed for DWM (“driving while Muslim”). Police forces were ineffective in Jos, Nigeria, in 2008, where they favored one group, and in Rwanda in 1994, where they melted before or joined the génocidaires. In Chechnya, the police acted as an arm of government repression. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has provided police forces in the former Yugoslavia and in Kyrgyzstan, to good effect. Integration, the opposite of separation, is another type of structural measure for preventing conflict and its escalation. If “responsible sovereignty is based on the politics of inclusion, not exclusion,” then integration is a requirement for forestalling ethnic conflict, and corrective integration, or affirmative action, may be a necessary form to take.18 The purpose of integration is to lock groups into the governing system so that its functioning depends on suspending the conflict and learning to work together. It involves creating self-government by association; bringing the targeting population into collective, not separate, governance; and opening the roles from which they felt excluded. More than separation, such measures eventually require a strong change of attitude as well as a structural change, although in many cases, former warring enemies were involved in governing together before they actually changed their attitudes; examples include Mozambique, Kenya, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Congo, as well as Colombia, Lebanon, South Africa, and Nepal. In politics, anything is possible, even if not guaranteed to go smoothly. In all cases, this integration followed rather than prevented violent conflict and some sort of formal agreement to end it. Only in Lebanon, among the examples cited, did power-sharing precede—and for a while prevent—conflict escalation. While third parties can actually intervene in the scene of conflict to effectuate separation, they have a more indirect if no less important role in bringing about integration. Structural integration often requires third-

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party involvement in convincing conflicting parties to bury their differences and work together. Thus, in the first group of the previously cited cases, a mediator was important and even arguably necessary to integrate the warring groups into the political system, whereas in the second group, the conflicting parties did it themselves—although even in the Lebanese case, the reshaping of the original power-sharing system required mediation in the 1980s to rework its elements. However, integration through power sharing is actually also a form of separation in that it freezes the identity group divisions in society and accords them participation in governance only through their representatives, precluding the possibility of gradually erasing the salience of separate identities in politics.19 Power can be shared legislatively or executively. The first takes the form of separate reserved seats, quotas, and assigned roles in legislative bodies, preselected or not and decided by systemwide processes such as general elections. The second makes the executive a coalition of identity-group representatives, in a consociational form of government. To be effective, power sharing has to be complemented by an overarching sense of loyalty to the greater system, adaptability to changing power balances, cross-cutting (horizontal) cleavages to counteract identity (vertical) divisions, and a culture of compromise and mutual understanding. Attitudinal solutions also are a slow, phased process and are by nature less concrete, less open to formalization, and less deliberate than structural change. Structural and attitudinal change go hand in hand; without attitudinal change, structural change is fragile and temporary, and without structural change, attitudinal change is unsupported. Structural solutions in identity conflicts pose the chicken-and-egg question of whether attitudinal solutions are needed first. Changing people’s attitudes often depends on changes in structured relations, yet as seen, structural changes do not hold unless accompanied by attitudinal change, as a process if not as a precondition. In black-white relations in the United States, the impact of Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, a structural change, was complex and multidirectional, yet even the election of an African American president over half a century later does not complete the story of attitudinal changes. The shift in US race relations was accompanied by seemingly insignificant measures, such as biracial rooming arrangements in college dormitories or new black neighbors without the fear of a black neighborhood, that wore away the zero-sum or fearinducing view of racial relations. National culture festivals, affirmative action, and doctrinal revisions are ways of changing people’s attitudes toward each other, instituted by higher authority or by civil society.

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The mediator’s job is to cultivate the actors’ desires for settlement while assuaging their fears. As with restructuring reforms, attitudinal change comes either from a neutral authority or social interactions, as through civil society. Just as identity conflicts are spurred, if not started, by political entrepreneurs who play on the latest public fears, often in times of difficulty,20 positive entrepreneurs are needed to reverse the feeling—to show that there is nothing to fear in the other party or that one’s identity does not hang on demeaning the other. While they can encourage such developments, external mediators need an internal partner to carry the message. The United States gave a helping hand to the structural and attitudinal changes that took place in the early 1990s in South Africa, but the changes were totally dependent on the accidental presence of a Nelson Mandela and a F. W. de Klerk.21 But the argument can be turned around: even with providential figures, an external role can be of great help. In the absence of domestically driven leadership change, the external role to prevent genocide is reduced to direct removal of the mass murderer, as in Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya, no longer R2P’s second pillar, but its third. A specific effort to change attitudes is the initiation of dialogue to deal coolly with the elements of the conflict before they sharpen into violence and ethnic cleansing. The purpose of dialogue is to talk out the problem, helping the parties understand the motivating fears and devise ways to reduce them. It is a challenge for mediators to get the conflicting groups to agree to sit down together, particularly if one is the government or government-sponsored. Both sides are likely to have a background of deep commitment to their public supporters by this point, making it hard to climb down from established perceptions and positions. The difficulty is compounded because dialogue is not a brief, oneshot activity; it needs sustained attention to overcome hardened perceptions and reverse sharpened policies, which in itself requires repeated, ongoing meetings; a suspension of actions that might be interpreted as hostile; and continual attention to seize on external events as an occasion to meet, explain, and work out common responses. Breaking into tense, hostile relations that have arisen and overcoming the undercutting of dialogue by the political entrepreneur or agent provocateur is a further challenge, when that person is likely to lose his or her job in the process. Third parties arranging confrontation to head off violence cannot limit themselves to offering good counsel; they need to provide incentives against defection from the path of reconciliation. Dialogue groups need to show results, in changing attitudes as well as in benefiting from changed attitudes. As in adolescent behavior, peer pressure is the best

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kind of pressure, which means engaging public figures to support the dialogue effort. Conflicting parties must be brought to see that their mutual fears are unwarranted, or if in fact warranted, removable; but the parties must also be made to see that the alternative to reconciliation is costly, and their negative entrepreneurs must be rendered incapable of upsetting the developing reconciliation. A third challenge lies in the search for appropriate ways for the parties to back down. Each party must find ways to explain to its public that it is sitting down with and then assuaging the very party that has been posing an existential threat. One of the most striking examples of dialogue facilitated by a thirdparty mediator, between Israelis and Palestinians, provides insightful lessons, both positive and negative. A low-level campaign under diverse sponsorship to create dialogue groups grew gradually during the 1980s and early 1990s, culminating in the Oslo contacts and agreement. The proliferation of intercommunal dialogue groups was impressive, and the work of Herbert Kelman of Harvard and Terje Rød-Larsen of Norway in raising the dialogue level to encompass leaders of both societies bore fruit in Oslo. But the dialogue was unsupported by vigorous official efforts after Oslo and then undercut during the Netanyahu and intifada period of the mid-1990s. The agreement outran support and the movement was dashed, to the point where individual participants became suspect and ostracized. Similarly, in Jos, Nigeria, interfaith and interethnic dialogue groups were set up after communal riots in 2001, but an incident in 2008 swept aside their efforts and provoked more deadly riots. On the other hand, the South Africa Peace Movement set up in 1991 to support the multiparty talks and the governance transition had an enormous impact in creating dialogue and reducing violence, with little external involvement.22 External third parties often have a role in moving internal dialogue into official peacemaking negotiations, where the third parties then become formal mediators.23 In El Salvador, direct dialogue began as early as October 1984, over half a decade before UN Secretary-General Perez de Cuellar and his special representative, Alvaro de Soto, mediated in the conflict between the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) and the Salvadoran government. The same dates marked private dialogues preparing official negotiations in South Africa, where no external mediation was involved, and the dialogue opened by Archbishop Jaime Gonçalves with the National Resistance Movement (Renamo) in Mozambique to prepare for official negotiations mediated by Sant’Egidio. The same story, with different dates, was repeated in Guatemala and Northern Ireland.

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Familiar culturally and historically based practices are frequently available to provide the framework for dialogue, first on the local and then on the national (and even international) level. Indigenous institutions and dispute resolution methods have often been developed over centuries to defuse conflict, and can be revived, updated, and adopted to fit current situations.24 These methods have often been bypassed in the process of modernization, yet they offer culturally rooted norms that can provide powerful ways of bringing conflicting groups together.25 Such historic and cultural legitimization removes the onus of losing face for the parties in calling for and submitting to dialogue.26 Often the communities themselves are the best experts on the functioning of the process. Traditional processes in the Kivus in eastern Congo began to make inroads into the endemic ethnic conflict in the region in 2009, but failing to receive official encouragement and recognition, they were overwhelmed by equally traditional conflict practices that did receive official connivance and exploitation.27 But, as in other measures, where domestic initiative is not present and the parties are too involved to reach out to their own traditions on their own, external third parties are needed to mobilize local and even traditional practices to manage conflicts.28 Measures of accountability lie on the hard end of the second pillar of R2P, and they involve third parties working on the protagonists’ attitudes and actions from the outside. Assuming, as in all the cases cited, that the state or its representatives are the perpetrators of genocide, accountability can only come from the outside, since the government has rejected internal accountability to the entire population. When a regime refuses its own accountability to itself, only sustained international action has the means to exercise accountability preventively, before the point of genocide is reached. The current agent of accountability during a conflict of mass killings is the International Criminal Court (ICC). Sustained use of the judicial form of coercive accountability is designed to remove the culture of impunity, but like any threat it needs to be resolutely credible and demonstrated from time to time. Indictments can serve to legitimate coercive accountability, but if the subject is not captured, the court appears ineffective. The subject can be offered up by his own people, as the ICC prefers,29 or by external military intervention, stretching the notion of mediation into the third pillar. Short of physical intervention, the challenge to the external third parties is to make the consequences of escalating genocidal measures plain to the perpetrators, causing them to think again and pull off their course.30 The measures are limited: condemnation, sanctions of all kinds, and threats of more punishment, including direct intervention.31 These

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measures can work directly on the offending ruler, causing a change of attitude, or can cause strains within the leader’s governing councils, bringing either reversal of policy or overthrow. Since these effects involve major political changes, the measures need to be timely and forceful. Such measures were late and gradual in the cases of Qaddafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria in 2011, and absent in the case of Laurent Gbagbo in Côte d’Ivoire in 2011, the CDR in Rwanda in 1993, and Saddam Hussein in Iraq in 1988–1990.32 The threat of coercive accountability needs to be considered in the extreme case where ethnic repression and genocide can be unambiguously traced to the long rule of an egregious dictator, the political entrepreneur who is the vehicle of fear. The removal of bloody-handed rulers is a necessary option in order to prevent further killing and the implantation of a culture of impunity. Preventing further mass killing and genocide in these cases depends on removing the ruler; hopes of reforming the ruler are in vain, and mere power sharing only prolongs the pain. Although incumbent rulers are sacred objects in international relations, respecting their claim to power in such cases only assures continued killing. Genocidal rulers have been removed on occasion, but the onus and the action have lain on individual states, acting collectively and discreetly applauded by the international community. Coercive accountability is very much of a last resort action;33 once the ethnic conflict has been pursued to that point, however, imposition of coercive accountability and removal of the culture of impunity has to be weighed against the cost of interethnic violence that could result from direct attempts at removal. None of the autocrats who have been removed by popular uprisings in the Middle East—Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia, Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, even Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, among possible others— was a genocidal ruler of the type of Saddam Hussein, for example. But their removal at the hands of their people should work to weaken the culture of impunity under which they operated and which protects other candidates—Abdelaziz Bouteflika in Algeria and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, among others. The events from 2011 to this writing in mid-2013 in the region do underscore the fact that accountability lies in the hands of the population, and that if not exercised responsibly through normal politics, it is exercised with vehemence at the end. But there is also an important role to be played by third parties. The Libyan events are stained but precedent setting. They indicate a sequence: first, external efforts to bring about negotiations, then—when these fail—internal efforts to exercise accountability, and then external efforts to back internal

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responsibilities, exercised collectively and approved by regional organizations. But events in Libya also show that delays in external efforts are costly and that the doctrine of “no net harm” can be the first victim when the opposing forces are strong and obdurate. The precedent operating under the cover of the third pillar of R2P for the protection of the population has been stained by direct and indirect losses to the civilian population. The next instance, in Syria, has also shown that the third pillar of R2P depends on authorization from regional organization members but above all on the willingness of the external “protectors” to take necessary risks and make necessary decisions.

Who Is to Do It and When?

Direct negotiations between the parties in identity conflicts are unlikely to take place, for the very reasons of the conflict. The parties’ fears make them unable to communicate credibly and confidently with each other. They are unable to think creatively of solutions other than the elimination of the other, and they are unable to provide adequate terms of trade to make an agreement worthwhile. They are also unable to conceive of anything less than efforts to defeat the opponent and protect themselves, unable to perceive the stalemate they are in, and unable to recognize the pain of that stalemate. They are unable to see and seize a ripe situation. All these inabilities call for third-party efforts to help overcome the various sources of blockage. Third-party attention is necessary to prevent identity-conflict escalation and genocide when the conflict rises to the point where the parties are not able to turn from violence on their own and need help.34 In the absence of normal politics, when all sides’ interests need to be incorporated in ending violence and restoring a functioning political system, outsiders need to step in. But, as has been often noted, mediators have a particularly difficult time in achieving entry into internal conflicts, since the rebels’ commitment and the state’s sovereignty leave little room for an external third party.35 Governments generally resist mediation in an internal conflict situation, as Israel, Algeria, and the United Kingdom (in Northern Ireland) have done on occasion; the implication is that a government cannot handle its own problems, the rebellious or repressed groups deserve recognition and equal standing before the mediator, and in the end the only resolving outcome will be a revised, integrated political system that accords the identity groups a legitimate place in politics. Rebels, however, can also reject mediation for fear of its being biased against them, as did the FMLN in El Salvador, the LTTE in Sri Lanka, and the RPF in Rwanda.36

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To this point, the discussion has assumed that the mediating agencies already exist and the only remaining question is which of them to select for the job. In fact, very few of these agencies are prepared for the challenge; their response is generally ad hoc, frequently thrust on them amid many other tasks that they also have to perform. States in general are busy elsewhere, and straightening another state’s ethnic relations is an unwelcome task for which they are not prepared. They become involved only when the loss is horrendously high, approaching genocide, or when the identity conflict affects their relations with a conflicted state of interest. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are short of means, occupied with other tasks of more direct relevance to their missions, and vulnerable to state objections to interference with their sovereignty. The difficulty that the international community has had with trying to operationalize such appealing innovations as conflict prevention and R2P testifies to the problem of getting various agencies to take up the challenge. The agency of mediation—the “who?” question—is an important consideration to assure a proper fit between the type of conflict and the intervening third party. Generically, mediation is open to private (NGO) and public (government) actors, each with its particular strengths and weaknesses, depending on the type of activity undertaken.37 In the last stages of an identity conflict, however, formal prevention is almost necessarily the work of states, stopping other state actors from engaging on the final slippery slope to genocide. Still, state agents can take a variety of forms, including interstate organizations and private figures formerly in state offices, as well as actual state government leaders. Thus, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan followed a number of other statespersons in “applying” for the job of mediator in the electoral dispute in Kenya in 2008; former South African president Nelson Mandela set the Burundian reconciliation process into motion, after it had been launched by former US president Jimmy Carter. Carter, with US Senator Sam Nunn and US General Colin Powell mediated the end of the Raoul Cedras regime in Haiti in 1994, and former Nigerian president Olasegun Obasanjo mediated in bitter ethnic disputes in Guinea-Bissau and Côte d’Ivoire in 2008; as high-ranking ex-official private citizens, they were able to mediate where a sitting state official probably could not. However, South African president Thabo Mbeki made a stab at mediating in similar disputes in Côte d’Ivoire and Zimbabwe, and Algerian president Abdelaziz Bouteflika mediated the end of the bloody Ethiopian-Eritrean war in 2000. States do not like to be interfered with as they pursue their identity conflicts with domestic and foreign enemies alike, but nor do

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they like the formal interference to come from anyone less than a fellow or recent state president. On a similar level are officials of the United Nations, including personal representatives or special representatives of the Secretary-General (SRSGs), and members of other IGOs. Probably the most effective such official is the high commissioner on national minorities (HCNM) of the OSCE, a position to be emulated more widely in other regional organizations, but the former UN special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Francis Deng, was tirelessly active in the same vein, as was the special adviser to the Secretary-General on R2P, Edward Luck. UN officials have played crucial mediatory roles in often-murderous ethnic conflicts—El Salvador, Guatemala, Cyprus, Afghanistan, and Burundi, among others. But much is to be done by private organizations or NGOs. Although final agreements, especially involving states, frequently need a state to formalize them, their work can be prepared, initiated, supported, and reinforced by private organizations and activities. All of the official mediation efforts mentioned in the previous paragraphs were prepared and accompanied by NGO efforts, which contribute in varying degrees to their success. Frequently the ideas for structural reform have come from local or foreign civil society organizations. Particularly important is the role of NGOs and civil society more broadly in the implementation of and follow-through on agreements. Governments have to go home and tend to other business, leaving the task to local and international NGOs to make sure that the agreements are carried out. Civil society and NGOs are the external parties best suited for the promotion of dialogue, as discussed above. Such activity is generally beyond the reach of the most R2P-conscious state; external private groups working with private groups in the afflicted countries can better handle these situations. States, however, through organizations such as the Children of NED (National Endowment for Democracy) or party foundations in Germany, among others, or foreign aid agencies can provide funds for such activities. Surprisingly, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has taken similar initiatives that creatively stretch its mandate. The mediator’s role comes in three forms, depending on the obstacle to bilateral negotiation, according to established literature.38 If the parties simply cannot communicate with each other, for lack of trust or presence of fear, they need a mediator as a communicator, sometimes called a facilitator, to carry messages and assure their credibility. Trust and communication are the basic functions of the mediator, particularly

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when the characteristics of identity conflict—fear and a zero-sum view of identity—are salient. But if the conflict keeps the parties from even conceiving of a solution, they need a mediator as a formulator. The formulator is not just a neutral telephone wire, as in the case of the communicator, but is an active participant in the search for a solution, putting forth ideas, suggesting formulas, and offering paths to solutions, always making the parties feel that it was they who thought of the solutions, of course. But if the payoffs of an envisaged solution are simply not large enough to be attractive to the parties and to draw them to an agreement, then they need a mediator as a manipulator. Manipulators are fully engaged in framing the solution, to the point that they add new elements, sweeten the pot, enlarge the pie, keep the parties in the game, and guarantee the results. The degree of engagement makes this third role a dangerous one for the mediator but often a necessary one if a solution is to be achieved. The question of who mediates also involves the question of with whom they mediate. The qualities of an appropriate partner are clear in the abstract: legitimacy as a recognized spokesperson for the identity interests, location in the middle and not just the friendly edge of the spectrum, representativeness of a sizeable portion of the opposing group, and deliverability to carry out the agreement, among other virtues. For mediation to work, valid spokespersons for the various parties and sides are required. If the parties are many or the spokespersons are not clearly authorized, the mediator may first have to promote coalitions and call meetings of civil parties to discuss the problem and plan remedial action in order to identify spokespersons for mediation purposes, necessitating deeper involvement in internal politics as a manipulator and seriously complicating the task. Conflicting parties, however, do not like to be told with whom to negotiate, even more than they dislike being led to an outcome or told they are in a damaging stalemate. The usual tendency is to try to make a deal with the party on the other side who is closest to the first party— the state—in the hope that fewer concessions will be necessary, which, in turn, reduces the legitimacy of the interlocutor for not having been demanding enough. Better, it can be argued, to make a deal with the largest party on each side in an effort to quell fear and repression, and then let the others into the tent of the partnership as they themselves moderate their attitudes. This approach can take place by mediating a rolling agreement until everyone becomes involved, as in Burundi, or by gradually bringing in fringe groups and spoilers as a precondition for agreement, as was done in Northern Ireland. Much of the answer de-

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pends on how legitimate, well-located, majoritarian, and deliverable the moderates are, and the difficulty of handling extremists who will act as spoilers.39 All these questions and answers are judgment calls, with little to go on in the conceptual realm to help make the decision. The mediator’s selection of parties to represent the sides can be touchy. The United States arranged for Serbian president Slobodan Milo¸sevi´ c to speak for the Bosnian Serbs and Croatian president Franjo Tudjman to speak for the Bosnian Croats at Dayton, but not without complications for the process and subsequent implementation.40 The United States and Nigeria in Abuja in 2007 unwisely picked and pressed some of the rebels to the exclusion of others in an attempt to craft an agreement to end the genocide in Darfur, but the excluded rebels continued the fight, each seeking a better deal than that originally negotiated.41 Yet experience shows how important the selection of parties is to success or failure. In Macedonia in 2001, the NATO mediator secretly helped the radical National Liberation Army and the other, moderate Albania parties meet at Prizren to craft a common platform and form a moderate negotiating partner for the government. In Sudan in 2000, in a reverse selection problem, the African and US mediators helped the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) develop negotiations that led to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the governing Islamist/military National Congress Party (NCP) rather than with the established (and doubtless majoritarian) opposition parties. In Darfur in 2006, US and African mediators pressed through an agreement with one of the Darfuri rebel groups, the Sudanese Liberation Movement of Minni Minnawi (SLM-M), which then fell apart under the weight of the excluded groups, all turned spoilers. In Rwanda in 1993, the mediators pushed for an inclusion of the Hutu akazu in the Arusha negotiations but were rebuffed by the Tutsi Rwandan Patriotic Front; the akazu had their revenge in the ensuing genocide. In Palestine after 2006, the Western mediators joined Israel in refusing to talk with Hamas, in or out of a Palestinian coalition government, but they did not give enough concessions to the moderate Fatah movement to enable it to draw support away from its rival, Hamas. In all of these notable cases, the importance of the mediator was capital in performing the third function. Next is the “when?” question. A key to the success of mediation involves seizing the conflict at the ripe moment.42 Conflicting parties are not susceptible to a call to end their conflict at just any time. They are ready to do so only when they recognize that their efforts at prevailing are stalemated and that the stalemate is painful to them—and also when they feel that the other party is willing to search with them for a con-

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ceivable solution. Again, as in the case of the substantive search for a solution, the parties locked in an identity conflict on the path to genocide are not likely to arrive at a sense of ripeness by themselves; the stakes involved in the assertion and defense of their identity are too high for them to admit stalemate, feel pain, or see the other party as ready for an agreement. In this they need the help of the mediator, who plays a major role in ripening the conflict for efforts to resolve it. Ripeness does not need to occur at the last moment, however, before the move to genocide is actually taken. If accountability focuses on making perpetrators stop and think about the consequences to themselves if they carry out the final act of mass killing, considerations of ripeness should make the prospective perpetrators think well beforehand about the cost and resistance that repression is likely to encounter and look to other ways of confronting the fear problem. The mediator’s challenge is to develop such consciousness in the repressing party, to think not only about the consequences if impending policies are implemented but also about the costly bind in which he will find himself in trying to implement them. Since genocide is based on a perception of the other parties’ intent as well as one’s own, the external third party faces the important challenge of changing perceptions, as early as possible. Ripening involves major efforts of persuasion to get the parties to see the mutually hurting stalemate in which they are caught—first to realize the impasse and then, most importantly, to acknowledge that it is costly and painful to them. Ripening efforts not only help the parties recognize their situation but also impel them to turn to someone for help, while the mediator is standing by, ready to be of assistance. Therefore, to open their minds to preconflict or preescalation prevention, the parties must be made aware that their existential conflict is both costly and unnecessary; the conflict must be ripe for mediation in their eyes. Developing that perception is the key to effective mediation, for without it the conflicting parties are continually asking why their conflict should be contained. The key to that perception, in turn, is to persuade the parties that their fear is unjustified, taking the mediator back to a search for changes in attitudes, or at least to structural ways to contain and nullify them. The parties’ perception of cost is enhanced by measures to make the parties realize that identity conflicts entail penalties larger than expected benefits, either at the hands of the repressed identity group or by the international community. The third party must convince the repressor that repressed groups can offer a more costly resistance than expected, and that continued ethnic conflict and cleansing will be met by sanctions and withheld recognition.43

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Ripening to create an entry into mediation has been more successful in preventing further escalation than in preventing violent identity conflict in the first place. A conflict in course provides objective evidence for the hurting stalemate, whereas a conflict in formation has few hard facts of cost and fear to which to refer. An FMLN offensive with no prospect of holding the capital city provided tangible signs of a hurting stalemate that opened the conflict with the Salvadoran government to UN mediation in 1990 as the mediator helped the parties realize that neither side could win but both were sustaining unbearable losses. Multiple mediators, both private and official, in Northern Ireland helped bring the sides to see that their ratcheting violence was not helping their cause, while also persuading them that the other side had the same perception and was possibly ready to talk. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in 2008 over Gaza, an imperfect ceasefire was reached between Israel and Hamas when both sides saw that they could not prevail but costs were mounting, a realization of ripeness sharpened by Egyptian mediation. Backed up by examples of political conflicts turning dirty, a series of international mediators, ending with former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, were able to convince the presidential candidates in Kenya in 2008 to negotiate a power-sharing agreement rather than sink their country into ethnic violence. Mediators seeking to ripen identity conflicts for prevention need to muster enormous skills of persuasion, but they may also need to provide objective facts on the ground to enhance the subjective perception of ripeness.

In the End, How to Do It?

Parties locked in a course of conflict leading to mass ethnic killings and repressors determined to eliminate the identity groups they fear are hell-bent for catastrophe, with a commitment and determination that prevent them from changing course on their own. By that fact they need external efforts if they are to be stopped, and by the same token, third parties making that effort face significant obstacles. The job is necessary and unattractive, but failure is worse. The external third party needs to work on the perceptions of the parties, and particularly the repressing party, which means entering deep into the conflicting relations, not merely invoking sanctions and condemning actions from the outside. In the stages of identity conflict leading up to mass killing, much can be done, as outlined above, to reorient attitudes and introduce structures to defuse the conflict, evoking the second pillar of R2P. Once the

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genocidal path has been decided upon, the third pillar of outside intervention likely becomes more necessary. External actors were notoriously lax in using pillar-two measures (not yet identified as such) in handling Nazi Germany in the 1930s. But they were just as lax in mobilizing both pillars in the early 1990s in Rwanda or in the 2000s in Sudan. But Turkey in the 1920s, Bosnia and Serbia in the 1990s, and the Soviet Union in the 1920s were staunchly impervious to any pillar-two measures that might have been used. Libya and Syria in the early 2010s, while identity conflicts only in a loose, political sense, show the enormous difficulties of third parties to penetrate the decisionmaking machinery of mass killing without putting boots, or at least bombs, on the ground. Mediation in this case thus depends almost inevitably on a certain willingness of the parties, and especially the repressing party, to be mediated. As a result, third parties, before any mediation or reconciling measures are launched, must put heavy sanctions on the repressing party—heavier than the existential danger it fears—in order to make the repressor reconsider its proposed policies and look instead for a better way out of its fears. Enormous questions remain about the effective ways to handle identity conflicts before they slide into genocide, and equally large shortfalls exist in designated actors’ ability to manipulate these ways. Recent studies of ways of meeting the conflict challenge have made a small dent,44 but this incipient knowledge needs to be greatly expanded and broadly diffused to training institutions and operative agencies. Capacity building needs to be much more developed and disseminated to overcome the seat-of-the-pants and fingertips nature of preventive diplomacy, however effective it may have been on occasion. Mediation as a means of preventing identity conflict and genocide is not merely a matter of making peace; it must be a means of reforming and restoring the political fabric of the state in order to render it a functioning entity again.

Notes 1. Ban Ki-moon, Report of the Secretary-General: Implementing the Responsibility to Protect (January 12, 2009), A 63/677; Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2008), pp. 105–111. 2. Recent works agree on six modern cases—German Jews, Turkish Armenians, Rwandan Tutsi, Bosnian Bosniaks (and others), Khmer “bourgeois,” and Soviet Kulaks (Scott Straus, “Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide,” World Politics 59, no. 3 (April 2007): 476–501.

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3. Straus, “Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide.” 4. Ervin Staub, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Benjamin Valentino, Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004); Mark Levene, Genocide in the Age of the Nation-State (London: I. B. Tauris, 2005); Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Mahmood Mamdani, When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001); I. William Zartman, Mark Anstey, and Paul Meerts, eds., The Slippery Slope to Genocide: Preventing Identity Conflicts and Reducing Mass Murder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 5. See Straus, “Second-Generation Comparative Research on Genocide.” 6. Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). 7. Helen Fein, “Accounting for Genocide After 1945: Theories and Some Findings,” International Journal on Minority and Group Rights 1, no. 2 (1993): 79–106. 8. Staub, Roots of Evil; Staub, Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and Terrorism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). 9. Valentino, Final Solutions. 10. Manus Midlarsky, The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 11. Mann, Dark Side of Democracy. 12. Monty Marshall and Ted Robert Gurr, Peace and Conflict 2005 (College Park: University of Maryland, Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 2005). For an extended discussion see Chapter 4 by Barbara Harff in this volume. 13. Zartman, Anstey, and Meerts, Slippery Slope. 14. I. William Zartman, “Ripeness: The Hurting Stalemate and Beyond,” in International Conflict Resolution After the Cold War, edited by Paul Stern and Daniel Druckman (Washington, DC: National Academies, 2000), pp. 225–250. 15. I. William Zartman, ed., Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods and Techniques (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2007). 16. Milton Leitenberg, “Deaths in Wars and Conflicts Between 1945 and 2000,” Cornell University Peace Studies Program Occasional Paper no. 29, Ithaca, NY, 2003. 17. Chaim Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions in Ethnic Civil War,” International Security 20, no. 4 (1996): 136–175; Kaufmann, “When All Else Fails: Evaluating Population Transfers and Partition as Solutions to Ethnic Conflict,” in Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention, edited by Barbara Walter and Jack Snyder (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 221–249. 18. Ban, Report of the Secretary-General, p. 10. 19. Arend Lijphart, Democracy in Plural Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972; Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985). 20. Staub, Overcoming Evil. 21. Princeton Lyman, Partner to History: The US Role in South Africa’s Transition to Democracy (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2002).

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22. Susan Collins Marks, Watching the Wind (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2000). 23. These and other cases are well presented in Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall, eds., Herding Cats: Multiparty Mediation in a Complex World (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 1999). 24. I. William Zartman, ed., Traditional Cures for Modern Conflict: Traditional African Conflict Medicine (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002). 25. I. William Zartman, “New and Modern Ways of Making Peace in West Africa: The Voices of African Scholars,” African Conflict and Peacebuilding Review 1, no. 2 (2012): 1–5. 26. Ban, Report of the Secretary-General, p. 45. 27. Séverine Autesserre, The Trouble with Congo: Local Violence and the Failure of International Peacebuilding (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 28. I. William Zartman, “Peace Making in West Africa: Historical Methods and Modern Applications,” African Conflict and Peacemaking Review 2, no. 2 (2012): 1–5. 29. Author conversation with ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, Washington DC, 2008. 30. Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen, “Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers,” Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Academy of Diplomacy, and US Institute of Peace, December 2008. 31. See the list in ibid., p. 61. 32. On the last, the least well known, see Joost Hiltermann, A Poisonous Affair: America, Iraq, and the Gassing of Halabja (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 33. Bernard Coard, Ferdinand Marcos, Manuel Noriega, Jean-Claude Duvalier, and eventually Raoul Cedras were also deposed in Grenada in 1983, the Philippines in 1986, Panama in 1989, and Haiti in 1986 and 1994, respectively, in conflicts that were other than identity-based. For the most part, the agent was the United States, but it operated with Britain in Iraq; France was the agent in the Central Africa Republic and involved in Haiti, and Tanzania was the agent in Uganda. Some of these interventions were condemned by international opinion, sometimes more for the principle than for the particular instances. The African interventions were roundly criticized by the Organization of African Unity, but the results were greeted with relief, and member states were content to allow France and Tanzania to produce them. See I. William Zartman, Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2005). 34. See Saadia Touval and I. William Zartman, eds., International Mediation in Theory and Practice (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1985); Jeffrey Z. Rubin, ed., The Dynamics of Third-Party Intervention: Kissinger in the Middle East (New York: Praeger, 1981); C. R. Mitchell and Keith Webb, eds., New Approaches to International Mediation (New York: Greenwood, 1988); Jacob Bercovitch and Jeffrey Z. Rubin, eds., Mediation in International Relations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992); Bercovitch, ed., Resolving International Conflicts: The Theory and Practice of Mediation (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1996); Bercovitch, ed., Studies in International Mediation (New York: Palgrave

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Macmillan, 2002); Marieke Kleiboer, Multiple Realities of International Mediation (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1997). 35. I. William Zartman, ed., Elusive Peace: Negotiating an End to Civil Wars (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995). 36. Ibid., esp. chap. 13. 37. I. William Zartman and Saadia Touval, “International Mediation,” in Leashing the Dogs of War, edited by Chester Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2007). 38. Ibid.; Jacob Bercovitch, “Mediation and Conflict Resolution,” in The SAGE Handbook of Conflict Resolution, edited by Jacob Bercovitch, Victor Kremenyuk, and I. William Zartman (London: Sage, 2010), pp. 340–357. 39. Marie-Joëlle Zahar, “Handling Spoilers and the Prospect of Violence,” in The Slippery Slope to Genocide: Preventing Identity Conflicts and Reducing Mass Murder, edited by I. William Zartman, Mark Anstey, and Paul Meerts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 173–194. 40. James C. O’Brien, “The Dayton Agreement in Bosnia,” in Peace vs. Justice, edited by I. William Zartman and Victor Kremenyuk (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), pp. 89–112. 41. Sean Brooks, “Enforcing a Turning Point and Imposing a Deal: An Analysis of the Darfur Abuja Negotiations of 2006,” International Negotiation 13, no. 3 (September 2008): 415–442. 42. I. William Zartman, “The Timing of Peace Initiatives: Hurting Stalemates and Ripe Moments,” Global Review of Ethnopolitics 1, no. 1 (2001): 8–18. 43. I. William Zartman and Alvaro de Soto, Timing Mediation Initiatives (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace, 2010). 44. Staub, Overcoming Evil; Evans, Responsibility to Protect; Robert Rotberg, ed., Mass Atrocity Crimes: Preventing Future Outrages (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2010); Zartman, Anstey, and Meerts, Slippery Slope to Genocide; David Hamburg, No More Killing Fields: Preventing Deadly Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002); David Hamburg and Beatrix Hamburg, Learning to Live Together: Preventing Hatred and Violence in Child and Adolescent Development (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

6 The Role of Transnational Civil Society Iavor Rangelov

I

f there has been any point of consensus in the debate about genocide in Darfur, it has to do with transnational advocacy and mobilization from below. The Save Darfur movement, which emerged in the United States at the onset of the crisis and quickly spread to other countries and continents, has been widely seen as shaping the public representation of Darfur and driving the international response to a remarkable extent. And yet, if the salience of this transnational civil society movement has been universally acknowledged, its significance and role in the continuing conflict in Darfur have become the subject of much contestation and debate. Analyses and interpretations of the Save Darfur movement have varied widely and often have clashed in the public domain, as disagreement has been pervasive both on the question of the movement’s motivations (from cosmopolitan concern to neo-imperialist ambition) and the assessment of its impact (enabling a successful resolution of the crisis or precipitating its failure). In this chapter, I take my cue in approaching transnational civil society and the question about its role in the international politics of genocide from this continuing disagreement over Save Darfur. I begin by highlighting the diversity of nonstate actors, discourses, and agendas on the world stage and seek to convey the contested politics and ambivalent normative orientation of transnational civil society. Assessments of the role of transnational civil society in debates over genocide should start, I argue, by acknowledging its diverse, contested, and ambivalent nature. I then direct attention to the various ways in which civil society ideas and action have influenced the evolving global humanitarian regime and, in this way, have ended up shaping the terms of the debate, as well as the rules and tools invoked in international responses to geno135

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cide. In the final section I focus more closely on the case of Darfur, in order to tease out some of the key lessons and consequences—positive and negative, intended and unintended—of the broad transnational mobilization sparked by the crisis, particularly in light of the limited international response. I conclude by offering some reflections on the potential of transnational civil society and the positive contribution it could make to future responses to genocide. Scholars use the term “civil society” in many different ways so the question of definition must be addressed. Debates over the meaning of “civil society” persist, often harking back to the intellectual origins of the concept and the political projects that it has expressed at different historical junctures. For thinkers like Hobbes and Locke, civil society was a type of society with a rule of law and legitimate political authority, as contrasted with the “state of nature.” In the writings of Hegel and Marx, civil society became a separate realm, distinct from the family and the state and dominated by capitalist relations. In the twentieth century, civil society was contrasted both with the state and the market. For Gramsci, civil society encompassed the sphere of culture and ideology that served to manufacture consent and legitimate hegemonic power structures. The rediscovery of civil society in the 1970s and 1980s in Eastern Europe articulated the concept as an autonomous sphere of thinking and action outside political institutions; since then, civil society has been reinterpreted yet again, in light of concepts such as “social capital” and the “public sphere.”1 Multiple conceptions of civil society are also advanced in the scholarly discussions of what has been variously called “transnational advocacy networks,”2 “global social movements,”3 “global citizen action,”4 “global civil society,”5 and “transnational civil society.”6 In such debates it is not always clear whether civil society is discussed as an analytical category or a normative concept.7 Skeptics even argue that no such thing as “global” civil society exists in the absence of a world state and democratic politics at the global level.8 What the literature clearly conveys, however, is the multiplicity of civil society as a “sphere of ideas, values, institutions, organisations, networks, and individuals located between the family, the state, and the market and operating beyond the confines of national societies, polities, and economies.”9 My analysis adopts a similar conception of transnational civil society as an arena in which diverse actors engage in debates over genocide and seek to shape international responses to mass atrocity. This descriptive approach to civil society directs attention to the range of actors and forms of organization in this sphere, including non-

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governmental organizations (NGOs), networks, social movements, diaspora communities, the global media, and even key individuals engaged in public debate. But civil society as discussed here has a normative dimension as well, because it is so closely bound up with legitimacy. From Hobbes to Habermas, the questions of consent and legitimacy have been central for civil society theory. Contemporary accounts go beyond the state to probe the role of civil society in negotiating “global social contracts,”10 advancing principles of international legitimacy,11 and addressing democratic deficits at the level of global governance.12 In this chapter, I stress the normative ambivalence of transnational civil society, stemming from its heterogeneous nature and the plural, sometimes clashing values that its actors advance. Nevertheless, I suggest that civil society has important legitimating functions in the international politics of genocide. I present the next two sections as an implicit interrogation of these functions, showing how transnational civil society serves as an arena of public deliberation and encourages the articulation of rules and tools that shape international responses to genocide.

Debates over Genocide: Actors and Discourses

The role of transnational civil society in the prevention and suppression of genocide is often conceived as akin to that of a whistle-blower— documenting mass atrocities and raising awareness about unfolding crises, seeking to galvanize public opinion and put pressure on the centers of power in order to trigger a timely response to the violence. This understanding has guided much of the scholarly discussion on the subject, which has been preoccupied in particular with the operations of international NGOs and the global media. Most of the detailed case-study analyses in the literature reflect this orientation and focus, from the strategic use of information and advocacy by humanitarian, human rights, and conflict-resolution NGOs, aimed at setting agendas and effecting policy outcomes at various levels, to the role of media coverage and representations of the violence in explaining such outcomes. 13 In such discussions of civil society, the capacity of NGOs and the media to inform the public and mobilize the international community to act is examined and assessed against the historical record of genocide. For this reason, the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 has been interpreted as a dramatic failure—perhaps the most dramatic one in the post–Cold War era—not only of political society but also of civil society at the transnational level. For example, Nicholas Wheeler has argued that just as public pressure in France led to the eventual deploy-

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ment of French forces in Operation Turquoise, as the government sought to deflect accusations of links to the Habyarimana regime, more robust mobilization of international public opinion might have forced the UN Security Council to take action in time to stop the Rwandan catastrophe.14 According to Alex de Waal, one of the leading civil society voices in the genocide debate, Rwanda served to expose the “impotence” of Western NGOs such as Human Rights Watch in the face of genocide in Africa, as they failed to couple information with action and operated on the flawed assumption that “if people knew enough, if the quality of research and reporting was good enough, if the information reached the right people, then action was bound to follow.”15 This line of argument is reflected also in comparative studies that have contrasted the international response to the Rwandan genocide with other major crises in recent years, such as those in the former Yugoslavia and East Timor. Brent Steele and Jacque Amoureux have highlighted NGO monitoring of human rights abuses and its disciplining functions on behalf of hegemonic power structures in international society, suggesting that NGO advocacy and media action can help to explain divergent outcomes in particular crises. They compare two episodes of violence in East Timor and draw the conclusion that “there was a striking difference between hegemonic awareness and genocidal success in 1975 (the year of East Timor’s first vote for independence) when few NGO personnel were on the ground to witness and report abuses, and in 1999 when human rights NGOs had established a more comprehensive micro (in East Timor) and macro (global) monitoring network.”16 Robust NGO advocacy and media attention in the late 1990s had an impact not only on the international community in terms of eliciting a response but also on the Indonesian military, which was aware that its actions were being monitored and scrutinized. In contrast, the media and NGO pressure came too late in Rwanda when finally prompting the United Nations and France to take action.17 But the narrow conception of transnational civil society and its normative orientation, implied in such accounts, captures only part of the story. The focus on international NGOs and media reporting, while undoubtedly important, offers at best a limited lens through which to examine the role of nonstate actors in debates and responses to genocide at the current juncture. The diversity of transnational civil society actors, discourses, and purposes on the world stage is so profound that its effects are bound to be complex and contradictory, often pulling in different directions in a normative and practical sense. Three central characteristics of transnational civil society, in particular, caution against the

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conventional view of its nature and role in debates over genocide and call for a more expansive analytical lens that reflects a broader understanding of civil society. First, there is no one civil society agenda but many, and they often clash in the public domain and, in turn, reinforce the positions and legitimacy of competing political actors engaged in the global debate over genocide. Ideological conflict and political strife are as prevalent in transnational civil society as they are in its domestic counterpart. Recall the struggle for the ratification of the Genocide Convention in the United States, which William Korey carefully documented. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, this struggle played out primarily in the civil society arena as a confrontation between a coalition of groups known as the Ad Hoc Committee on the Genocide and Human Rights Treaties, on one side, and the influential American Bar Association (ABA), on the other. The resistance of the ABA reflected concerns over sovereignty and the balance of federalstate relations, and not until a majority within the ABA shifted its position and spearheaded the campaign did civil society efforts begin to bear fruit, leading to the eventual ratification of the convention in 1988.18 At the international level, similar conflicts within civil society have been the norm and often have dominated debates over genocide. In the context of the Yugoslav crisis, for example, civil society actors who advocated humanitarian intervention found their most vociferous opposition among sections of the global left, which advanced the argument of what Noam Chomsky termed the “new military humanism”: contesting intervention in the Balkans on the grounds that it served as a cover and justification for Western imperialism, in particular for the projection of US power and the global extension of capitalism after the end of the Cold War.19 The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established by the UN Security Council in 1993 and strongly supported by transnational human rights and women’s movements, has also been rejected by these currents in the global left and by nationalist movements in the region itself—from the International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milo¸sevi´ c, which had enlisted prominent public intellectuals like Harold Pinter, to associations of war veterans in Croatia and the so-called patriotic bloc in Serbia.20 Since then, the imperialist argument has been revived in debates over genocide in Darfur by those who see the responsibility to protect principle and the African indictments of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as signaling a big power agenda to “recolonize” Africa.21 Second, even those civil society movements that may appear to be monolithic turn out to be fractured and contested upon closer scrutiny,

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particularly when they are faced with the need to respond to concrete situations of mass violence and atrocity. This situation held among the generally like-minded groups that constituted the transnational human rights movement during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia at the turn of the century. Aidan Hehir notes that prior to the NATO intervention in Kosovo, “Kosovo Albanians had alerted the world to their plight by appealing to international human rights organizations and their overseas diaspora. Humanitarian NGOs publicized the situation and attracted increased media attention, which combined to create a momentum among domestic publics in the West for action against Milo¸sevi´ c’s regime.”22 But Mary Kaldor, one of the direct participants in the civil society debate at the time, conveys the internal tensions and anxieties of what was fundamentally a divided and unsettled movement: The war in Kosovo deeply divided civil society. Some groups felt the intervention was justified. Some favored military intervention but criticized the form of intervention: the use of air strikes instead of ground troops, which could have directly protected people. Human Rights Watch, in particular, drew attention to the ways in which NATO bombings may have violated international law. For many human rights groups Kosovo was a troubling moment. Many sympathized with the plight of the Kosovars but at the same time found bombing repugnant and an inappropriate way to enforce human rights. This was especially true in Eastern Europe, where bombing has always been regarded as much more unacceptable than in the West. Yet, at the same time, East European human rights groups felt uneasy about criticizing the air strikes, both because of sympathy with the Kosovars and because of the legacies of the Cold War. . . . Even an organization like Human Rights Watch was torn by the NATO bombing between those who were strongly in favor and those who felt that bombing had accelerated ethnic cleansing.23

Finally, new actors have emerged in transnational civil society, becoming increasingly prominent over the past few decades, but we know very little about them, in terms of understanding their modes of organization and operation across borders and the politics and purposes they might be driving on the world stage. These actors are often associated with some of the celebrated aspects of contemporary globalization but also with its less palpable underside, from the growth of new communication and information technologies to the advent of new forms of informality and identity politics from below.24 Diasporas, in particular, may be representative of these new types of actors to the extent that they tend to be understudied and are often left out of discussions of transnational civil society and mass violence.

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That the involvement of the Sudanese diaspora in the United States and Western Europe in recent years has been assessed as serving to promote the rebel cause and reinforce the Arab/African framing of the conflict in Darfur, on the one hand, and laying the groundwork for the emergence of long-term peace and democratization in Sudan, on the other, is indicative.25 In the case of Kosovo, it has been widely acknowledged that the Albanian diasporas played a crucial role in the runup to the NATO intervention by raising awareness about the plight of Kosovo Albanians and demanding an international response to the crisis, particularly through their engagement with the Clinton administration. Much less visible, however, has been the impact of the Albanian diasporas on the trajectory of the conflict and the levels of violence on the ground, especially after the Dayton peace settlement for Bosnia in the mid-1990s, when these transnational communities began to shift their funding and support from the nonviolent resistance movement, led by Ibrahim Rugova and his Democratic League of Kosovo, toward the armed campaign of the Kosovo Liberation Army.26 The dominant NGO-media paradigm, which tells us little about these important dynamics in transnational civil society, might end up obscuring more than it purports to reveal. In particular, this approach risks reducing transnational civil society to a singular logic and normative orientation that betrays its multiplicity and ambivalence in practice. From the plight of the Kurds in northern Iraq two decades ago to the crisis in Darfur, the question of appropriate international action in the face of mass killing, perhaps more than any other question on the global agenda, has often energized and mobilized civil society. Yet this question has also proven to be profoundly divisive for civil society, marked by vigorous contestation and debate. Indeed, transnational civil society could be understood as an arena in which the global debate over genocide has been conducted and nonstate actors have competed for discursive hegemony and political influence in shaping international responses. With this understanding in mind, the next section examines in more detail specific instances of transnational mobilization from below and assesses the impact of civil society on global arrangements for the prevention and suppression of genocide.

Responses to Genocide: Rules and Tools

Transnational civil society has shaped in many different ways the legal framework and the policy instruments that constitute the evolving global humanitarian regime, which is invoked in debates about international responses to genocide and provides their language and reference

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points. Indeed, the very origins of this regime can be traced to civil society and a long line of committed individuals, most notably the figure of Raphael Lemkin. Winston Churchill had famously described the destruction of the European Jews during the Second World War as the “crime without a name.”27 Lemkin gave us a name for that crime and was often described as a “one-person NGO” for his inexhaustible energy and efforts. He managed to mobilize support for a genocide treaty at the United Nations in a remarkably short period of time, leading to the adoption in 1948 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.28 The most successful efforts of transnational civil society have involved promoting new humanitarian norms and seeking to enshrine them in international law and policy. This normative change, produced over time with much impetus and input from below, represents the most far-reaching impact of civil society on debates over genocide as well as, crucially, on the international community’s will and ability to respond to particular crises. In this sense, my subsequent discussion should be understood against the background of a broader transformation of the relationship between civil society and political authority that has come to the fore in the post–Cold War era, as nonstate actors have increasingly sought to engage with international society and to influence the changing regimes of international law and global governance.29 Among the more visible civil society campaigns that have advanced the global humanitarian regime were those that resulted in the adoption of the Ottawa Convention banning antipersonnel land mines and, more recently, the Convention on Cluster Munitions.30 An important legal innovation in the 1990s was the UN Security Council’s establishment of the ad hoc international criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1994), which were endowed with jurisdiction to prosecute perpetrators of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. This development reflected the legacy of the Nuremberg and Tokyo trials after World War II. But it also signalled a shift from crimes against peace (aggression was seen as the “supreme crime” at Nuremberg) to crimes against humanity (genocide became the new “crime of crimes” in the 1990s), as the conflicts in Bosnia and Rwanda were interpreted through a humanitarian lens that emphasized human rights abuse and mass atrocity. The idea for the ICTY came from Bosnian civil society, but its establishment and operations have been shaped by wider processes of cross-border mobilization, from the antiwar movement in the former Yugoslavia and solidarity networks across Europe to transnational human rights and women’s movements.31

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The Yugoslav tribunal created a momentum for those currents in civil society wanting to ensure that the norms and institutions of international justice would be embodied in a permanent international criminal court. This momentum was seized and paved the way for a campaign that many analysts saw as promising a new legal instrument to deter perpetrators of genocide and other serious international crimes. The crucial role of nonstate actors in the process that led to the creation of the ICC has been widely acknowledged, in particular the far-reaching impact of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), which currently includes over 2,500 organizations from 150 countries and now focuses its efforts on state ratification of the Rome Statute of the ICC.32 Indeed, the role of this transnational movement has been so central—in mobilizing support for establishing the court and in shaping the course of the international negotiations at the Rome Conference in the summer of 1998—that the ICC itself has been described by some as a “global civil society achievement.”33 Other humanitarian innovations that emerged in that period also had important lineages in transnational civil society, from no-fly zones and humanitarian corridors to safe havens and international protectorates. The influence of Bernard Kouchner on these developments goes back to the Biafra crisis in the late 1960s and his involvement in the unauthorized airlift organized by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) amid fears of impending genocide. The experience in Biafra prompted him to establish a new organization, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and to seek the media spotlight in pressing for responses to humanitarian emergencies. By the mid-1980s Kouchner was promoting the doctrine of the “right to interfere” (droit d’ingérence), which informed UN General Assembly resolution 43/131 in 1988, the year when he became minister for health and humanitarian action in the French cabinet. After the end of the Gulf War in 1991, the brutal suppression of Kurdish and Shiite uprisings by Saddam Hussein attracted much international attention and condemnation. Kouchner championed the interference argument as public pressure mounted also in the United States, Britain, and elsewhere, ultimately leading to Security Council resolution 688, which established a precedent by authorizing a safe haven, protected by some 20,000 troops, for the Kurds in northern Iraq.34 Another important moment was the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Early on, local groups there had argued for an international protectorate to prevent genocide, and their demands were taken up and advanced internationally by movements such as the Helsinki Citizens Assembly (HCA). The international administrations set up in Mostar and Sarajevo

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had far-reaching consequences, to the extent that they paved the way for the protectorates in Bosnia and Kosovo.35 The Yugoslav wars highlighted also the growing influence of think tanks and commissions, such as the two Carnegie commissions on the Balkans and the Independent International Commission on Kosovo.36 In the wake of the Kosovo crisis and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, Gareth Evans and Mohamed Sahnoun convened the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), which deployed a human security framework in its analysis and advanced the responsibility-to-protect principle.37 The case for R2P was made by invoking the memory of the genocide in Rwanda, and the commission declared, “We want no more Rwandas and we believe that the adoption of the proposals in our report is the best way of ensuring that.”38 The report of the commission generated much international debate and led to the endorsement of R2P by the World Summit held in New York in September 2005, which marked the sixtieth anniversary of the United Nations.39 This endorsement served to revive the debate about humanitarian intervention, which over the past two decades has been the most controversial tool available to the international community in responding to genocide and by far the most divisive issue on the civil society agenda. Tracing the evolution of this debate from Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq to the interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone, Kaldor distinguished four main positions adopted by transnational civil society actors. The sovereignist (rejectionist) position, which insists on the principle of noninterference, is advanced both by realists and antiglobalist currents. The just war (supporters) argument has justified war on humanitarian grounds and privileged morality over legality on the question of intervention. Proponents of the humanitarian peace (alternatives) position have tended to distrust power and see intervention as a cover for imperialism, arguing instead for a civil society intervention. Lastly, the human rights enforcement (reformers) camp has argued for humanitarian intervention in the form of international law enforcement, in particular for direct protection of civilians and arrest of war criminals.40 Underlying these divisions have been competing interpretations of the character of specific conflicts (international conflict, civil war, “new war,” ethnic cleansing, genocide, etc.) and, for those in favor of external action, disagreement over the nature of the appropriate international response (military intervention or civil society intervention, air strikes or ground troops, international prosecutions or peace negotiations, etc.). These tensions have also played out in the debate over Darfur. A broad range of civil society actors have com-

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peted over the framing of the situation in Darfur as a “civil war” or a “genocide” and over the nature of the required response—external intervention to protect civilians or internal political solution to end the conflict.41 The growth of new media and communications in the beginning of the twenty-first century has revived hopes for more direct engagement of transnational civil society in humanitarian emergencies that goes beyond relief efforts and aid. As already mentioned, the idea of a civil society intervention gained salience in the 1990s, reflecting the notion that the very presence of international actors afforded a measure of protection to civilians on the ground. In recent years, however, rather contradictory developments have taken place, and their overall direction remains unclear. On the one hand, humanitarian NGOs and journalists have been warning of the shrinking space for their operations in conflict zones, as governments and belligerents have sought to restrict humanitarian access and reporting to the outside world. In the wake of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Indonesian authorities sought to restrict access to Aceh as they worried that the relief NGOs “would provide a window into the treatment of Aceh citizens by Indonesian security forces.”42 In the spring of 2009, the regime in Khartoum expelled thirteen aid groups from the country, accusing them of collaboration with the ICC, which had issued an arrest warrant for President Omar alBashir.43 On the other hand, new open source and crowdsourcing technologies have increased the transparency of events in conflict zones. The Ushahidi (“testimony” in Swahili) software platform was first deployed in Kenya in 2008 to map incidents of postelection violence on the basis of reports submitted via the Internet and mobile phones. Since then, the tool has been used in Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Pakistan, and elsewhere.44 My analysis suggests that the most significant impact of transnational civil society on debates over genocide might be its contribution to the evolving global humanitarian regime—those rules and tools for responding to mass violence and killing that shape the terms of the debate and define the range of options considered appropriate and legitimate in the face of any particular crisis. This contribution, however, has come about through contestation rather than consensus and has generated much controversy and soul-searching in transnational civil society. The question of humanitarian intervention and now R2P has been particularly divisive for civil society. The growth of international criminal justice has been attacked from various nationalist, leftist, and postcolonial positions. The safe havens in Bosnia are remembered mostly for their

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failure to protect civilians, as the fall of Srebrenica led to the killing of more than 8,000 men and boys and revived the specter of genocide in Europe. The interventions and protectorates in Bosnia and Kosovo have ended the fighting but not the underlying conflicts, and both states remain fragile and plagued by uncertainty about the future. As the list goes on, it raises an important question about the unintended consequences of transnational civil society action, which I address next by focusing on the case of Darfur.

Will to Respond? Lessons from Darfur

The Save Darfur movement attracted much public and media attention and has been described as “the largest US activist movement on an African issue since the anti-apartheid struggle” and “undoubtedly the most successful organized popular movement in the United States since the movement against the Vietnam War.”45 The umbrella organization of the movement, the Save Darfur Coalition, has advocated ending the violence against civilians and enabling humanitarian relief, refugee return, and long-term development, as well as holding accountable the perpetrators of atrocities.46 The movement’s diversity—ranging from African American, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups to Hollywood celebrities and humanitarian organizations—is remarkable, as is the degree of grassroots mobilization it managed to effect, especially by involving thousands of students in hundreds of chapters that sprang up on university campuses around the country. The Save Darfur movement had a profound impact on the visibility of the Darfur crisis in the public domain and managed to propel the issue on the policy agenda in Washington, combining grassroots activism with strategic use of advertising and alliance building on Capitol Hill. What began as a US phenomenon soon was extended transnationally to Canada, the United Kingdom, and a number of other countries. The range of civil society actors that have become involved in debates over Darfur in one way or another is astonishing, including many journalists and public intellectuals. At the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the European Union in March 2007, a group of Europe’s leading intellectuals published an open letter that demanded action on Darfur. The group included Umberto Eco, Dario Fo, Günter Grass, Jürgen Habermas, Vaclav Havel, Seamus Heaney, Bernard Henri-Levy, Harold Pinter, Franca Rame, and Tom Stoppard, and they invoked the memory of the Holocaust and Srebrenica in calling upon the European heads of state to impose targeted sanctions on the regime in Khartoum:

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The Europe which allowed Auschwitz and failed in Bosnia must not tolerate the murder in Darfur. Europe is more than a network of political classes, more than first-world economic club and bureaucratic excrescence. It is an inherited culture which sustains our shared belief in the value and dignity of the human being. In the name of that common culture and those shared values, we call upon the 27 leaders to impose immediately the most stringent sanctions upon the leaders of the Sudanese regime. Forbid them our shores, our health services and our luxury goods. Freeze their assets in our banks and move immediately to involve other concerned countries. We must not once again betray our European civilization by watching and waiting while another civilization in Africa is destroyed.47

To be sure, transnational civil society has been divided over Darfur, both on the question of how to name the violence and what is the most appropriate international response. Important critics of the Save Darfur movement and the calls for a humanitarian intervention have come from some humanitarian NGOs active on the ground, sections of the Sudanese diaspora and African civil society, as well as public intellectuals like Mahmood Mamdani in the West. 48 Alex de Waal argued that a successful humanitarian intervention was so unlikely in a complicated war like Darfur that it was “foolish to even make the threat” and coined the slogan “RIP R2P.”49 However, civil society polarization on a similar or greater scale has been a salient feature of previous crises like Kosovo and cannot explain the paucity of international response. This response has involved humanitarian action as well as peace mediation but is widely seen as muddled, inadequate, and weak. Perhaps the most detailed analysis of international efforts over Darfur published to date describes a tale of self-interest and risk aversion masked by ethical posturing; of prevarication and procrastination in the face of a “supreme humanitarian emergency”; of skirmishing over responsibility and accountability in the international response; and of a fundamental lack of commitment and will to respond with an appropriate degree of resources and resolve . . . Notwithstanding the fact that international efforts have provided a significant measure of humanitarian relief and have saved thousands of lives (at least for now), hundreds of thousands more have experienced dislocation, extreme suffering and death as international society has debated and delivered its responses.50

Several lessons can be drawn from this remarkable contrast between the scale and reach of civic mobilization over Darfur, on the one hand, and the international response, on the other. These lessons could

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help to clarify the broader positive and negative effects of transnational civil society on debates over genocide. On the positive side, it appears that, especially in the United States and other countries in the West, whatever limited action has been taken to address the crisis has come mostly as a result of civil society efforts through advocacy and pressure. All significant policies and decisions of the Bush administration have been traced back to a similar pattern: civil society mobilization and lobbying secures the support of Congress, and the two combine to spring the government into action. The measures that have followed this trajectory include the determination that Darfur constituted a genocide (September 2004), pressing for sanctions at the UN Security Council (July 2004), the designation of Roger Winter as US State Department special representative for Sudan (July 2005) and Andrew Natsios as presidential special envoy to Sudan (September 2006), and the US decision to abstain from the vote at the UN Security Council, which allowed the referral of Darfur to the ICC (March 2005).51 The power of transnational civil society is often conceived as stemming from its ability to put pressure on Western democracies and international organizations and the opportunities that such pressure affords for advocacy and mobilization from below. Illiberal or repressive regimes are usually brought into this discussion only in order to demonstrate the “boomerang effect” of transnational advocacy networks on domestic political change in such countries.52 The case of Darfur cautions against such assumptions and suggests an important lesson for the future: in an increasingly interconnected world, non-Western powers have also become more susceptible to civil society influence on global issues such as the prevention and suppression of genocide. At the onset of the crisis, China’s role at the UN Security Council and its position in the debate over genocide in Darfur were seen as either unhelpful or openly obstructionist. Since then, however, China’s role in the crisis has evolved in a constructive direction, a change attributed primarily to direct and indirect civil society action. Particularly important were the letter by US Senator Joseph Biden and ninety-six other senators to China’s President Hu Jintao in 2007 and the broader transnational campaign in the run-up to what activists tagged the “Genocide Olympics,” which included Steven Spielberg’s widely publicized resignation as artistic adviser to the games in Beijing over China’s role in Darfur. These efforts were bearing fruit by the time of the Olympics, and “From being seen to block all efforts at resolving Darfur, Beijing as of mid-2008 made a great deal of effort to be seen to be publicly pressing Khartoum to resolve the crisis.”53

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The other important player in Darfur has been the African Union (AU). The AU has deployed troops in two peace operations in Darfur: one on its own in the African Mission in Sudan (AMIS) in June 2004, and another in the African Union/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) in December 2007. It has also spearheaded the mediation efforts since 2003 and has convened several rounds of the Inter-Sudanese Peace Talks in Addis Ababa and Abuja, Nigeria.54 Despite the many shortcomings of these regional initiatives and the criticisms they have attracted, the AU is widely seen as the only international actor appearing concerned about Darfur. African states and civil society have often been divided in their response to the evolving situation in Darfur. Nevertheless, the regional dimension of the debate has become an increasingly salient feature of the international politics of the conflict. In June 2009, when the AU decided to extend its support to Omar al-Bashir and to withhold cooperation from the ICC in his arrest and surrender, 164 African NGOs across the continent issued a joint statement urging state parties to reaffirm their commitment to cooperate with the court.55 The example of the AU, like China, suggests the emergence of new discursive and political openings for transnational civil society actors as they seek to shape debates over genocide and prompt international action in the future. Equally important, however, are the lessons drawn from the unintended consequences of Save Darfur activism and the broader transnational movement that has often been front and center in the international politics of Darfur. These lessons highlight the dangers of conceiving of the role of civil society in debates over genocide only through the limited lens of a whistle-blower—publicizing the unfolding mass violence in order to mobilize public opinion and pressure the power centers to do something about the crisis. In particular, the Save Darfur movement has exposed the gap between mobilizing the will to respond and mobilizing an effective response in the face of a multifaceted crisis. While transnational civil society movements ensured that the situation in Darfur was globally visible and raised the political costs of inaction, they have not encouraged a sustained debate about the extent and nature of international cooperation that would be required for an effective response to this complex crisis. After the genocide in Rwanda, many observers argued that civil society had failed to create sufficient public pressure in order to elicit a timely and effective international response. Wheeler writes that, in the West, “There were demands for military intervention from NGOs, but this constituency was unable to mobilize wider domestic public opinion

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into joining it in pressurizing politicians to end the genocide.”56 What was lacking in the United States and elsewhere in 1994 was the political will to rescue Rwandans from the horror of the spiraling violence.57 Ten years later, the Save Darfur movement put the emphasis precisely on turning the crisis into a political issue and worked tirelessly to muster the will to respond. Much of the movement’s energies focused on issues such as securing a “genocide determination” by the US Congress and the administration, in what proved to be frustrated expectations that endorsement of the “genocide” label would serve as a catalyst that would trigger obligations under the Genocide Convention and swift international action. The anticipated response failed to materialize; instead, the lasting impact of the genocide determination issue on the debate over Darfur has been one of the unforeseen and unfortunate consequences of civil society activism. “In July 2004, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution labeling Darfur a genocide. Much of the public debate in the United States and elsewhere, however, has focused not on stopping the crisis, but on whether or not it should be called a ‘genocide’ under the terms of the Genocide Convention.”58 Disagreement over the interpretation of mass violence along similar lines has been a perennial feature of the transnational civil society debate in the past two decades. More unfortunate has been the absence of sustained civil society discussion about viable humanitarian and political solutions to the crisis in Darfur, which might be the most significant unintended consequence of transnational civil society activism in this difficult case. The Save Darfur movement, in particular, has prioritized the question of political will over other important questions such as ideas, instruments, and capabilities for resolving the conflict. Publicizing the plight of civilians in Darfur was useful in eliciting a global debate about the need to respond, but not at the expense of a debate about the means to respond and efforts needed to mobilize the range of international and local actors with stakes in a sustainable solution.

Conclusion

The case of Darfur could be seen as an illustration of the ambivalent impact of transnational civil society on debates over genocide and the related prospects for an effective international response. In this chapter I have argued that in order to understand this ambivalence, we need to abandon the narrow view of transnational civil society and to acknowledge the diversity of civil society actors, discourses, and agendas that have been enmeshed in recent decades alongside states and international

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organizations in the international politics of genocide. In particular, my analysis has emphasized the dynamics of contestation and struggle in order to advance a conception of transnational civil society as an arena in which global debates over genocide have been conducted and international responses have been elicited and shaped. This broader conception of transnational civil society is necessary in order to assess its promise as well as its limits in effecting international responses to future instances of genocidal violence. It cautions against unrealistic expectations but also suggests how transnational civil society can play a distinctive and positive role. Diversity of voices and contestation in debates over genocide are indispensable for effective international responses to mass violence, because they are part of the process of legitimation on which such responses depend for success. Civil society can play a central role in this process, and its transnational dimension is particularly important in order to generate legitimacy among the multiple publics and actors involved. Without such broad legitimacy the success of international policies and interventions will always be called into question, as the Iraq War has demonstrated in tragic detail. From Bosnia to Darfur, the main lines of division in transnational civil society have revolved around two questions: What is the character of the violence, and what is the appropriate international response? On a number of occasions, these divisions have served to stifle meaningful debate, inhibiting rather than enabling the emergence of a timely and effective response. But these divisions could also be harnessed for productive purposes. Those who describe Darfur as a “civil war” and those who label the violence “genocide” in fact highlight two dynamics of the conflict that reinforce rather than contradict each other. More importantly, they draw attention to the two faces of the conflict that could be adequately addressed only with a combination of political and humanitarian solutions. In this sense, what is needed is not consensus about the character of the conflict in transnational civil society but more sustained debate about the policies and instruments that could be effective in addressing both of these dimensions. Finally, the limits to the civil society argument must be acknowledged. Situations that deteriorate into genocidal violence are highly volatile and may unfold swiftly. They may spiral out of control before any meaningful civil society debate can take place and generate ideas and momentum for an international response to the crisis. These limits, however, underscore the role of civil society actors in shaping the evolving global humanitarian regime, which might be all that we have

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to lean on at such moments. The most important contribution of transnational civil society might be in advancing those humanitarian norms and novel legal and policy instruments that, once in place, set the terms of the debate and guide the international response to any particular crisis.

Notes 1. Jean L. Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992); Neera Chandhoke, State and Civil Society: Explorations in Political Theory (New Delhi: Sage, 1995); Michael Edwards, Civil Society, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2009). 2. Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 3. Robin Cohen and Shirin M. Rai, eds., Global Social Movements (London: Athlone, 2000). 4. Michael Edwards and John Gaventa, Global Citizen Action (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner; London: Earthscan, 2001). 5. Mary Kaldor, Global Civil Society: An Answer to War (Cambridge: Polity, 2003). 6. John Clark, ed., Globalizing Civic Engagement: Civil Society and Transnational Action (London: Earthscan, 2003). 7. Alejandro Colás, “Global Civil Society: Analytical Category or Normative Concept?” in Global Civil Society: Contested Futures, edited by Gideon Baker and David Chandler (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 14–28. 8. Kenneth Anderson and David Rieff, “Global Civil Society: A Skeptical View,” in Global Civil Society 2004/5, edited by Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor (London: Sage, 2004), pp. 26–39. 9. Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor, “Introducing Global Civil Society,” in Global Civil Society 2001, edited by Helmut Anheier, Marlies Glasius, and Mary Kaldor (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 3–22. 10. Kaldor, Global Civil Society. 11. Ian Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 12. Jens Steffek, Claudia Kissling, and Patricia Nanz, eds., Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance: A Cure for the Democratic Deficit? (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 13. Abby Stoddard, Humanitarian Alert: NGO Information and Its Impact on US Foreign Policy (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2006); Mari Fitzduff and Cheyanne Church, eds., NGOs at the Table: Strategies for Influencing Policies in Areas of Conflict (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004); Gregory Kent, Framing War and Genocide: British Policy and News Media Reaction to the War in Bosnia (Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2006). 14. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 15. Alex de Waal, “Becoming Shameless,” Times Literary Supplement (London), February 21, 1997, pp. 1–2.

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16. Brent J. Steele and Jacque L. Amoureux, “NGOs and Monitoring Genocide: The Benefits and Limits of Human Rights Panopticism,” Millennium— Journal of International Studies 34, no. 2 (2006): 419. 17. Ibid., 429. 18. William Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: A Curious Grapevine (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998), chap. 9. 19. Noam Chomsky, The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo (London: Pluto, 1999); see also Marko A. Hoare, “Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia: A Critique of the Left Revisionism’s Denial,” Journal of Genocide Research 5, no. 4 (2003): 543–563. 20. Iavor Rangelov and Ruti Teitel, “Global Civil Society and Transitional Justice,” in Global Civil Society 2011: Globality and the Absence of Justice, edited by Martin Albrow and Hakan Seckinelgin (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 162–179. 21. Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics and the War on Terror (New York: Pantheon Press, 2009). 22. Aidan Hehir, Humanitarian Intervention: An Introduction (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 252. 23. Mary Kaldor, Human Security: Reflections on Globalization and Intervention (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), pp. 51–52. 24. Mary Kaldor and Diego Muro, “Religious and Nationalist Militant Networks,” in Global Civil Society 2003, edited by Mary Kaldor, Helmut Anheier, and Marlies Glasius (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 151–184; Gerard Delanty, Citizenship in a Global Age: Society, Culture, Politics (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000). 25. I.D.F. and Monzoul Assal, “The National Congress Party and the Darfurian Arms Groups,” in The International Politics of Mass Atrocity: The Case of Darfur, edited by David R. Black and Paul D. Williams (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 27–48. 26. Denisa Kostovicova, “Albanian Diasporas and Their Political Roles,” in Chaillot Paper No. 107: Is There an Albanian Question?, edited by Judy Batt (Paris: Institute for Security Studies, 2008), pp. 73–86. 27. In a speech on April 24, 1941. See Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, p. 206. 28. Korey, NGOs and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Dominik J. Schaller and Jürgen Zimmerer, “From the Guest Editors: Raphael Lemkin: The ‘Founder of the United Nations Genocide Convention’ as a Historian of Mass Violence,” Journal of Genocide Research 7, no. 4 (2005): 447–452. 29. Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society; David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt, and Jonathan Perathtonet, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, Culture (Cambridge: Polity, 1999); Kaldor, Global Civil Society; Steffek et al., Civil Society Participation in European and Global Governance. 30. Nicola Short, “The Role of NGOs in the Ottawa Process to Ban Landmines,” International Negotiation 4, no. 3 (1999): 481–500; Matthew Bolton and Thomas Nash, “The Role of Middle Power-NGO Coalitions in Global Policy: The Case of the Cluster Munitions Ban,” Global Policy 1, no. 2 (May 2010): 172–184. 31. Rangelov and Teitel, “Global Civil Society and Transitional Justice.”

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32. See the information about the composition and activities of the Coalition for the International Criminal Court on its website, www.iccnow.org. 33. Marlies Glasius, The International Criminal Court: A Global Civil Society Achievement (London: Routledge, 2007). 34. Tim Allen and David Styan, “A Right to Interfere? Bernard Kouchner and the New Humanitarianism,” Journal of International Development 12, no. 6 (August 2000): 825–842. 35. Kaldor, Human Security. 36. International Commission on the Balkans, Unfinished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996); Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Preventing Deadly Conflict: Final Report, (Washington, DC: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1998); Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict, International Response, Lessons Learned (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 37. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001). 38. Ibid., p. xiii. 39. UN General Assembly, Outcome Document of the 2005 World Summit (September 2005), A/60/L.1, 15. 40. Kaldor, Human Security. 41. See the debate occasioned by the publication of Mahmood Mamdani, “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency,” London Review of Books 29, no. 5 (March 8, 2007): 5–8, on the blog of the Review, www.lrb.co.uk/blog. 42. Steele and Amoureux, NGOs and Monitoring Genocide, p. 423. 43. Lynsey Adarrio and Lydia Polgreen, “‘Aid Groups’ Expulsion, Fears of More Misery,” New York Times, March 22, 2009. 44. See the Ushahidi website, www.ushahidi.com. 45. Scott Stedjan and Colin Thomas-Jensen, “The United States,” in The International Politics of Mass Atrocity: The Case of Darfur, edited by David R. Black and Paul D. Williams (New York: Routledge, 2010), 157; Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors, p. 7. 46. See the Save Darfur Unity Statement, www.savedarfur.org/pages/unity _statement. 47. “Darfur: A Letter from Europe’s Leading Writers,” The Independent, March 24, 2007. 48. Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors. 49. Alex de Waal, “Why Darfur Intervention Is a Mistake,” BBC News, May 21, 2008. 50. David R. Black and Paul D. Williams, “Conclusion: Darfur’s Challenge to International Society,” in The International Politics of Mass Atrocities: The Case of Darfur, edited by David R. Black and Paul D. Williams (New York: Routledge, 2010), p. 249. 51. Stedjan and Thomas-Jensen, United States. 52. Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders. 53. Ian Taylor, “The People’s Republic of China,” in The International Politics of Mass Atrocity: The Case of Darfur, edited by David R. Black and Paul D. Williams (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 176–194.

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54. Christina Badescu and Linnea Bergholm, “The African Union,” in The International Politics of Mass Atrocities: The Case of Darfur, edited by David R. Black and Paul D. Williams (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. 100–118; Paul D. Williams, “Keeping the Peace in Africa: Why ‘African’ Solutions Are Not Enough,” Ethics and Internationals Affairs 22, no. 3 (2008): 309–329. 55. Human Rights Watch, “African Civil Society Urges African States Parties to the Rome Statute to Reaffirm Their Commitment to the ICC,” July 30, 2009, www.hrw.org. 56. Wheeler, Saving Strangers, p. 303. 57. Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002). 58. Scott Straus, “Darfur and the Genocide Debate,” Foreign Affairs 84, no. 1 (2005): 123.

7 The Role of Regional Organizations Timothy Murithi

T

he violent conflicts of the mid-1990s led to the Rwandan and Srebrenica genocides and increased calls for effective regional approaches to the prevention of mass killings. In this chapter I assess the regional politics of constituting and activating the will to respond to genocide. I focus on what regional organizations in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East can do to more effectively mitigate genocide. In particular, I assess the role of the African Union (AU), which enshrined a responsibility to intervene in the event of genocide in its Constitutive Act of 2000, and discuss the AU’s intervention in the crisis in Darfur, Sudan, which has been described by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a theater of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. I also assess the role of the Arab League in attempting to prevent the atrocities that have taken place in Syria. Regional organizations are not necessarily better suited than individual states or international organizations, like the United Nations, to prevent genocide, but they can be. On the one hand, regional organizations have the comparative advantage of being in the vicinity of an unfolding crisis and therefore are more likely to act with a degree of urgency than the United Nations. Regional organizations also have more legitimacy as the collective voice of their member states than individual states when it comes to mitigating against mass atrocities. On the other hand, regional organizations can suffer from internal political wrangling that can paralyze the ability to act in a timely fashion. Ultimately, in this chapter I seek to respond to the question of how a more effective multilateral capacity can be developed within regional organizations to limit ongoing or potential genocide. Specifically, I argue that regional organizations can more effectively respond or prevent genocide and mass 157

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atrocities in a more timely fashion by establishing mechanisms for triggering political will and action when an imminent threat or escalating genocide situation has been identified.

Contextualizing Regionalism

The seminal report of the Commission on Global Governance titled Our Global Neighborhood, issued in 1995, observed, “The UN must prepare for a time when regionalism becomes more ascendant world-wide, and even help the process along.”1 Close to two decades after issuing this report, regionalism is now prevalent across the world. In particular, “Organizations for regional cooperation of varying capacity and effectiveness now cover most parts of the world, and regional collaboration remains a strong aspiration world-wide.”2 This proliferation of supranational and transnational institutions “has not only fostered cooperation between states, but has also contributed to stability within states, thus being a force for conflict prevention.”3 However, the proximity of nation-states to each other is not a guarantee that regionalism will emerge or thrive, particularly when states are competing for regional hegemony, as illustrated by the persistent tension between India and Pakistan. The predisposition to regionalism becomes more pronounced in the era of globalization, as telecommunications, financial trade, and labor migration in effect erode the salience of national borders. States are recognizing that they cannot effectively manage and exploit these trends if they restrict their activities to their borders. As a consequence, regionalism has emerged as a means for nation-states to remain relevant and project their interests in a globalized world. The manifestations of regionalism are varied across the world and often reflect the nation’s context-specific interests and priorities. Crossborder formations such as the European Union (EU), the AU, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the Organization of American States (OAS), the Arab League, and the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) in Latin America reflect the trend of states coming together. However, these regional institutions are at best in their nascent phase since none have opted for the complete pooling of sovereignty and the transfer of political power to the supranational level. Nation-states continue to guard their independence jealously, which has a constraining effect on regionalism. In the context of globalization there is increasingly a need for the joint management of resources and challenges at the regional and international levels. Regional and global institutions have to strive to

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become mutually supportive of each others’ efforts to manage international crises and issues. 4 In terms of maintaining international peace and security, the UN Charter recognizes this principle. Specifically, Article 52 of Chapter VIII states that “nothing in the present Charter precludes the existence of regional arrangements or agencies for dealing with such matters relating to the maintenance of international peace and security as are appropriate for regional action.” 5 The UN Charter even devolves the maintenance of stability to regional organizations when it states that “the members of the UN entering into such arrangements or constituting such agencies shall make every effort to achieve pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies before referring them to the Security Council.”6 More recently a trend has emerged for states acting in tandem within a region to take the initiative and address crises within their vicinity even without referring the matter to the Security Council. The AU’s intervention in Somalia in 2007 and in Comoros in 2008 are cases in point. The UN Charter already anticipated the importance of regionalism and even expected regional institutions to, in effect, become partners in maintaining international peace and security. Beyond that, the UN Charter stipulates, “The Security Council shall encourage the development of pacific settlement of local disputes through such regional arrangements or by such regional agencies either on the initiative of the states concerned or by reference from the Security Council.”7

The Politics of Naming Genocide

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines “genocide” as “acts committed with the intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical [sic], racial, or religious group.”8 These acts could include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions to destroy a group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The definition is relatively broad based. The signatories to the Genocide Convention stated that genocide is “a crime under international law” and that they undertook “to prevent and to punish” its perpetrators.9 The specific acts that are liable to punishment under this convention include genocide, a conspiracy to commit genocide, public incitement to commit genocide, an attempt to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. The fact that these crimes include a conspiracy to commit genocide means that the actual act of genocide

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itself does not even need to have been committed for perpetrators to be indicted under international law. Therefore, this array of legal provisions provides a clearly identifiable threshold beyond which perpetrators and their coconspirators can be investigated and charged. Article VIII of the Genocide Convention stipulates that parties “may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide.”10 The convention distributes the responsibility to prevent and suppress genocide to the member states of the United Nations as well as the United Nations itself; in other words, even prior knowledge of a potential act of genocide has to be addressed. Where genocide is taking place, the Genocide Convention compels the United Nations and its member states to intervene directly to suppress the act itself. The UN Charter in Chapter VII provides the means for robust intervention through enforcement measures and military action. Specifically, Article 42 states that if the UN Security Council is required to intervene to prevent “any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression,” the United Nations can “take such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security.”11 The definition of genocide is therefore not ambiguous. The challenge arises when state authorities and intergovernmental organizations choose to adopt particular interpretations of the definition provided in the Genocide Convention. The politics of naming political violence “genocide” is linked to the responsibility to prevent and suppress it. Once violence is named as genocide, the responsibility to do something becomes all the more pressing. The fact that any party to the Genocide Convention can initiate the alert of a premeditated or escalating act of genocide means that this responsibility to act is also enshrined in regional organizations, because they are in most cases constituted by groupings of states that are also UN members. The politics of whether to name political violence “genocide” has plagued the ability of regional and international organizations to prevent and intervene in a timely fashion to mitigate against pogroms. In particular, as I discuss below, the politics of naming genocide in Rwanda in 1994 prevented an effective response to the crisis. Similarly, whether genocide took place or is taking place in Darfur also remains a contested issue, as I illustrate below. Regional organizations are plagued by the same pathologies that afflict nation-states and international organizations, generally manifesting

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the same form of inertia and reluctance to make a political commitment to addressing an escalating crisis that could potentially lead to genocide. This reluctance relates to the lack of political culture transformation. The primacy of sovereignty and the reluctance to intervene in what is perceived as an internal crisis is still the dominant modus operandi of the nation-state in the Westphalian system, founded as it was on the principles of nonintervention and territorial integrity. The Genocide Convention was not only geared toward prevention but, as is stated in its title, was also adopted in order to define the parameters for punishing the perpetrators of genocide. The struggle over whether to name violence “genocide” is linked to a realization that once a genocide is named in international relations, the parties to the convention become obliged to respond in some way. The Genocide Convention constitutes the responsibility to prevent and delegates this responsibility to the United Nations and its member states. Specifically, the convention spells out binding legal obligations for all states to prevent genocide.12 As seen above, the UN Charter has constituted the basis for intervening in situations that threaten a breach in international peace and security. The 1992 document An Agenda for Peace, published by the former UN Secretary-General Boutros BoutrosGhali, argued for proactive peacemaking to offset crises before they became unmanageable, as well as humanitarian intervention to manage complex emergencies.13 In outlining suggestions for enabling intergovernmental organizations to respond quickly and effectively to threats to international peace and security in the post–Cold War era, the report identified four major areas of activity: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, peacekeeping, and postconflict peacebuilding. Preventive diplomacy strives to resolve a dispute before it escalates into violence. Peacemaking seeks to promote a cease-fire and negotiate an agreement. Peacekeeping proceeds after the outbreak of violence and involves “the deployment of a United Nations presence in the field, hitherto with the consent of all the parties concerned, normally involving United Nations military and/or police personnel and frequently civilians as well.”14 These initiatives ideally are coordinated and integrated in order to ensure postconflict peacebuilding, which includes the programs and activities that sustain the peace and prevent any future outbreak of violent conflict, and may include addressing the diplomatic, political, social, military, and security sectors, as well as economic development issues. Peace operations over the years have demonstrated that peacemaking and preventive diplomacy are much more cost effective than peacekeeping and peacebuilding.15

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Regional Organizations as Institutions for Genocide Prevention

A number of regional organizations are also taking the initiative and responsibility to act in the face of genocide. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has a mandate for conflict prevention. The OSCE high commissioner for national minorities intervenes at an early stage in countries with the potential for escalating tensions that could lead to genocidal violence. The high commissioner actively seeks to recommend changes in political engagement and national legislation to deescalate mounting tensions. As I discuss below, the African Union is one of the few regional organizations that has established the right to respond to genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in its founding charter, the AU Constitutive Act of 2000. To the extent that regional organizations can confer legitimacy on a governing state regime, they can also withdraw it. This power places regional bodies in a strategic position to exert pressure on errant regimes or governments that threaten to use force against their own people. When they are proactive, regional organizations can substantially influence their member states. In Africa, however, such influence has been more the exception than the rule. Due to political pressures from the internal political machinations of regional organizations, including the secretariats, assemblies, and councils of their member states, these bodies tend to be less effective at mobilizing the will to respond to atrocities such as genocide before they unfold. Mobilizing the responses is, therefore, severely hampered by the lack of political will to respond effectively to an escalating and full-blown crisis. In addition, as a practical matter, the failure of regional organizations to respond to genocide results from the lack of a standing force to intervene in the event that potential war crimes or crimes against humanity are being committed. Despite the fact that they were created by a group of states, most regional organizations do not have the means to project their will to stabilize a situation or resolve a crisis. Similar to their international counterparts, regional organizations almost exclusively rely on a coalition of willing member states in order to project their will to respond to potential crisis situations. In the final analysis, regional organizations need to factor in the practical modalities of how they will uphold the noble principles that they enshrine in their founding charters, in order to ultimately develop coherent genocide prevention strategies.

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The Organization of African Unity and the Rwandan Genocide

The inauguration of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) on May 25, 1963, represented the institutionalization of the ideals of panAfricanism. The preamble of the OAU Charter outlined a commitment by member states to collectively establish, maintain, and sustain the “human conditions for peace and security.”16 However, in parallel, the same OAU Charter contained the provision to “defend the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence of the member states.”17 This provision was later interpreted as a norm of nonintervention. The key organs of the OAU—the council of ministers and the assembly of heads of state and government—could only intervene in a conflict situation if the parties to a dispute invited them to do so.18 Many intrastate disputes were viewed, at the time, as internal matters and the exclusive preserve of national governments. Regrettably, due to the nonintervention doctrine, the OAU became a silent observer to the atrocities that some of its member states were committing. Eventually, a culture of impunity and indifference became entrenched in the international relations of African countries during the era of the proxy conflicts of the Cold War. During its existence the OAU used preventive diplomacy and peacemaking strategies, even though such terminology was only developed at the end of the twentieth century. To fulfill its peacemaking role, Article XIX of the OAU Charter established a Commission on Mediation, Conciliation, and Arbitration (CMCA). At the 1993 Cairo summit, the African Heads of State and Government decided to establish a mechanism to prevent, manage, and resolve conflicts in Africa.19 One year later the devastating tragedy of the Rwandan genocide took place with unrelenting ruthlessness and brutality.20 In the early 1990s, tensions were rife in Rwanda, characterized by a civil war between the government of President Juvénal Habyarimana and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF).21 The OAU was among the international actors pressuring the parties to achieve a negotiated political agreement. In July 1992 the mediation process was convened in Arusha, Tanzania. The president of Tanzania, Ali Hassan Mwinyi, led the mediation effort on behalf of the OAU. In August 1993 the Arusha Accords were signed to lay the foundation for the establishment of a transitional government and to oversee an array of political and security-sector reforms. However, the accords had the opposite effect of radicalizing the extremists within the government, who subsequently went on to plan and execute the Rwandan genocide of 1994.22

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When the situation in Rwanda deteriorated in April 1994, the international community declined to intervene in the unfolding tragedy in any meaningful way. In the UN Security Council, on May 6, 1994, “A group of non-permanent members—Spain, New Zealand, Argentina, the Czech Republic—presented a resolution calling for reinforcements” to stem the escalating massacre in Rwanda.23 This initiative was effectively quashed when “British and American diplomats told everyone that future action in Rwanda must be taken primarily through the efforts of African countries”; specifically the British ambassador at the time, David Hannay, said that in his opinion the Organization of African Unity had a “key role to play.” 24 In return, the then–secretary-general of the OAU, Salim Ahmed Salim, had communicated to the then–UN Secretary-General, Boutros-Ghali, “pointing out that because of the magnitude of the Rwandan tragedy, efforts must be made under UN auspices, with all that implied in terms of political engagement and resource commitment.”25 Salim further added, “This has been the practice in other situations of dire need elsewhere in the world. It must not be set aside in the case of Africa.”26 This almost puerile exchange demonstrated that efforts to stem the genocide in Rwanda were characterized by an unmitigated systemic failure of the international organization, in the form of the United Nations, as well as the regional organization—in this case, the OAU. These institutions preferred to dither and pass the proverbial buck rather than convene a meaningful response to the unfolding tragedy. The then–US deputy assistant secretary of defense confessed that this dithering had an origin: “I think it was a sort of a formal spectacle of the US in disarray and retreat, leading the international community away from doing the right thing and I think that everybody was perfectly happy to follow our lead—in retreat.”27 Despite the retreat of the international community from addressing the escalating situation, the OAU had from the outset been involved in brokering peace in Rwanda and had thus staked its responsibility as a regional organization for managing an intractable situation that subsequently descended into one of the defining genocides of the twentieth century.28 The Rwanda genocide revealed that the OAU was basically powerless to positively influence national policies, monitor the internal behavior of its member states, and prevent human rights atrocities from being committed. Despite the existence of mechanisms for conflict prevention and management, the Rwandan tragedy demonstrated the OAU’s virtual impotence in the face of violent conflict within its member states. Histori-

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cally, the OAU’s record indicates that a policy of nonintervention was applied to the extreme point of African nation-states oppressing their people with impunity and doing little or nothing to prevent massive human rights abuses in their neighboring countries. A culture of indifference to internal affairs prevailed in the OAU’s machinations; the OAU was essentially a toothless talking shop.29 The OAU was perceived as a club of African heads of states, most of whom were not legitimately elected representatives of their own citizens but self-appointed dictators and oligarchs. This negative perception informed people’s attitude toward the OAU. It was viewed as an organization that existed without having a genuine impact on Africans’ daily lives. In effect, the OAU was a silent observer to the atrocities being committed by its member states. The impetus for adopting a new paradigm in promoting peace and security on the African continent emerged following the Rwandan tragedy. The United Nations did not fare any better in Rwanda; all of its peacekeeping troops, except the Ghanaian contingent, pulled out of the country leaving its people to their fate. Subsequently, both the OAU and the United Nations issued reports acknowledging their failures. Specifically, in 2000 the OAU issued a report titled Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide.30 This report was a damning indictment of the inadequacy of the regional organization’s ability to intervene rapidly to prevent a deteriorating violent conflict situation from becoming progressively worse, leading to genocide or other crimes against humanity and war crimes. In the end, the OAU and the United Nations both lacked the political will to act, illustrating the limitations that beset regional organizations.

The African Union and the Challenge of Effective Genocide Prevention

In 1999, five years after the Rwandan genocide, African leaders met inauspiciously in Sirte, Libya, to review the OAU charter. This meeting emphasized the importance of strengthening the solidarity among African countries and reviving the spirit of pan-Africanism. Following animated discussions, the African Union (AU) project was born, with the decision to draft an act of constitution. The AU’s Constitutive Act was subsequently signed in Lomé, Togo, on July 11, 2000. The AU’s official inauguration took place in July 2002, in Durban, South Africa, and represented the next stage in the evolution of the ideal of panAfricanism.

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The AU is learning from the lessons of the OAU and has adopted a much more interventionist stance through its legal frameworks and institutions. The AU Peace and Security Council was established in 2004 through the Protocol Relating to the Peace and Security Council of 2002.31 The AU’s fifteen-member Peace and Security Council is mandated to conduct peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. The Peace and Security Council is tasked with assessing potential crisis situations, sending fact-finding missions to trouble spots, and being positioned to authorize and legitimize the AU’s intervention in internal crisis situations. Article 4(h) of the AU Constitutive Act affirms the right of the union to intervene in a member state with respect to crisis situations. In specific, Article 7, 1(e), of the Protocol Relating to the Peace and Security Council states that the council can “recommend to the Assembly (of Heads of State), intervention, on behalf of the Union, in a Member State in respect of grave circumstances, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, as defined in relevant international conventions and instruments.”32 This is a major qualitative difference between the legal mandate of the AU and the OAU charter. With the adoption of these legal provisions, for the first time in Africa’s history, the continental organization working through an appointed group of states has the authority to intervene in internal situations that might lead to genocide against minority groups or communities at risk within states. The African Union has been operational for a decade now, and it is appropriate to reflect on whether the peace and security architecture has achieved its intended objectives. In 2002 the AU adopted the Protocol on the Establishment of the Peace and Security Council which launched the creation of the Peace and Security Council (PSC), the African Standby Force (ASF), the Continental Early Warning Mechanism, and the Panel of the Wise. The ASF comprises five brigades from each of Africa’s subregions: South, East, Central, West, and North. This architecture is designed to oversee the implementation of the AU’s peacemaking, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding initiatives. This architecture is also ostensibly designed to prevent genocide in the mold of the Rwandan tragedy of 1994 from ever transpiring on the African continent again. The African continent continued to be afflicted by violent conflict into the twenty-first century, with devastating consequences for its people, specifically in countries such as South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Somalia having to deal with the persistent legacy of past conflicts.33

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The AU’s Response to the Darfur Violence

The AU’s intervention in the Darfur crisis dates back to April 8, 2004, when it sought to find a political solution to the crisis. In particular, the regional organization brokered a cease-fire—between the government of Sudan and the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) armed resistance movements—in order to enable humanitarian aid to reach the affected populations.34 The AU subsequently embarked on establishing and financing a cease-fire verification commission. The AU brokered another agreement, on May 28, 2004, that authorized the deployment of an Armed Protection Force of about 300 troops from Rwanda and Nigeria to the western Sudanese region of Darfur. The force was intended to allow refugees to return home and to protect AU observers monitoring the fragile cease-fire that had been signed on April 8, 2004, but this small force was perhaps inadequate for policing a region the size of other medium-sized African countries. The AU force also did not have the mandate to prevent attacks, notably from the aerial bombardment of the Sudanese Air Force, but the AU hoped that it could play a preventive role by being in the vicinity of the conflict. In addition, the then-chairperson of the AU, former president Alpha Oumar Konaré of Mali, argued that the “AU would not sit idly while atrocities persisted” in the region.35 Konaré requested that the Sudanese government make every effort to halt the bombing that was taking place and asked the Janjaweed militia to desist from military action. The thenchairman of the AU Assembly of Heads of State and Government, former president Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, added to this concern when he stated that the intervention was an attempt to demonstrate the AU’s “determination to be proactive,” prevent violence, and protect lives and property.36 Leaving aside for a moment the matter of whether the AU’s intervention was adequate, this intervention—the second, after a similar deployment in Burundi—was indeed symbolic in terms of confirming the regional organization’s commitment to intervention to prevent conflict in its sphere of responsibility. It was also a precursor to subsequent AU interventions in other parts of the continent. Whether it was actually a demonstration of the AU living up to its stated principles, enshrined in its Constitutive Act, of implementing its responsibility to protect remains a contentious subject. Of course, much pain and suffering could be prevented if the AU enhanced and strengthened its mechanism for preventive diplomacy and early response to potential conflicts before they escalate.

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The AU’s efforts at promoting a political solution were naturally related to its parallel efforts to create a peacekeeping force in order to monitor the situation and try to prevent the violence and atrocities from escalating. In terms of peacekeeping, the AU deployed a protection force to Darfur in June 2004, also known as the African Mission in the Sudan (AMIS).37 An expanded AU mission, AMIS II, was authorized in October 2005 and includes civilian police units to protect refugee camps. The AU mission floundered because the Sudanese government was obstructionist and prevented its effective functioning. The AU had a rather weak mandate in Darfur: to monitor the humanitarian crisis in the region and coordinate efforts to advance the cause of peace. The ability of the AU to achieve and fulfill its mission in this situation would always depend on its capacity to mobilize the political will of its member states. The AMIS operation was due to wind down and be replaced by a more robust UN peacekeeping operation. However, the Sudanese government rejected efforts to convert the AU mission into a UN mission and requested the AMIS mission to terminate its operations by September 30, 2006. The government of Sudan was quite adept at maneuvering against the establishment of a UN peacekeeping force on its territory. The Khartoum regime under President Omar al-Bashir categorically stated that the presence of a UN force would be tantamount to the recolonization of Sudan. However, UN Security Council Resolution 1706 requested that the Secretary-General “take the necessary steps to strengthen AMIS through the use of existing and additional United Nations resources with a view to transition to a United Nations operation in Darfur.”38 The UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) was already supporting AMIS through its UN Assistance Cell in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where the AU is headquartered. More specifically, DPKO and the AU’s Peace Support Operations Division had signed an agreement to develop a joint action plan, and in July 2006 the UN created a dedicated integrated capacity to oversee the implementation of this action plan. This integrated capacity would involve the “collocation” of UN staff within the AU commission in Addis Ababa. This innovative approach of embedding UN staff within the operational structures of a regional organization represented an attempt at forging a hybrid partnership. Through persistence in addressing and overcoming the objections put forward by the Sudanese government, the UN Security Council officially authorized the deployment of the UN/African Union Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) in July 2007.39 The plan was that UNAMID would incorporate AMIS personnel, but also be buttressed by additional UN heavy

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and light support equipment and machinery. Its initial authorization called for the deployment of 19,555 military personnel, plus 6,432 police and a “significant civilian component.”40 Staff were drawn from Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, and South Africa, among other countries. Its operating budget in 2009 was $1.7 billion per year, which was the largest in the history of UN peacekeeping operations.41 By mid-2013, at the time of this writing, UNAMID maintained a presence in Darfur. Despite the security challenges, UNAMID has conducted and continues to conduct confidence-building patrols, providing convoy protection and facilitating humanitarian access. The AU’s intervention to mitigate against the Darfur violence through AMIS I and II failed to fulfill their mandate because they had insufficient troops and inadequate equipment and training. The inefficacy of AMIS was also due to the fact that since the conflict began in 2003, the situation in Darfur has descended into confusion with the increasing factionalization of the initial armed resistance groups. As of 2013, this factionalization was still prevalent in Darfur and efforts are ongoing to forge common ground through peace talks hosted in Doha, Qatar. The AU’s monitoring mission left much to be desired, and a more robust UN peacekeeping force was required to effectively end the silent genocide that was taking place there.42 On September 9, 2004, former US secretary of state Colin Powell provided the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee with written evidence in which he stated that “despite having been put on notice multiple times, Khartoum has failed to stop the violence.” He further noted that “genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the Government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility—and genocide may still be occurring.”43 In mid-September 2004, the UN Security Council established the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur. This commission published its report on January 25, 2005, which stated that “it would seem that those who planned and organized attacks on villages pursued the intent to drive the victims from their homes, primarily for the purposes of counter-insurgency warfare.”44 However, the report also stated that individuals, including government officials, may have possessed “genocidal intent.”45

The Role of the Arab League in Addressing Atrocities in Syria

The Arab League’s early attempts to address the crisis in Syria represent another instance in which a regional organization endeavored and failed to prevent mass atrocities. The Cairo-based Arab League was confronted

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with a challenge in 2011 following widespread protests against the Syrian government. President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him had maintained their rule over the country for more than forty years. In March 2011, nationwide protests began and spread across several Syrian cities and regions. The government deployed the military to quell these protests, which resulted in the death of more than 5,000 people, according to the United Nations, throughout the rest of 2011.46 On December 26, 2011, the Arab League deployed 165 monitors to verify Syria’s compliance with an agreement to stop the forceful crackdown on protesters.47 This mission was hastily deployed when it became evident that, despite the ten months of activism, the protesters were determined to continue voicing their concerns and the government was equally driven to prevent them from doing so by violent means. President al-Assad agreed to a peace plan to halt the violent repression of the protesters. However, the agreement stipulated that the Arab League monitors were only empowered to observe the situation on the ground, meaning they would not be able to intervene in the event that they witnessed atrocities being committed. As a consequence, the violent attacks against antigovernment protesters continued unabated. The Arab League remained divided on how to deal with the killing of antigovernment protesters in Syria. In January 2012 the Arab Parliament, an advisory body to the Arab League, stated that the Syrian regime was manipulating the presence of its monitors in Syria as a useful cover to the international community so that the regime could continue with its atrocities.48 Ali Salem Al-Deqbasi, the Kuwaiti head of the Arab Parliament, noted that “the killing of children and the violation of human rights law is happening in the presence of Arab League monitors.”49 Al-Deqbasi further stated that the mission of the Arab League team had failed in its primary mission in preventing “the killing of children and ensuring the withdrawal of troops from the Syrian streets,” and was in fact “giving the Syrian regime a cover to commit inhumane acts under the noses of the Arab League observers.”50 Far from bringing relief to the suffering population, the Arab League became a co-opted spectator to what was progressively becoming a theater for the execution of mass atrocity. Syrian opposition groups argued at the time that the Arab League’s mission only succeeded in buying the Assad regime more time to continue with its massacres. The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, while on a visit to neighboring Lebanon, noted that the Syrian uprising was more violent in comparison to the popular protests in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in 2011, which toppled their long-standing dictators.51 Despite the musings

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of the Secretary-General, the UN Security Council also remained deeply divided on how to respond to the Syrian situation, given the fact that the powerful permanent members of the body (the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, and France) remained at odds on how to respond to the unfolding crisis. The Syrian debacle undermined the Arab League’s status as a body capable of preventing mass atrocities. The Arab League’s faltering efforts exposed the limits to which regional organizations can act to prevent violent repression by their member states.

Insights from Interventions by Regional Organizations

The AU’s intervention in Darfur and the Arab League’s fledgling role in Syria provide some insights on whether regional organizations are better situated than national or international organizations to establish mechanisms to prevent genocide or to intervene to stop it once it has begun. Certainly, as early as 2004, it was right and proper for the AU to intervene in Darfur, or for some form of international peace operation to be staged there, particularly in the absence of the international community’s will to mount a response to the escalating genocidal violence. Regrettably, the AU’s peacemaking efforts failed to deliver a genuinely comprehensive agreement, and its peace monitoring operation floundered. In this environment, government forces, the Janjaweed, and the armed resistance groups could continue fighting among themselves and extend the carnage and destruction of Darfurians’ lives and property. In Syria, the Arab League could not muster a more robust response to the Damascus regime, with serious consequences for the nation’s citizens. The AU’s intervention was stymied by the stubborn stance of the Sudanese government, based on its appeal to the strictures of sovereignty and the principle of nonintervention in member states’ affairs. Similarly, the Arab League’s efforts were undermined by the Syrian regime’s capacity for obfuscation, double-speak, and deception, and the regime’s consistent position that the so-called antigovernment protesters were actually terrorists and criminals bent on undermining governance and stability in the country. Even with the deployment of monitors in December 2011, the Arab League failed to moderate the violent action against the protesters, which further undermined the league’s credibility to act in the face of crisis. Regional organizations will likely confront similar obstacles in the future. Ultimately, the AU’s effort to deploy a mission to Darfur and the Arab League’s monitoring efforts in Syria were defined by the absence

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of fully articulated frameworks for preventing genocide. In Darfur, the AU found itself with a test case that it was ill equipped institutionally and underresourced financially to resolve. The AU acknowledged that it had insufficient funds for its Darfur operation.52 Ultimately, the operational capacity of the AU and its financial and logistical limitations illustrated that the organization needed adequate funds to achieve its objectives. The AU also needs to further enhance the level of efficiency and eradicate the administrative bottlenecks that hinder the rapid deployment of its peace operations. In this regard, through the African Standby Force, the AU is in the process of establishing a permanent institutional framework for training civilian and military personnel to function more effectively in peacekeeping operations. Similarly, the Arab League has not had to deal with a crisis of the magnitude of the Syrian uprising and was also ill equipped, even in terms of its policy for preventing, and later responding to, atrocities. Regional organizations should be concerned with reinforcing their capacity to intervene in the future when genocide or mass atrocities threaten to escalate.

The Limits of Mobilizing and Maintaining the Political Will to Prevent Genocide

When the Rwandan crisis was unfolding with overwhelming proof of genocide, the UN Security Council’s first impulse was “to create a committee of experts to evaluate the evidence.”53 A report commissioned by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and issued in December 1999 concluded by blaming everyone associated with the organization, including the Secretary-General, the Secretariat, the Security Council, and the UN membership.54 This report concluded that Secretary-General BoutrosGhali should have argued strongly for reinforcing the UN mission in Rwanda. Boutros-Ghali in turn argued that without the support of the United States and the United Kingdom, no movement could take place on enhancing the United Nations’ intervention. The system of secret and informal consultations held by the UN Security Council means that the exact record of what transpired as the Rwandan genocide was unfolding may now be lost forever. A strong case now exists for informal consultations to be filmed on closed-circuit television so as to ensure the presence of a public record.55 In the mid-1990s the United Nations had become allergic to extending interventions, following the debacle in Somalia. In effect, “Politicians were determined to conduct casualty-free interventions and, with a lack of public awareness because of the inadequate press coverage, there

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were no choices given and no risks were taken.”56 There was a general reluctance to engage in an open dialogue about who should intervene in Rwanda and how.57 The victims of the Rwandan genocide, like the European Jews during World War II, were abandoned to their fate. As far as contemporary interventions are concerned, governments will likely resist any incursion into their sovereign territory. Governments, particularly those with dubious legitimacy, prefer to retain all the national means to deploy force, and any trend that encourages the possibility of external intervention would threaten this condition. As things stand in the second decade of the twenty-first century, the African continent could still relive the Rwanda nightmare scenario, since the continent has no robust mechanisms and troops in place to project stability. The AU is working toward this objective, but years will pass before it is fully operational. The Arab League was exposed for its lack of an effective mechanism to prevent the commission of atrocities by its member states. Both organizations will require help from external partners to genuinely put in place a continental force that could prevent future war crimes and crimes against humanity. The limitations of the AU’s fledgling institutions have been exposed by the failure to prevent the incremental genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. The basic conditions required for the effective prevention of genocide were absent in Darfur. Specifically, there was no peace to keep, and the government and the parties continued to pursue a military solution to the conflict. Whether the UN Security Council mandate was achievable in the circumstances that prevailed in the region is therefore not clear. The UN Secretary-General has acknowledged that, as far as the situation in Darfur was concerned, the operation’s effectiveness was largely contingent on the parties’ commitment to the peace process, without which an intervening force would be vulnerable. Similarly, the Arab League was vulnerable in the face of intransigence from the Syrian regime and singularly unable to prevent human rights violations from being committed. The actions of the AU and the Arab League were in many respects, however, the only alternative to a dithering, detached, and disengaged international community. Paradoxically, only when the situation gets even more untenable does the international community, mainly through the United Nations, come in to mend broken societies. Perversely, the financial resources deployed to conduct these missions (for example, the $1.7 billion in the case of Darfur) would have been more wisely spent strengthening the continental mechanisms for preventing and resolving conflict at an early stage, before the outbreak of violent con-

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frontation and potential genocide. This discrepancy in financing the United Nations’ security agenda ultimately has to be remedied if the world is to witness fewer complex humanitarian calamities like the situations in Darfur and Syria. The United Nations is implementing a tenyear capacity-building program to build and enhance the capacity of the AU to collaborate on planning and implementing joint activities and intervention. A strong case can be made for a similar capacity-building program for the Arab League, particularly given the popular uprisings of 2011 and 2012. The AU and Arab League have adopted a stance that can be characterized as “interventionist,” as far as responding to mass atrocities and conflict. However, this interventionism has not been predicated on a coherent policy toward crisis and potential genocidal situations, and can be best described as “reactive interventionism.” The AU and the Arab League are both beset by a reactive form of interventionism that in many respects is a function of the absence of a proactive culture of crisis prevention within these regional organizations and their member states. The AU and the Arab League both need to make the transition from reactive interventionism toward more proactive interventionism. Challenges need to be overcome at the strategic level of decisionmaking and at the tactical and operational level of implementation in order to ensure that proactive interventionism becomes entrenched in the modus operandi of the organs and institutions of the AU and the Arab League. Regional organizations, like their international counterparts, have historically exhibited a lack of strategic clarity as far as intervening in genocidal situations. The lack of adequate rapid response systems and persistent institutional weakness means that regional organizations have been unable to effectively mitigate against genocide. A paradigm shift needs to take place in the constitution of regional organizations, predicated on an effective means to prevent and respond to genocide.58

Conclusion

Genocide is conceived in the minds of human beings, and it is therefore incumbent on humanity to find a response to this scourge. The twentyfirst century has demonstrated that a predilection for exterminating the other, for whatever reason, is still a feature of international relations. Political factors clearly shape the nature of regional and international responses to the possibility and actuality of genocidal violence.59 Regional organizations often have to step into the fray when the international system is unwilling to intervene in a crisis situation. The prox-

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imity of regional organizations to escalating crisis situations means that they recognize the importance of a timely intervention, due to the potential impact of the spillover effects on their member states. In this chapter I assessed the OAU and the Rwandan genocide, the AU’s attempt to intervene in the pogroms in Darfur, and the Arab League’s efforts to prevent atrocities being committed in Syria. Regional organizations are constituted by their member states, and even though their founding documents might enshrine noble principles on preventing mass atrocities, experience demonstrates that such principles are often sacrificed on the altars of sovereignty, territorial integrity, and nonintervention. Therefore, regional organizations are confronted by a variety of political challenges when faced with a situation that calls for preventing potential genocide. Regional organizations are not yet in a position to prevent genocide or atrocities independently. The AU required the intervention in Darfur to mitigate against the escalating violence in the region. The AU’s deployment to prevent the escalating crisis in Darfur, through AMIS I and II, demonstrated the significant challenges that regional organizations will face, particularly when it comes to navigating the interests of their member states—in this case, Sudan—to prevent any intervention. Similarly, the Arab League was also inadequately structured to deal with regional uprisings and crisis situations. Codeployment with the United Nations could be a model for reinforcing regional organizations’ capacity to prevent genocide. Implicit in the charter of the United Nations is the recognition of global interdependence. The interconnectivity of the world means that we need to rethink our notions of security. We now live in an era of what we can call security interdependence, which means acknowledging that international peace and security are predicated on achieving regional peace and security, and that instability in one part of the world can impact another. Furthermore, with security interdependence, we need to develop the capacity of regional security organizations to respond to genocide by providing professional and infrastructural support to ensure effective regional security provisions and the ability to prevent genocide. The challenge is to ensure that the necessary strategic planning takes place so that regional institutions are able to project stability where necessary, through clear command-and-control structures, with professional personnel who are effectively trained to undertake the required tasks. In the emerging global context, regional arrangements will need to be reinforced in the absence of a universal system for collective security that is not mired in political calculations, and they will need to be robust enough to be deployed fairly rapidly.

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In this chapter I also sought to respond to the question of how a more effective multilateral capacity can be developed within regional organizations to limit ongoing or potential genocide. The experiences in Africa and the Middle East offer a number of critical insights on the difficulty of overcoming political fault lines in order to activate the will to respond within regional organizations. The African Union and the Arab League need to orient the political leadership of the continent toward taking decisive and necessary action to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. Regional organizations are more strategically situated within the proximity of potential crisis situations to deploy fact-finding and preventive diplomacy missions. In that respect regional organizations are more likely to take on the role of first responders to an unfolding regional crisis. In this regard, regional organizations should rely more on providing early warning and the appropriate early action to respond to potentially escalating tensions that could generate a genocidal conflict and affect a region’s peace and stability, as well as relations between nations. Regional organizations should become involved in the business of systematically deescalating tensions involving ethnic and racial groups and in formally alerting the wider international system of situations that are threatening to get out of control. To do this effectively, all regional organizations must develop coherent genocide prevention strategies. If they do, regional organizations are well placed to play a critical role in international efforts to prevent or stop genocide in the future.

Notes 1. Commission on Global Governance, Our Global Neighborhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 286. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Neil MacFarlane and Thomas Weiss, “Regional Organizations and Regional Security,” Security Studies 2, no. 1 (1992): 6–37. 5. United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice, New York: United Nations, 1945, Article 52(1), emphasis added. 6. Ibid., Article 52(2), emphasis added. 7. Ibid., Article 52(3), emphasis added. 8. United Nations, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, New York: United Nations, 1948, Article 2. 9. Ibid., Article 1. 10. Ibid., Article 8. 11. United Nations, Charter of the United Nations and Statute of the International Court of Justice, Article 42.

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12. William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 13. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peacekeeping (New York: United Nations, 1992). 14. Ibid., para. 20. 15. See Michael Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy (Washington, DC: US Institute for Peace, 1996), and Wilhelm Höynck, “The Role of the CSCE and Other Organizations in Managing Crisis and Maintaining Peace,” Studia Diplomatica 47, no. 4 (1994): 37–49. 16. Solomon Gomes, “The Peacemaking and Mediation Role of the OAU and AU: What Prospects?,” paper submitted to the Center for Conflict Resolution (CCR) policy seminar, “Building an African Union (AU) for the 21st Century,” Cape Town, South Africa, August 20–22, 2005. 17. Organization of African Unity, Charter of the Organization of African Unity (Addis Ababa: OAU, 1963). 18. Samuel Asante, “The Role of the Organization of African Unity in Promoting Peace, Development, and Regional Security in Africa,” in Africa: Perspectives on Peace and Development, edited by Emmanuel Hansen (London: Zed Books, 1989), pp. 123–158. 19. Kwame Nkrumah’s proposal for an executive council that would, among other things, address dispute and conflict situations failed to attract the needed support because it was viewed as being associated with his proposal to establish a “Union Government for Africa.” Sierra Leone’s proposal for an African security council failed principally because the government, like Kwame Nkrumah, did not canvass the membership for support, nor did it strive to dispel fears that some parties had about the establishment of such a council. 20. Henry K. Anyidoho, Guns over Kigali (Accra, Ghana: Woeli Publishing, 1997). 21. Peter Uvin, Aiding Violence: The Development Enterprise in Rwanda (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998). 22. Howard Adelman and Astri Suhrke, eds., The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999). 23. Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000), p. 192. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Interview with James Woods, “The Triumph of Evil,” Frontline, January 26, 1999, www.pbs.org. 28. Gérard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (London: C. Hurst, 1995). 29. Samuel Makinda and Wafula Okumu, The African Union: Challenges of Globalization, Security, and Governance (London: Routledge, 2008). 30. Organization of African Unity, Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide (Addis Ababa: Organization of African Unity, 2000); and United Nations, “Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda,” New York: United Nations, 1999. 31. African Union, “Protocol Relating to the Establishment of the Peace

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and Security Council of the African Union,” Addis Ababa: African Union, 2002. 32. Ibid., p. 9. 33. Gérard Prunier, From Genocide to Continental War: The Congolese Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa (London: C. Hurst, 2009). 34. See “Sudan: The Who’s Who of the Darfur Groups in Sirte,” Nairobi: Integrated Regional Information Networks, November 1, 2007, www.irinnews.org. 35. Timothy Murithi, The African Union: Pan-Africanism, Peacebuilding, and Development (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2005), p. 91. 36. Ibid., p. 92. 37. Roberta Cohen, “No Quick Fix for Darfur,” Northwestern Journal of International Affairs 8 (Fall): 1–7. 38. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1706 (2006), S/RES/1706 (2006), August 31, 2006, paragraph 11. 39. United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769, establishing the United Nations/African Union Hybrid operation in Darfur (UNAMID), July 31, 2007. 40. United Nations, “UNAMID Facts and Figures,” www.un.org/en/peace keeping/missions/unamid/facts.shtml. 41. United Nations, “Report of the Secretary-General on the Deployment of the African Union–United Nations Hybrid Operation in Darfur,” S/2009/201, April 14, 2009. 42. Gérard Prunier, Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005). 43. Colin Powell, “The Crisis in Darfur,” written remarks before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Washington, DC, September 9, 2004. 44. UN Security Council, International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, January 2005, p. 4. 45. Julie Flint and Alex de Waal, Darfur: A New History of a Long War (London: Zed Books, 2008), p. 132. 46. Khaled Yacoub Oweis, “Syria Protests Erupt, Arab League Fears Civil War,” Reuters, March 18, 2011. 47. “Syrian Observers ‘A Failure,’” Sunday Times [South Africa], January 15, 2012. 48. Catrina Stewart, “Monitors Being Used as Cover for Killing in Syria,” The Independent, January 3, 2012. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Oweis, “Syria Protests Erupt.” 52. Report of the chairperson of the African Union Commission on Conflict Situations in Africa, Executive Council, Seventh Ordinary Session, June 28–July 2, 2005, Sirte, Libya, EX.CL/191 (VII). 53. UN Security Council resolution 935 of July 1, 1994, mandated the creation of an impartial Commission of Experts to examine and analyze information concerning serious violations of international law, including genocide. The committee was paradoxically staffed by Africans, including Astu-Koffi Amega, a former president of the Supreme Court of Togo; Habi Dieng, former attorney general of Guinea; and Salifou Fomba, a professor of law in Mali who was also a former member of the UN International Law Commission.

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54. The three-man Panel of Inquiry included Ingvar Carlsson, former prime minister of Sweden; Han Sung-joo, former foreign minister of the Republic of Korea; and Lieutenant-General Rufus Kupolati of Nigeria, the former head of the UN Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO) in Jerusalem. 55. Melvern, A People Betrayed, p. 229. 56. Ibid. 57. Michael Barnett, “The Politics of Indifference at the United Nations and Genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia,” in This Time We Knew: Western Response to Genocide in Bosnia, edited by Thomas Cushman and Stjepan Meštrovi (New York: New York University Press, 1996), pp. 128–162. 58. Scott Feil, “Preventing Genocide: How the Early Use of Force Might Have Succeeded in Rwanda,” Report of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, New York: Carnegie Corporation of New York, 1998. 59. Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981).

8 The Role of the UN Security Council Colin Keating

I

nternal political factors, resources, and political dynamics involving wider international relations have often limited responses to genocide. History would suggest that national interest and geopolitics are likely to continue to constrain options for promoting timely prevention and other responses. However, a close examination of how cases have been treated in the UN Security Council since the end of the Cold War shows that a potentially significant evolution has occurred and that some grounds exist for hoping for better outcomes in the future.

The Prevention Dilemma

Almost everybody intuitively understands the idea that prevention is better than cure and that, in the face of threatened or actual mass atrocities, taking action to protect as many civilians as possible and preventing more deaths and atrocities is better than waiting until the violence subsides and then trying to deal in the best manner with humanitarian consequences and accountability. Action to protect civilians can be invoked at various points along the spectrum leading to atrocities, and also as atrocities are being committed. In practice, all such action has a preventive rationale—an investment of resources to keep harm from spreading to a wider group of innocents. When the case of Libya emerged in March 2011, many practitioners saw it essentially as a challenge of prevention. For policymakers, whether analysing the options in terms of prevention of mass atrocities,

To accommodate the author, the spelling in this chapter is inconsistent with that in the rest of the book.

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protection of civilians, or intervention under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the discussion was about policy options to prevent atrocities from spreading. Many people in the academic community have tended to see prevention, protection of civilians, and intervention to stop mass atrocities as discrete analytical categories, and the UN methodology of producing separate reports on these sets of issues may have helped to reinforce that trend. This approach, however, breeds confusion in practice, which a number of states have exploited based on their absolute view of sovereignty. They would prefer no international response to mass atrocities. Policymakers rarely, if ever, have the luxury of dealing with situations that fall into neat, narrow analytical boxes. Some recent academic commentary beginning to recognize the very real interconnections between these issues is therefore encouraging. Alex Bellamy, in his 2011 “Policy Analysis Brief” for the Stanley Foundation, comments on the close connection between prevention and response under the responsibility to protect (R2P), “The strong empirical correlation between the two phenomena implies a direct link,” and he notes that many of the prevention tools are very similar.1 Because of this intimate practical connection between prevention, protection, and other actions to protect—and the fact that politically there will almost always be a preventive dimension—we need to understand what I call the “prevention dilemma.” This dilemma is well understood in wider domestic policy contexts. Practitioners in the health sector are familiar with the prevention dilemma. In many countries, the health benefits of preventive intervention are widely recognised. The value of shifting from a spending paradigm based on expensive hospitals, which treat illnesses after the event, to a paradigm based on prevention is well understood.2 Even so, securing a sustainable commitment to prevention is often difficult to achieve politically. Similarly, securing political agreement on domestic policy interventions for prevention in the criminal justice sector has also been problematic. During my tenure as secretary for justice in New Zealand, I was often amazed at how quickly and positively most politicians would welcome initiatives to respond to crime after the event. Large, expensive programs for police, courts, and prisons were strongly supported, but even modest prevention programs in local communities were hard to sell. My counterparts in other countries reported the same kind of dilemma. One of the key reasons for political resistance to prevention—in the wide sense outlined above—is that politically the most potent event is a crisis that has actually happened: a crime wave, an earthquake, a flood, a humanitarian disaster, or a massacre of civilians. Public sentiment to

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support action in such cases is easily generated, which translates into willingness to spend public funds. In contrast, a crisis that is still in the making or which might be arrested is a crisis that might not happen or might not be as serious as feared. Public sympathy, the media, and NGO attention are often not yet engaged. Competing demands loom large. For these reasons, deferring proposals for prevention is almost always easier politically, and securing support for spending public funds is harder. Decisionmakers worry about the opportunity cost and fear that resources might be wasted. This factor is all too apparent in some of the cases that the UN Security Council addressed and which I discuss below. A key problem with prevention is that one can rarely prove subsequently that prevention succeeded. Some critics of proposed prevention actions argue that the feared event might never occur. Others worry about the “complexity factor”—the possibility that the proposed preventive intervention will be much more difficult than understood at the outset and thus create new, unforeseen problems. Complexity of local problems—which outsiders may poorly understand—and uncertainty about spillover effects drive such concerns. Abstentions in the Security Council in March 2011 over the action on Libya reflected some of these concerns. In brief, despite the widespread intuitive support for prevention being better than cure, a trend is also widespread to resist spending money and resources on preventive responses. At the UN World Summit in 2005, member states committed to take action multilaterally via the Security Council to protect threatened populations from mass atrocities. This decision supported early preventive measures as well as more forceful protective action further along the spectrum.3 The 2005 decision was reinforced at the UN General Assembly in 20094 in its debate on the responsibility to protect, and again in 2010 at a General Assembly informal interactive dialogue that focused on the issue of early warning.5 The consensus in support of action to prevent atrocities would seem to be reinforced—in principle at least—by the Security Council’s intensified interest in recent years in the related concepts of preventive diplomacy, mediation, and noncoercive measures for the prevention of conflict as well as the protection of civilians.6 The preventive theme has been articulated strongly not only by Western nations but also by many Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) members. A wide spectrum of Latin American and Asian members of the United Nations concerned about the impact of conflict on civilians have also increasingly championed prevention and protection. The crit-

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ical link between good governance, development and security, and the importance of collective action for preventing war and mass atrocities is increasingly being highlighted in this context.7 Some African countries have been among the strongest champions of the collective preventive model—conscious of the need to give effect to the far-reaching provisions of the African Union Constitutive Act.8 These nations are also keen for legitimate collective processes that would help to limit the scope for former colonial powers to exercise disproportionate influence in situations in which violence actually breaks out.9 There has also been the interesting phenomenon of China and Russia justifying their resistance to proposed robust UN Security Council action, such as sanctions, in some specific cases by arguing for delay so as to allow for more preventive diplomacy and negotiation to resolve underlying social and economic issues.10 This trend sits in the context of an evolving thematic focus in the Security Council over more than a decade on the normative context for action with respect to protection of civilians; protection of children, women, and girls; and the importance of justice and avoiding impunity.11 As the examples in this chapter clearly show, this thematic progress has not always been matched by equivalent political traction in countryspecific cases. Too often the Security Council has seemed slow or unable (as in the case of Sri Lanka and presently in Syria) to put these thematic principles into practice. The reasons are many, geopolitics and national interest being prime considerations. As I show below in this chapter, there are some hopeful developments. But equally, as the case of Syria is demonstrating, securing agreement in the Security Council on preventive protective action remains difficult. Caution is still appropriate about the reasonableness of expectations for automatic collective action in all cases to prevent genocide and other mass atrocities.

Evolution in the Security Council, 1990–2011

Since the end of the Cold War, the Security Council has been a major focus for initiatives to develop collective strategies and action to protect civilians and prevent or deter atrocities. My analysis is not an exhaustive review of the work of the Council on these issues over the last two decades. Space does not permit a full review or analysis of all the situations in which the Council might have taken a preventive approach. I therefore selected certain cases and offer a discussion of the evolution of practice, which demonstrates the difficult interaction between national interest, on the one hand, and the impulse to prevent or protect,

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on the other. But my analysis also reveals some trends that, despite the case of Syria, might give hope for the future. Bosnia and Herzegovina

The conflicts in the former Yugoslavia were an important early challenge to the post–Cold War optimism that the Security Council could control conflict and protect civilians. In these conflicts, atrocities against civilians were a deliberate strategy. The UN role in Bosnia, approved by the Security Council, always had a protection dimension. The very name of the mission, UNPROFOR, was an acronym for the UN “Protection Force.”12 And in a limited number of geographical areas— the so-called safe areas—UNPROFOR had a very specific mandate for protection and prevention of attacks on civilians.13 My conclusion, as New Zealand’s ambassador to the United Nations and member of the Security Council in 1993 and 1994, was that the United Nations was able at certain times and in certain places to provide an element of protection for many Bosnians. The United Nations often was able to facilitate the humanitarian supply convoys that sustained— barely—large elements of the population. Its presence was an important factor in Sarajevo’s ability to withstand the Serbian siege. But for most Bosnians most of the time, the protection force was a cruel illusion. Convoys escorted by tanks or armored personnel carriers (APCs) were too often turned back by Serb policemen with light weapons. Atrocities—and eventually genocide—were committed under the noses of UN forces.14 The absence of resolute, robust, and consistent protection action by UN forces was caused by a lack of agreement within the Council on whether the mission could use force only in self-defence or whether force could also be used to prevent atrocities and in defence of those who were supposedly being protected. This lack of consensus flowed out of quite different assessments of national interest. On the one hand, a large majority in the UN General Assembly,15 and sometimes in the Security Council as well, sympathized with the plight of the besieged Bosnian Muslim population. But the permanent members of the Council were divided. Russia, in the Council and in the Bosnia Contact Group, argued that the United Nations should not take sides and that using force to protect the Bosnian population would amount to taking sides. Not only the Security Council was hamstrung by divisions on policy regarding the use of force to protect the Bosnians. The same cleavage divided the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Group of Seven nations (G7).

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The United Kingdom and France also resisted taking a robust position. They argued in favor of a neutral role for UNPROFOR on the basis that only a negotiated peace could lead to a viable long-term solution, and that use of force by the United Nations would compromise the negotiating process, remove the United Nations’ impartial status, and require much greater forces than were available. But my sense was that behind the British and French public positions lay a much stronger European security/national interest analysis. The Cold War had just ended. In Russia, President Boris Yeltsin, who was being somewhat cooperative with the West on Bosnia via the Contact Group, was struggling to survive. Open conflict involving use of effective force against the Bosnian Serbs, which risked bringing their backers in Belgrade formally into the conflict as well, might have generated a real backlash in Russia from former communists supporting a pro-Serbian position. It seemed to me that both the United Kingdom and France may have seen real risks—going far beyond the situation in the former Yugoslavia—that taking forceful action in Bosnia might provoke Russian nationalist/communist forces that would topple Yeltsin and possibly even restart the Cold War. If this analysis is correct, specific protection needs in Bosnia were at times perhaps subordinated to what was seen as a wider geopolitical good. But also, as time passed and the Bosnian situation became more desperate, the United Kingdom and France both went to significant expense to deploy large contingents on the ground. The two nations also accepted—and in some cases provided active support for—the limited use of force by NATO air strikes in defence of safe areas.16 For my part, I was not convinced that it was necessary for the United Nations to be supine in the face of atrocities. New Zealand was a consistent supporter in the Security Council and in meetings of troopcontributing countries, of more effective use of the forces available to the United Nations. The United States seemed to vacillate. At times it talked robust protection: “Lift the arms embargo and strike with air power.” But Washington demonstrated no practical interest in helping to provide such action on the ground, which was the only place that protection could be delivered. Possibly the United States also shared wider geopolitical anxieties about how far it could push a very vulnerable Russia. Certainly the United States was hamstrung internally by a Congress that was resistant to the deployment of US troops. As a result, the United States seemed to have no answer to the British and French criticism of US advocacy of robust action. UK and French representatives were not slow to point out that British and French troops were on the ground and that,

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if the United States really wanted force to be used, then it should be willing to put its own forces at the same risk. Another factor was financial. Although the United States argued for more aggressive UN strategies, when the Security Council did establish the protected areas in Bosnia, the United States—driven by internal domestic policy to reduce contributions to the United Nations—put financial interests ahead of protection interests. It opposed the force levels necessary to protect the areas that the Secretary-General had recommended,17 despite the fact that all the other members of the Council were willing to support them.18 As a result, UNPROFOR was put in the classic bind of a mandate/capacity gap. Eventually, and especially after the genocide at Srebrenica, the United States found ways to bring its leadership to bear. A combination of covert arms transfers to Croatian and Bosnian forces and an air strikes policy turned the tide of battle and led eventually to the Dayton peace agreement.19 But peace came only after a huge price had been paid, both by the Bosnian people and in terms of the United Nations’ credibility and legitimacy; peace was not achieved as a result of effective collective action through the United Nations, but essentially from the outside. Many observers continue to note the irony that, throughout the war, the underresourced UN blue helmets bore the brunt of the risk and the criticism for not being willing to commit to combat to prevent atrocities and genocide. But as soon as the fighting stopped, large numbers of well-resourced US and NATO forces were suddenly available to do peacekeeping under a NATO umbrella and in an environment that was benign by comparison with what the United Nations had faced. Credit is due to all the people who gave strong support to the need for justice as well as peace. The establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a significant innovation.20 The tribunal was to some extent conceived out of a sense of collective frustration at the failure of other tools available to the Security Council at the time, but it has enabled many people responsible for mass atrocities to be tried for their crimes. The closure achieved for many victims—along with the truth about the crimes that the tribunal’s jurisprudence has revealed—seems, over time, to have had a positive impact. Nevertheless, important perpetrators—including General Ratko Mladi´ c the notorious Serb commander at Srebrenica—remained at large for more than fifteen years.21 Questions are still relevant as to why, after the Dayton peace agreement, the huge NATO force did not make more systematic efforts to secure his arrest. National interest and geopolitics likely played a role here as well. The case of Bosnia demonstrates the impact not only of geopolitics

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but also of a variety of national interest calculations, including the way in which domestic politics and financial issues can constrain effective collective action to prevent and contain atrocities. Rwanda

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda will stand in history as a classic example of how national interest and geopolitics combined to defeat action by the Security Council to prevent or stop genocide. I set out in another article my experience as president of the Security Council in April 1994, the month that the genocide began, and my assessment of the lessons that should have been learned.22 But it is worth reemphasizing some of the factors that led to inaction. Complexity was a factor, although it need not have been so. The misleading reports from Special Representative of the Secretary-General J. R. Booh-Booh, who insisted on characterising the violence as a resumption of the civil war,23 unnecessarily clouded the analysis of when the genocide commenced. Indeed, given what we now know about the reporting several months earlier from the UN force commander24 to UN headquarters about plans for mass atrocities and the request for the United Nations to act on this information, it is hard to understand what motivated BoohBooh’s reports. Equally hard to understand is the failure of Secretariat officials in New York to alert Council members to the alarming warnings that had come from the field—or to the clear warnings from the UN office in Geneva, where a special rapporteur,25 following a visit to Rwanda, had publicly warned of the imminent risk of genocide there. Ideology was also a factor that caused obstruction and delay. China at the time opposed any reference to human rights in the Security Council, mistakenly characterizing the Genocide Convention as a human rights instrument.26 China therefore pursued what it saw as its national interest and spoke firmly against any reference to the violence in Rwanda as genocide. The United Kingdom, for different reasons, took a similar position. The British cautioned against recognising the situation as genocide and, at least initially, pushed for downsizing the UN force. The role of Rwanda, as an elected member of the Council27—pursuing a very partisan national interest—was also a factor. National interest led a number of other countries, in different ways, to resist a collective response. Belgium, a key troop contributor to the UN force in Rwanda, perhaps stung by embarrassment about its premature withdrawal of its forces from the UN mission in response to the casualties sustained at the outset of the genocide, 28 lobbied furi-

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ously to persuade the Council and other troop contributors to withdraw as well. By far the most significant set of factors that determined the ultimate failure of the United Nations to act in Rwanda was generated in Washington, DC. President Bill Clinton subsequently went to Rwanda29 and apologised for the mistakes that led to the US decision to oppose reinforcement of the UN force to limit the genocide. Three quite distinct issues seem to have affected decision making in Washington. The first has been called the “Mogadishu factor.” Only a few months earlier, in Somalia, the United States had been humiliated in Mogadishu when US forces, acting outside the UN command structure, were sent to capture the warlord General Mohamed Farrah Aideed. The US forces were trapped by large numbers of Aideed’s fighters.30 The subsequent spectacle of a number of bodies of US servicemen being mistreated led to revulsion in the United States and to embitterment about involvement in such conflicts. False claims, aimed at shifting blame for the fiasco to the United Nations, stoked the ire of President Clinton’s opponents in Congress against all things related to the United Nations. The narrative about the US national interest therefore shifted against future US military involvement in Africa. Financial considerations drove a second major strand of national interest. The US Congress was pushing the Clinton administration to reduce the cost of US contributions to the UN budget.31 Peacekeeping became a target of this drive, and the United States was determined to close down a major peacekeeping operation, choosing the operation in Rwanda as its target. The United States insisted on funding the Rwanda operation only for very short periods,32 with demands that the parties to the conflict meet certain criteria for renewal. What they failed to appreciate—but which the Rwandan government seated inside the closed Security Council consultations could see only too well—was that this ultimatum actually provided an incentive for bad behavior by the party that wanted the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) out of the way. Getting the United Nations out was exactly what the Kigali regime wanted; as we now know, it was preparing for genocide. The regime knew that the Council had to approve renewal of the peacekeeping mandate. The regime clearly judged that, by launching a violent campaign and attacking peacekeepers as well, the logical result, given the US position, should be that UNAMIR would be shuttered. Much to the region’s surprise—and the surprise of the permanent members of the Council—a small group of elected members, led by

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New Zealand and the Czech Republic but also including Argentina, Nigeria, and Spain, insisted that this was genocide and needed to be recognised as such. New Zealand presented a draft resolution proposing that the situation specifically be named genocide. Moreover, as the days went by and the scale of the atrocities mounted, this group of elected members argued that the Council should not only retain UNAMIR but also reinforce it and give it a clear, robust mandate to prevent further atrocities and protect civilians. New Zealand and Nigeria both presented draft resolutions to that effect. Nevertheless, some harsh realities blunted these initiatives. The United Nations does not have its own forces. It relies on member states offering national troop contingents, and the troop-contributing countries naturally have a strong national interest in their troops’ safety. UNAMIR comprised two kinds of contingents. Some, like Belgium’s, were well armed and equipped. They were expected to do any heavy lifting. Others were lightly armed and poorly equipped. When the Belgian forces were prematurely withdrawn after taking casualties at the start of the genocide, some of the other less well-armed forces not surprisingly wanted to follow suit. For several weeks, and with some contingents effectively deserting, it seemed possible that UNAMIR might collapse. However, Canada and Ghana were steadfast and continued to allow their personnel to be used to protect whatever civilians they could. Instead of UNAMIR being closed down in April—as many had anticipated—it actually survived but at a reduced level.33 The force reduction has been rightly criticised, but the reduction reflected a practical reality. As a result of decisions by troop-contributing countries such as Belgium and others, the force was already substantially diminished. The troop strength also reflected the political reality that, in order to turn around the pressures to close the mission, a deal had to be struck with the United States and others. In this regard, the third factor that influenced the US position comes into play. Coincidentally at this time, the United States had been undertaking a review of its peacekeeping policy, a well-intentioned exercise designed to help secure wider domestic support for UN peacekeeping. The outcome was a presidential decision, PDD25.34 One of its key conclusions was that, going forward, the United States—in deciding whether to vote in favor of UN peacekeeping operations—should place weight on whether a peace agreement was in place and being observed. In parallel, although unconnected, negotiations were taking place in the Security Council in March, April, and May 1994 on a peacekeeping statement. Not surprisingly, US negotiators in these discussions argued, in terms similar to PDD25, that future UN peacekeeping should take place only in situations that presented a benign environment. Robust

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mandates, requiring assertive military action, should be left to coalitions of the willing. The eventual Security Council statement did not go as far as PDD25, but like PDD25, it did contain language favoring UN operations where a “cease fire exists.”35 The manifest absence of a cease-fire in Rwanda at just that time seems to have contributed to the US analysis and the position that the United States adopted, blocking effective UN action to respond to the genocide. Ironically, the small group of sponsors of an expanded UNAMIR was nonetheless successful in gaining wide support in the Council for rapidly expanding the force. They also gained agreement to giving UNAMIR a new Chapter VII mandate with explicit language authorizing the use of force for protecting civilians. Indeed, the provision on protection of civilians in Security Council Resolution 918 of May 17, 1994, became the model for future protection of civilian mandates. But the United States continued to block the necessary supplementary authorisation for actual deployment until the genocide was over. Many analysts argued at the time that the problem was lack of resources. But the reality was that major powers—twice in 1994—were able to mobilise the resources, military forces, equipment, and airlift capacity to intervene. First, a major operation took place in April to extract vulnerable foreign communities from Rwanda.36 Second, an even larger operation was organised in July 1994 to care for the Rwandan “genocidaires” after their retreat to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).37 When political will was present, so were resources—particularly for humanitarian response after the event. But for the genocide victims—when they required prevention and protection—political will was lacking. In Rwanda, as in Bosnia, while the Security Council and the wider UN membership failed to act effectively to prevent further atrocities, they were not completely paralyzed. The initiative to establish the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR)38 was conceived by New Zealand while the genocide was still happening. The idea for the tribunal flowed from the belief that an immediate response to hold individuals accountable for atrocities could play an important deterrent effect as well as help ensure that major perpetrators did not enjoy enduring impunity. New Zealand quickly received wide support in the Council, and in contrast to its obstruction of deploying reinforcements for UNAMIR, the United States played a positive and constructive role in the negotiations on the tribunal. Establishing the tribunal took longer than hoped. Several months were required to resolve technical issues, and by then the genocide had stopped. But it seems fair to say that the ICTR, as did the ICTY, has had some success in holding accountable many of the senior figures responsi-

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ble for genocide and other mass atrocities. The tribunal has also helped, to some extent, to bring closure and international acceptance of the truth about the crimes. In that limited sense the Security Council acted well. Council Inaction in the Mid- to Late 1990s, and Then a Dramatic Change

The failures in Somalia, Bosnia, and Rwanda left no appetite in the mid- to late 1990s for any new effort to develop collective responses through the United Nations to protect vulnerable populations from atrocities. Tragedies unfolded, especially in Africa. The presence of the Rwandan genocidaires in the DRC became a major element in the brutal civil war39 there that cost perhaps 3 million lives, mostly civilians. There was little interest at this stage for involvement in addressing the atrocities occurring in the DRC or in the horrific wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. The prevailing mantra of the time was that regional powers were best suited to dealing with such situations. But thanks to the work of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and some media outlets, it became clear by the late 1990s that these wars were having a terrible impact on civilians. Graphic reports of war brutally directed at women and children40—and the recruitment and exploitation of child soldiers41—galvanized a new sense of public urgency that began to be reflected in the way Security Council members behaved and in a renewed willingness in the Security Council for reactivating UN peacekeeping. The scene was set, therefore, for a dramatic change, which occurred at the very end of the millennium as the Security Council began to see a new alignment in favor of collective action to respond, especially where the United Nations could play a role in preventing renewed violence involving mass atrocities. In the space of twelve months, the Council established four major new operations, two in Africa, one in Asia, and one in Europe—all cases in which appalling crimes had been committed against civilians. This new trend in the Security Council went beyond just establishing new missions. In two cases, Kosovo and East Timor, the Council broke entirely new ground, giving the United Nations unique roles in managing the administration of the territories—effectively assuming the sovereign responsibility of protection and governance. Furthermore, in the operations in Sierra Leone and the DRC, the Council gave specific mandates for the missions to use force if necessary to protect civilians—picking up the language developed for Rwanda in 1994 in resolution 918, but tragically never used.

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At least as importantly in terms of the United Nations’ long-term commitment to prevention and protection, the Council began a process of developing normative principles about protection through a series of thematic debates, statements, and resolutions. The intensive and determined thematic program, which was launched during this period, included the following actions: • In June 1998 the Security Council adopted a landmark statement on “Children in Armed Conflict.”42 • In February 1999 an equally historic statement was approved on the “Protection of Civilians” in which the Council called for a “comprehensive and coordinated approach” to “address the problem of protection of civilians in armed conflict.”43 • In August 1999 the Council adopted its first resolution on the protection of children, in particular condemning the targeting of children.44 • In September 1999 the Council adopted its first resolution on the protection of civilians, condemning the targeting of civilians, reinforcing the importance of international humanitarian law, threatening specific measures against violators, and confirming the protection role for peacekeeping missions in necessary cases.45 • In August 2000 there was a further resolution on children in armed conflict.46 • In September 2000 there was a landmark resolution on women, peace, and security, focusing on the disproportionate impact in many recent conflicts on women and girls.47 In a remarkable period spanning the end of the millennium, from late January 1999 to February 2000, this new activism was applied also in a range of country-specific situations. The Security Council seemed ready to apply lessons from the previous decade, and more significantly to fund major new UN operations to make it possible: • On Kosovo, the Council on January 29, 1999, stated its concern about attacks on civilians.48 • In June 1999 the Council, in an entirely innovative development, established the UN Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), a complete administrative structure to govern Kosovo and ensure delivery of humanitarian needs.49 • In September 1999, in response to the massive atrocities in East Timor following the referendum on independence, the Council, acting under Chapter VII, authorized a multinational coalition to restore secu-

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rity and ensure delivery of humanitarian support for the traumatized population.50 • In October, a decision was taken to establish a UN force in Sierra Leone with a specific mandate for protecting civilians.51 • Also in October, the Council created even more ambitious administrative machinery, in the form of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), to govern and protect the newly independent territory of East Timor (now Timor Leste).52 • In February 2000 the Council turned to the conflict in the DRC. A major peacekeeping mission with a substantial UN force was created.53 Notably the force was also given a specific protection-of-civilians mandate. A New Trend Almost Derailed

This new trend came on quickly, but it did not advance without resistance, suffering serious pushback as a result of geopolitical developments in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The situation in Kosovo and the response to the atrocities there played a major role in the pushback that occurred. As we have seen, Council members were united in condemning the Serb atrocities, expressing their concern in language that became part of the protection-ofcivilians lexicon. However, a sharp division existed over whether the Council could go further than condemnation. Russia, with a national interest in supporting the Serb side, had made it clear that it would veto any proposal for coercive action. China, nervous about secession, argued that the issue was an internal matter and the key requirement was to respect Serbia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.54 In Russia’s and China’s positions, we see at work, in a graphic way, the national interest of a powerful regional neighbor in one case, and an affection for sovereignty in the other, but both being used to make the case against action to prevent atrocities. NATO’s decision to use military force against Serbia, without authorisation by the Security Council and based on the principle of humanitarian intervention, prevailed.55 The Kosovar population, which had been subjected to massive ethnic cleansing, was able to return to Kosovo. And as we saw earlier, once the war was over, all sides quickly recognised the geopolitical merit of the United Nations playing a neutral role in administering the territory for an interim period. But while the NATO intervention had positive impacts for protecting the Kosovars, it remained hugely controversial. At the wider political level in the United Nations the lack of Security Council authorisation left a bitter taste. For many of the NAM countries, what happened

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in Kosovo intensified a growing concern about the risks of a doctrine permitting humanitarian intervention in a world with a sole superpower. Before long, the Kosovo bombing became a major feature in the advocacy of those resisting the protection-of-civilians agenda. Despite important leadership from Secretary-General Kofi Annan56 and support from thoughtful and balanced initiatives such as the Canadiansponsored Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty57—which coined the responsibility to protect principle as a legitimate alternative to humanitarian intervention—the environment became increasingly hostile to prevention and protection. A dark period began in 2003 with the invasion of Iraq and the Bush administration’s attempt to justify it inter alia on protection needs.58 To many in the United Nations, the Iraq invasion confirmed their worst fears: that the very powerful would co-opt the prevention and protection agenda, which had begun to flower at the end of the 1990s, as a tool to justify regime change in unpopular countries. The response to the 2006 war in Lebanon reinforced this trend. The war lasted forty-six days. There were 160 Israeli casualties, mostly military, and 1,187 Lebanese casualties, mostly civilian.59 The Security Council debates were notable for the outpouring of support for the Council to act for the purposes of civilian protection.60 But the US position, largely influenced by Israel, was to resist any action by the Council to protect civilians, even a simple call for a cease-fire. Eventually the weight of international opinion became overwhelming, and on August 11, 2006, a resolution imposing a cease-fire, requiring withdrawal of Israeli forces, imposing an arms embargo, and expanding the UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon was passed.61 However, the US reluctance to put protection of civilians at the forefront in this case reinforced arguments about selectivity and further intensified the level of suspicion and cynicism about protection and prevention generally. While this period was bleak for the United Nations, it was not quite so hands off as the comparable period in the mid-1990s. In the DRC,62 Liberia,63 Haiti,64 Timor,65 Côte d’Ivoire,66 and Nepal,67 UN peacekeeping continued to be developed. Although not without major controversy, the thematic protection agenda also continued to evolve. Moreover, against all expectations, as outlined above, the 2005 World Summit gave birth to a consensus on responsibility to protect. Finally, contrast the very slow Security Council response to a dire civilian situation in Lebanon in 2006 to the Council’s response in late 2008 when the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza again presented serious threats to civilians. In Gaza, the Israeli action began on Decem-

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ber 27, 2008. The very next day the Council issued a statement,68 and by January 8 it adopted a significant resolution.69 Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka

Had it not been for the backlash generated by the NATO intervention in Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq, the response to the protection needs in Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka might have been different. In Darfur, it became clear in 2004 that atrocities—and perhaps genocide—were being perpetrated.70 The case of Darfur is one that has seen almost unprecedented mobilization of public opinion throughout the world. The Security Council was initially very slow to respond, although in time it became more active on the issue, with continuing statements and condemnations of the violence.71 However, the regime in Khartoum had many cards to play, including the size of the country, its remoteness, its savvy diplomats, and its friends in the AU. Sudan’s government was well aware that most countries capable of robust military contributions to any operation for Darfur were already overcommitted in Afghanistan and Iraq, and reports persisted that Khartoum’s economic leverage with Beijing influenced action on Darfur. Thus, despite the establishment of, first, an AU peacekeeping mission (the African Union Mission in Sudan [AMIS])72 and then a hybrid UN/AU peacekeeping operation (African Union/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur [UNAMID]),73 the imposition of sanctions,74 the referral of Sudan to the International Criminal Court (ICC),75 and a long-running mediation process in Doha,76 Sudan continues to play the sovereignty card to good effect. There is still no peace in Darfur, and the people remain vulnerable to the constant risk of atrocities. An important geopolitical consideration is that for some Security Council members, the situation in South Sudan, and the survival of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement,77 which ended a bloody twentyyear war between northern and southern Sudan, was at least as important an objective as securing approval for a mission in Darfur. At various key points, this issue continued to be a major consideration in terms of how far to push the regime in Khartoum. In Zimbabwe, large-scale violence was perpetrated against civilians by the Mugabe regime before and after the contested 2008 election. There was unanimous support in the Security Council for a statement condemning the campaign of violence against the opposition and calling on Zimbabwe’s government to stop the violence, political intimidation, and restrictions on the right of assembly; to release detained political leaders; and to cooperate with all efforts aimed at finding a peaceful so-

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lution.78 The Council also insisted that the results of the March 29 elections be respected. Notwithstanding clear evidence of atrocities, there was strong resistance in the Council to coercive intervention. A draft sanctions resolution failed because of vetoes by China and Russia.79 Libya, South Africa, and Vietnam also cast negative votes, and Indonesia abstained. The failure of the draft resolution may also have been due to poor timing of the draft and poor management of it in the Council. However, explanations of the vote made it clear that a growing number of UN members were becoming hostile to the leadership of the United States (and the United Kingdom), and feared that these powers were trying to ride roughshod over the UN Charter definitions of what constituted a threat to international peace and security.80 The protection of civilians was clearly becoming a casualty of wider geopolitical interest. Later in 2008 a major humanitarian crisis emerged in Sri Lanka during the closing phase of the civil war, with clear risks of atrocities against civilians.81 Many Council members believed that they had a responsibility to become involved. It was agreed that Council members would receive briefings on the humanitarian situation.82 But there was strong resistance, especially from China—which had a close relationship with the government in Colombo—to the Council taking it up formally. As in the case of Zimbabwe, the argument was that the situation was not a real threat to international peace and security. For many months the case of Sri Lanka became another example of failure by the Council members to come to grips with a protection-ofcivilians crisis unfolding before their eyes. China, which had commercial interests, argued that this situation was a civil war, an internal affair, and not a matter for the United Nations. However, as a result of the steady determination of many Council members and of their insistence on the responsibility to protect civilians, a modest innovation did take place. China seems to have eventually accepted that, in such a case, where there were high risks to civilians, Council members should be able to discuss the substance of the protection issues—as opposed to the political and military issues—but in private and without putting the situation formally on the agenda. As a result, a new format for Council meetings emerged. It came to be called the “Informal Interactive Dialogue.” Under this format the protection situation in Sri Lanka could be discussed informally, even though Sir Lanka was not on the Council’s formal agenda. Sri Lanka would also be present at the table. Four meetings on Sri Lanka were actually held in this new format. Significantly, as confidence in the new

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format rose, Council members were even able to agree on a statement expressing deep concern over the use of heavy weapons “in areas with high concentrations of civilians.”83 It called on all parties to respect obligations under international humanitarian law and on Sri Lanka to fulfill its commitment in this regard. This result had no benefit at all for the civilians at risk in Sri Lanka. But, at time of writing, the precedent seems to have become a valuable new procedural tool allowing Council members to work constructively and engage on cases with protection and prevention needs that would not have been possible previously. Côte d’Ivoire

The response to the civil war in Côte d’Ivoire is important because from the beginning it was clear that the context, involving ethnic hatred and xenophobic rhetoric, was potentially explosive. The risk of mass atrocities was high—and the risk of genocide was present as well. The issue is also significant because the AU and the Security Council all devoted significant effort to conflict management. A long commitment to UN peacekeeping was sustained, and protection of civilians was an important feature of the mandate given to the UN peacekeeping operation (UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire [UNOCI]).84 Important lessons can be learned from the crisis that emerged in late 2010, when the repeatedly delayed election, foreseen in the 2005 Pretoria peace agreement, was held.85 In hindsight, assuming that a winnertake-all election would really resolve the underlying issues was clearly not wise. But the election proceeded without those issues being addressed, and it resulted in the defeat of the incumbent president Laurent Gbagbo. Despite prolonged mediation and calls for a peaceful transfer of power by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the AU, and the Security Council, Gbagbo threatened a descent into civil war rather than concede power.86 He stoked ethnic tensions by unleashing new bouts of rhetoric, and his security forces began using violence against civilians; increasing numbers of atrocities were being reported. The position of ECOWAS was clear from the outset: Gbagbo had to go. The prospect of an ECOWAS military intervention was floated. Most of the AU took a similar position. But some AU members, including South Africa, initially continued to look for a deal to keep Gbagbo in place under a power sharing arrangement. Most Security Council members, alert to the risk of atrocity crimes, seemed to accept that a credible deal with Gbagbo was unachievable and that his transition from power was the only option. However, during a critical period of weeks immedi-

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ately after the election, the Council was stalled. Russia opposed the Council adopting a statement based on the argument that the election was an “internal affair.” They challenged the appropriateness of the UN certification of the election result, despite the fact that this was required under the Pretoria peace agreement and had already been accepted by Russia in Security Council Resolution 1528, establishing the UNOCI mandate. (There were rumors that economic ties with the Gbagbo regime influenced Russia’s position.) But what is really significant in terms of the historical trend is that as the weeks went by and as the stakes got higher—and it looked as if there could be a rerun of the events in Rwanda in 1994—no one in the Security Council advocated downsizing the force or UN withdrawal. The troop contributors stayed firm. The Council approved reinforcements for UNOCI.87 The mandate was clear and robust, and it included a willingness to patrol with force and push back against the Gbagbo forces. As the AU position became firmer, South Africa and Russia both eventually aligned themselves with the growing consensus. When Nigeria and France came to the Security Council in late March 2011 with a draft resolution asking the Council to reinforce the UNOCI mandate and to use force if necessary to stop the use of heavy weapons by Gbagbo forces against civilians, no Council members were prepared to be the ones to take responsibility for blocking the kind of effective collective action that had been blocked in 1994 in Rwanda. Resolution 1975 on reinforcing the UNOCI mandate was adopted unanimously, and the supporters included many countries that had been skeptical about protection of civilians and R2P in the past, including Russia and China, but also India, Brazil, and South Africa. The result was that, in April 2011, when the crisis became a battle for control of Abidjan between the Gbagbo forces and the forces of elected president Alassane Ouattara, and when civilians and UN forces were being deliberately targeted by Gbagbo’s heavy weapons, UN attack helicopters made numerous air strikes against sites where heavy weapons were located. This use of force marked the first time that the United Nations had acted in a crisis situation in such a robust way using a clear protection mandate. The use of force provoked some controversy, and some criticism came from those who had favored a policy more accommodating to Gbagbo. The fact that the United Nations acted in such close cooperation with French forces in Côte d’Ivoire was, for some, rather problematic in view of their discomfort about France’s role as the former colonial power. However, the fact was that, like the United Nations, the

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French forces were present with a specific Security Council mandate that also included protection of civilians. Whether the Abidjan precedent will be repeated in the long term remains to be seen. But it clearly does represent a new high-water mark in terms of the exercise by UN forces of collective responsibility for prevention and protection of civilians threatened by mass atrocities or genocide. Libya

Remarkably, while the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire was coming to a crescendo, the Council was confronted with an even more difficult challenge in Libya. Brutal attacks against civilian protesters by the military forces of the Qaddafi regime, including the use of air strikes, led to a remarkable consensus in both the UN Human Rights Council88 and the Security Council.89 The Security Council recognised that the events in Libya could amount to crimes against humanity. It specifically referenced the first R2P pillar, recalled that Libya had a responsibility to protect its population, and demanded an end to the violence. Under Chapter VII the Council referred the situation to the ICC, imposed an arms embargo, and designated targeted sanctions against the regime leadership. This early response was unique for an emerging situation involving atrocities. Never before had the Council acted so promptly or so decisively in a protection mode. That resolution 1970 was adopted unanimously was significant. But it quickly became apparent that the warning and deterrents in resolution 1970 were being ignored. By mid-March 2011, following threats by the Qaddafi regime to exterminate the protesters—and with the regime’s military forces on the outskirts of Libya’s second-largest city, Benghazi—there was a credible risk of a massive atrocity crime being committed. The Council again acted in a quite unique way,90 although it hesitated until Qaddafi forces were actually in the city. Resolution 1973 was another high-water point in the collective effort to prevent atrocities. It expressed determination to ensure the protection of civilians. Under Chapter VII it authorized member states to use force to establish a no-fly zone and to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas. (A ground occupation force was specifically excluded.) Resolution 1973 also extended the sanctions with strong enforcement provisions and new designations, so that many more regime figures and entities were included. In this way, the sanctions operated to effectively block the sale of oil by the Qaddafi regime but permit oil to be sold by the alternative

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leadership in Benghazi. Finally, and controversially, an obscure piece of drafting seemed to loosen the arms embargo to potentially legitimize the provision of arms to parties using them to protect civilians. Significantly, five Council members abstained in the voting on resolution 1973.91 It seems that for some of these nations, a major reason for the abstention was their historical distrust of the protection agenda and a perceived Western propensity to resort to force. The abstentions also seem clearly influenced by the complexity factor—the concern that the situation on the ground would prove much more complex and intractable than the cosponsors of the resolution understood. For Germany and Brazil, in particular, there was a real sense of anxiety about how the end game would play out, and a fear that Qaddafi would resist to the bitter end and the situation would become a protracted civil war. But it was also obvious that a key factor in the overall decision process was that the Qaddafi regime had no friends among the Council members or in the region. As a result, in the context of a situation calling for the prevention of mass atrocities, no one was prepared to veto the resolution and face the risk of being held politically and morally responsible for a catastrophe. Again the memory of Rwanda may have been a compelling factor. But perhaps also some of the abstainers were very conscious of the fact that this vote left them with a credible basis to attack the resolution and its enforcement if things seemed to be going badly. Indeed, in hindsight it seems that some of the targeting by NATO was excessive. And Russia in particular, but also many African states, have criticised the air strikes for exceeding what was authorized.92

Issues That Can Forestall Action Complexity

As indicated above, a major ground for resistance to preventive action can be fear of unforeseen consequences arising from local complexity. Almost every emerging situation of possible mass atrocities will very likely involve a complex domestic political problem with deep political, social, or economic roots. But few diplomats representing member states at the United Nations and few of their counterparts in capitals have been trained for the task of analysing and responding to such events. Complexity can therefore lead to paralysis. Complexity can also engender a strong sense from capitals that the problem is just too hard—that it is not in the national interest to commit

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resources to it and the problem is better left to bilateral or regional actors. Moreover, most diplomats are trained in bilateral diplomacy and usually suffer from a degree of local capture because, by the nature of their duties, they are already invested in the local bilateral relationship. In general they have even less experience than their multilateral colleagues in diagnosing trends toward violence or in understanding the range of possible response strategies. These factors often lead to reluctance to enter into serious engagement on protection in practical cases. Many diplomats, and their head offices as well, struggle not only to understand the complex issues involved but also how to forge effective collective action. The Defence of Absolute Sovereignty

A second key factor that can appear in specific cases is the contradiction between the practical needs of threatened populations and the national interests of states—often quite remote from the affected region—that support an absolutist interpretation of sovereignty. When it becomes clear that the United Nations is considering some preventive involvement—even of a relatively mild kind—one of the parties to the conflict, usually the party controlling the government, senses the risks to its position if the United Nations does become involved. The threatened party will therefore reach out to whatever allies it can.93 Its diplomatic demarches often focus on countries that have no national interest in the actual conflict, but a strong national interest in protecting the principle of sovereignty. The supporters of prevention in the Non-Aligned Movement tend to make up the moderate NAM majority, but geopolitics often makes it very difficult for the moderates to bring their perspective to bear. NAM working methods often tend to empower the small number of absolutists on sovereignty who are more than ready to take up the cudgels against UN involvement in what they try to label as “internal affairs.” They have often proved effective. Partiality and the Pursuit of National Interest

Much discussion of protection outside the United Nations—and especially by the media—assumes that the decision makers are a group of essentially impartial states motivated by the merits of the case and the needs of a vulnerable civilian population. However, this is often far from the reality. As we have seen above, countries wanting to pursue a less than impartial position on sovereignty can hijack the sometimes significant weight of the NAM.

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From my experience most of the elected members of the Security Council are essentially impartial most of the time on most protection issues that arise. However, many Council members are often very cautious about taking initiatives or sponsoring proposals for practical engagement in prevention. Their diplomats—influenced by training in bilateral diplomacy—are often looking over their shoulders, anxious about pressure from major powers, important trading partners, or important countries in their regional group who do not share the same sense of impartiality. Cases also arise in which supporters of collective prevention are challenged by powerful friends or allies who see prevention initiatives as premature, costly, unduly risky, or undermining a particular national interest. In such circumstances, capitals inevitably weigh the short-term risk to important bilateral relationships. As a result, national interest sometimes dictates that initiatives on complex protection problems be downplayed or abandoned. In worst-case scenarios, powerful countries that have interests at stake may in the end threaten94—or actually use—a veto. Most elected Security Council members assess carefully the implications of pushing a friendly permanent member of the Security Council to use its veto. Trade and Finance

A further major reason in practice that can inhibit the promotion of collective preventive action is the geopolitics of trade and economics. Parties in a crisis situation will not shrink from using any economic leverage they may have. If faced with economic or trade risks, most states carefully assess and take into account their wider national economic interests before concurring in a collective preventive response that might have significant costs to those economic interests.95 Financial interests can loom just as large. Major contributors to the UN budget sometimes resist prevention initiatives and new mandates simply because of domestic financial or political pressures.96 Sometimes these internal considerations overwhelm the capacity of the collective machinery to pursue otherwise generally acceptable ideas. The Delicate Balance of Peace and Justice

Collective action on issues involving mass atrocities will almost always raise the associated question of accountability, which, when it emerges in a real-world context, adds significant tension to all of the underlying issues. Public opinion and the media will not easily tolerate committing collective resources to prevention and response when the end result is

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that notorious dictators will get to while away their days in luxurious exile. The story of the brutal Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, and his comfortable exile in Saudi Arabia is only one such example.97 However, mediators and peacemakers have to deal with the practical reality that avoiding violence or stopping violence involves dealing with people who often have very bloodstained hands. Getting perpetrators to step back from atrocities is hard enough, but when the perpetrators sense that the end result of stepping back from the brink will also involve accountability for past crimes, few, if any, are likely to see any incentive to stop. Not surprisingly, therefore, the question of accountability in general, and the sequencing of peace and justice, often become a key element in debate as states contemplate taking action to prevent or respond to mass atrocities. Premature action on individual criminal accountability can not only complicate the regional political support for peace processes, but also lead to parties digging in when it comes to cessation of violence. The African Union challenged98 the ICC indictments99 of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir in 2009 and 2010 for events in Darfur, which has certainly become a serious complicating factor in the overall situation in Sudan.

Conclusion

The turbulent twenty years since the end of the Cold War provide a remarkable set of examples of the differing ways in which the world has responded to events that have gravely threatened civilians. Atrocities have been common. Genocide has appeared in at least three cases and was only narrowly averted in at least one other. The early 1990s saw bold initiatives to develop new peacekeeping tools. There were some successes—in Asia and Latin America and in Mozambique and Angola. But these successes were overshadowed by the failures in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Somalia. Various national interests and geopolitical interest by major powers resulted in a lack of political will at key points, and civilians suffered grievously as a result. Poorly adapted UN systems for managing operations and confused decision making by member states also contributed. A bleak period followed in the mid- to late 1990s when the national interest of major powers dictated that the United Nations stand aside from some of the most horrific conflicts during which civilians, and particularly women and children, were systematically targeted. But at the end of the millennium a remarkable change took place. How does one account for this? My conclusion is that three primary factors were responsible.

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The first is the actual composition of the Security Council between 1999 and 2001. We see a group of elected members including Norway, Canada, the Netherlands, and Ireland—all of whom seemed determined to play leading principled and independent roles. Jamaica, Colombia, Singapore, Mauritius, and Malaysia also stand out as members during this period who were willing to take independent and principled positions. The second factor, which was in play at this critical time at the end of the millennium, was the growing weight of public opinion and the related role of civil society. The emergence of the Internet and the global communications and media revolution no doubt contributed. The wide circulation of the stories about abuses of women and children in the DRC, Sierra Leone, and Liberia were causing outrage in many parts of the world. Advocacy by NGOs was also beginning to have an impact—including in New York at the Security Council. All of this focus also had an impact on the consciences of policymakers in many of the countries on the Security Council. And so, with a number of determined, courageous, and principled elected members from across the regional groups, the atmosphere was right both for the emergence of Council-led normative developments and for the application of prevention and protection tools in specific cases. The third factor, in my view, was the presence of a Secretary-General, in the person of Kofi Annan, who sensed the movement in the tide and the opportunity that existed and was willing to provide the Council with visionary reports and gave the progressive members the intellectual framework and options for action. This step took courage because it involved not only challenging the hard-line NAM members but also it meant giving the Council the advice needed as opposed to the advice that the Council’s permanent five members wanted to hear. In this Annan took to heart the recommendations in the now-famous “Brahimi Report” on reforming peacekeeping operations.100 Some pushback against the new trends on prevention and protection was probably to be expected. But the muscular NATO action in Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq combined to turn pushback into a tide of resistance. The resistance to Security Council protection action seemed at times to be subsumed within a wider effort to contain what many argued was a dangerous expansion of US power. Similarly, arguments emerged that the United States was seeking to co-opt the United Nations, the Security Council, and the protection agenda as a tool for US policy. The dark period that followed was therefore not surprising. In the Security Council, elected members became very silent. National interest dictated a low profile when major bilateral relationships were on the line and in an environment where the major powers seemed to be increasingly polarized.

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But again we should ask, what led to change at the end of the decade, and what are the prospects for the future? Why a more responsive approach for Gaza as opposed to Lebanon? Why the emergence of flexibility—albeit far too little too late—on Sri Lanka? Why a much better performance in Côte d’Ivoire than Rwanda? And why a remarkable set of decisions on Libya? Again, I attach real importance to the steady growth of public knowledge and concern. Also the last few years have again seen a group of strong, independent elected members of the Council willing to push the protection and prevention agenda very firmly—Mexico and Austria in particular, but also with support from countries like Costa Rica, Turkey, Nigeria, and Uganda in some cases. Another key factor, which cannot be underestimated, has been the steady progressive development of the normative framework under the rubric of the three major thematic areas, protection of civilians; children in armed conflict; and women, peace, and security. The emergence of a new thematic area covering peace, justice, and impunity should also be noted.101 I also believe that some fading of the geopolitical anxiety about the United States as a single superpower also contributed to a more constructive climate. The policies of the Obama administration seemed to have some positive impact, and the incentive to oppose protection initiatives for strategic reasons seemed to diminish. By 2011, there was a new sense that where massive atrocities against civilians were possible, none of the major powers were willing to take the reputational risk of being, very publicly, the one to be blamed for genocide or mass atrocities. Genocide was avoided in Côte d’Ivoire, but the peacebuilding task that followed is huge and the underlying issues remain. It is not clear that the United Nations and the Security Council will take the issues sufficiently seriously, so relapse into conflict remains a real risk. How peace is consolidated in Libya and at what cost—including to neighbors—will be an important element in how the policy trend on protection and prevention develops in the next decade. In the Security Council, Libya was undoubtedly a special case, not least because of the strong support for action in the Arab region and because Qaddafi had no real friends. But just as there was serious pushback after Kosovo (as described above) there is clear evidence of a further period of pushback after Libya. The first signs of this pushback were seen as early as April 2011, when Russia resisted the Council’s approving language for press statements expressing concern about the violence in Yemen102 and Syria.103 At the time, it was unclear whether the pushback against protection being seen in the Syria case would become

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widespread and long lasting. The sequence of three vetoes on Syria in the Security Council from Russia and China seemed ominous. However, there was also some evidence that the Syria case might need to be viewed on its own merits. An indicator of a more hopeful long-term trend can be seen in thematic debate on protection of civilians in the Security Council on May 10, 2011.104 Many observers had expected this debate to become a vehicle for concerted and determined pushback against the protection of civilians and the responsibility to protect. In the end, debate was relatively muted, and the pushback was mild when compared to the debates following the Kosovo intervention. A few strongly critical voices emerged from the exponents of extreme positions regarding sovereignty (Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran), but overall the tone was relatively constructive. At the time of writing in early 2013, the failure of the Security Council to protect Syrian civilians was again being held up as an indictment of international institutions. But weight has to be given to the fact that, for Russia at least, Syria was a very special case. Unlike Libya, where Qaddafi had no friends, the link between Damascus and Moscow is long-standing, and significant Russian interests are in play. The fact that geopolitics trumped protection is not surprising. In trying to judge how significant or sustained the current period of pushback against protection will be, I take some hope from the fact that in early 2013 the Security Council again responded with substantial new initiatives to grave situations in the eastern DRC and Mali. In these cases, there seems to be wide support, including from Russia and China, for intervention, despite the fact that the proposed solutions have many real problems. This suggests that the pendulum may be swinging back to support intervention. The political dynamics and peculiarities of future cases will no doubt continue to play a key role in dictating Security Council responses. But there is some hope for better outcomes in general, if only because important new benchmarks now exist.

Notes 1. Alex J. Bellamy, “Mass Atrocities and Armed Conflict: Links, Distinctions and Implications for the Responsibility to Protect,” Muscatine, IA: Stanley Foundation, February 2011. 2. Applied Economics, “Returns on Investment in Public Health: An Epidemiological and Economic Analysis,” Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing, March 2003. 3. UN General Assembly, “World Summit Outcome” (October 24, 2005), A/RES/60/1, pp. 20–27.

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4. UN General Assembly, “Official Records of the 63rd Session,” Plenary Meetings 97–101 (July 23–28, 2009), A/60/PV.97–PV.101. 5. International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect, “GA Dialogue on Early Warning, Assessment, and the Responsibility to Protect,” New York, August 2010. 6. UN Security Council, “Official Record of the 6389th Meeting” (September 23, 2010), S/PV.6389. 7. UN Security Council, “Official Record of the 6427th Meeting: Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict” (November 22, 2010), S/PV.427 Resumption 1, p. 15; UN Security Council, “Official Record of the 6479th Meeting: The Interdependence Between Security and Development” (February 11, 2011), S/PV.6479. 8. African Union Constitutive Act, www.africa-union.org. 9. UN Security Council Report, “Update Report No. 3: Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa,” New York, August 24, 2007. 10. See, for example, the Russian and Chinese veto of a draft resolution imposing sanctions on Zimbabwe in 2008: UN Security Council, “Official Record of the 5933rd Meeting” (July 11, 2008), S/PV.5933. 11. UN Security Council Report, “Cross-Cutting Report No. 3: Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict,” New York, October 29, 2010. 12. UN Security Council, “Resolution 743” (February 22, 1992), S/RES/743. 13. UN Security Council, “Resolution 824” (May 6, 1993), S/RES/824. 14. Prosecutor v. Radislav Krsti´ c (Trial Judgment), International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), August 2, 2001. 15. Contrast the deadlock in the Council with the wide support in the General Assembly for the Bosnian side in the conflict: UN General Assembly, “Resolution 121” (December 18, 1992), A/RES/47/121. 16. “Bosnia Genocide” blog, “Serbs Attack ‘Safe Area,’ Gorazde on Brink of Collapse,” August 7, 2011, http://bosniagenocide.wordpress.com. 17. UN Secretary-General’s Report Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 815, (May 15, 1993), S/25777. 18. UN Security Council, “Resolution 847” (June 30, 1993), S/RES/847. 19. US Department of State, “Dayton Peace Accords,” December 14, 1995, www.state.gov. 20. UN Security Council, “Resolution 827” (May 25, 1993), S/RES/827. 21. China Daily, “Serbia Told EU Path Open, Even Without Capture of War Crimes Fugitives,” May 18, 2011. 22. Colin Keating, “An Insider’s Account,” in The UN Security Council: From the Cold War to the 21st Century, edited by David Malone (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2004), pp. 500–511. 23. Ibid. 24. Randolph Kent, “The UN and the Rwanda Genocide: Could It Ever Happen Again?,” Humanitarian Exchange Magazine, no. 26 (March 2004), www.odihpn.org. 25. UN Economic and Social Council, “Report by Special Rapporteur Bacre Waly Ndiaye on His Mission to Rwanda from 8 to 17 April 1993” (August 11, 1993), E/CN.4/1994/7/Add.1. 26. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948, www.un.org.

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27. See elected members of the Security Council by year, www.un.org/en/sc /members/elected.shtml. 28. Stanley Meiser, “U.N. Considers Withdrawal of Force in Rwanda: Central Africa: Belgium Will Pull out Troops. Move Prompts Concern for Peacekeepers,” Los Angeles Times, April 14, 1994. 29. Charles Krause, “Promoting Peace in Rwanda,” Newshour, March 25, 1998, www.pbs.org. 30. See “Synopsis,” in “Ambush on Mogadishu,” Frontline, September 29, 1998, www.pbs.org. 31. See, for example, bills drafted by Congress during the Clinton era that sought to limit funding to UN peacekeeping operations. Michael Renner, “Peacekeeping and the United Nations,” Washington, DC: Foreign Policy in Focus, December 1, 1996. 32. Resolution 908, adopted on April 5, 1994, the very eve of the commencement of the genocide, warned at US insistence that the mission would be closed unless specific benchmarks were met. 33. See UN Security Council, “Resolution 912” (April 21, 1994), S/RES/912. 34. See Presidential Directive Decision 25, “PDD-25,” May 6, 1994, www.fas.org. 35. S/PRST/1994/22 (May 3, 1994). 36. See background on the official UNAMIR website, www.un.org/en/peace keeping/missions/past/unamir.htm. 37. Ibid. 38. See UN Security Council, “Resolution 955” (November 6, 1994), S/RES/955. 39. Reliefweb, “DRC: Attacks Prompt UN to Boost Patrols in East Congo,” January 12, 2004, http://reliefweb.int. 40. UN Economic and Social Council, “Integration of the Human Rights of Women and the Gender Perspective” (March 10, 1999), E/CN.4/1999/68. 41. United Nations, “Graca Machel Report on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” (January 26, 2001), A/51/306. 42. S/PRST/1998/18 (June 29, 1998). 43. S/PRST/1999/6 (February 12, 1999). 44. Resolution 1261 (August 25, 1999). 45. Resolution 1265 (September 17, 1999). 46. Resolution 1314 (August 11, 2000). 47. Resolution 1325 (October 31, 2000). 48. S/PRST/1999/5. 49. Resolution 1244 (June 10, 1999). 50. Resolution 1264 (September 15, 1999). 51. Resolution 1270 (October 22, 1999). 52. Resolution 1272 (October 25, 1999). 53. Resolution 1291 (February 24, 2000). 54. SC/6657 (March 24, 1999). 55. See NATO’s chronology of its role in the conflict in Kosovo, www.nato.int/kosovo/history.htm. 56. “Secretary General’s Annual Report to the General Assembly,” New York, September 8, 1999. 57. See the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’s website, www.iciss.ca.

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58. For a fact sheet on President Bush’s request to Congress based on protection needs and humanitarian grounds, see the Information War website, “Bush Requests $74,700 Million for Iraq War, Aid and U.S. Security,” March 25, 2003, www.iwar.org.uk. 59. UN Security Council Report, “Special Research Report No. 6: Resolution 1701,” New York, September 25, 2006. 60. See, for example, UN Security Council, “5508th Meeting Record on the Situation in the Middle East” (August 8, 2006), S.PV/5508. 61. Resolution 1701 (August 11, 2006). 62. UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) website, www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/monuc/. 63. UN Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) website, www.un.org/en/peacekeeping /missions/unmil/. 64. UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) website, www.un.org /en/peacekeeping/missions/minustah/. 65. UN Mission of Support in East Timor (UNMISET) website, www.un.org /en/peacekeeping/missions/past/unmiset/. 66. UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI) website, www.un.org/en/peace keeping/missions/unoci/. 67. See UN Security Council Report publications on Nepal, www.security councilreport.org/site/c.glKWLeMTIsG/b.2400753/k.6DA9/Publications_on _Nepal.htm. 68. SC/9559 (December 28, 2008). 69. Resolution 1860 (January 8, 2009). 70. Address by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to the Commission of Human Rights, April 7, 2004, http://www.un.org. 71. See, for example, Reliefweb, “Security Council Condemns Upsurge of Violence in Darfur, Sudan,” October 10, 2005, http://reliefweb.int. 72. For information on the establishment of AMIS, see government of Canada website, www.canadainternational.gc.ca/sudan-soudan/support-appui .aspx?lang=eng. 73. African Union / UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID) website, www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/unamid/. 74. UN Security Council Resolution 1591 (March 29, 2005), S/RES/1591. 75. UN Security Council Resolution 1593 (March 31, 2005), S/RES/1593. 76. Sudan Tribune, “Darfur Rebels Fail to Agree on Joint Positions on the Remaining Issues of the Doha Talks,” May 18, 2011, www.sudantribune.com. 77. See the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Government of the Republic of Sudan and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Sudan People’s Liberation Army, www.aec-sudan.org/docs/cpa/cpa-en.pdf. 78. S/PRST/2008/23 (June 23, 2008). 79. S/2008/447. 80. S/PV5933 (July 11, 2008). 81. Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka, March 10, 2011, www.un.org. 82. UN Security Council Report, “Update Report No. 5: Sri Lanka,” New York, April 21, 2009. 83. SC/9659 (May 13, 2009). 84. Resolution 1528 (February 27, 2008).

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85. Resolution 1975 (March 30, 2011). 86. UN Security Council Report, “Update Report No. 3: Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Africa,” New York, August 24, 2007. 87. UN Security Council Resolution 1967 (January 19, 2011), S/RES/1967. 88. A/HRC/RES/S-15/1 (February 25, 2011). 89. Resolution 1970 (February 26, 2011). 90. Resolution 1973 (March 17, 2011). 91. Brazil, China, Germany, India, and Russia. 92. Global Research, “Russia Says NATO Strikes Violate UN Resolution,” May 14, 2011, www.globalresearch.ca. 93. See, for example, the response of Sri Lanka to Council interest in its civil war: UN Security Council Report, “Update Report No. 1: Sri Lanka,” New York, June 4, 2009. 94. See the US blocking of draft resolution S/2006/508: Security Council Report, “Update Report No. 5: Lebanon/Israel,” New York, July 20, 2006. 95. Russia’s opposition to taking Security Council action on Côte d’Ivoire may be an example: see Tom Burgis and Catherine Belton, “Russia Faces Pressure on Ivory Coast,” Financial Times, January 13, 2011, www.ft.com. 96. See, for example, the section on “Council Dynamics” and Council members drawn to reduce UN budget support due to financial constraints in UN Security Council Report, “Monthly Forecast February 2011: Timor-Leste,” New York, January 28, 2011. 97. Ethan Bronner, “The Obscenely Easy Exile of Idi Amin,” New York Times, August 19, 2003, A20. 98. On the African Union’s position on the ICC indictments, see Sam Dealy, “Omar Al-Bashir: Sudan’s Wanted Man,” Time.com, August 13, 2009, www.time.com. 99. ICC Warrant for Arrest, “The Case of the Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir (OMAR AL BASHIR),” March 4, 2009, www.icc-cpi.int; ICC Judgment on the Appeal of the Prosecutor Against the “Decision on the Prosecution’s Application for a Warrant of Arrest against Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir,” February 3, 2010, www.icc-cpi.int. 100. “Report of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations,” S/2000/809 (August 21, 2000). 101. UN Security Council, “Statement by the President of the Security Council” (June 22, 2006), S/PRST/2006/28, and UN Security Council, “Statement by the President of the Security Council” (June 29, 2010), S/PRST/2010/11. 102. UN Security Council Report, “May 2011 Status Update: Yemen,” New York, April 29, 2011. 103. UN Security Council Report, “May 2011 Status Update: Syria,” New York, April 29, 2011. 104. S/PV.6531 (May 10, 2011).

9 Politics, the UN, and Halting Mass Atrocities Thomas G. Weiss

W

ith the exception of Raphael Lemkin’s efforts and the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, no idea has moved faster in the international normative arena than the responsibility to protect (R2P), the title of the 2001 report from the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS).1 Friends and foes have agreed that the commission’s main contribution to forestalling and stopping mass atrocities was its specific framework with a three-pronged responsibility—to prevent, to react, to rebuild. The proposition here is that the increasing and, at times, virtually exclusive stress on prevention may be politically correct but counterproductive. Prevention and rebuilding certainly were not ICISS afterthoughts, but the main motivation for convening the commission in fall 2000 was to break new ground and reach consensus about reacting to mass atrocities. Its comparative advantage, at least in comparison with other international blue-ribbon groups, was a narrow focus—what used to be called “humanitarian intervention.” Receptivity to its recommendations reflected not only the idealism of a few like-minded norm entrepreneurs but also its demand-driven character. After divisive and inconsistent instances of military humanitarianism in the tumultuous 1990s, states genuinely sought guidance about intervening across borders to protect and assist war victims. The ICISS’s original formulation of R2P sandwiched military force between the sliced white bread of prevention and postconflict peacebuilding. 2 These popular issues made military intervention for human protection purposes somewhat more palatable than it had been, especially to critics in the global South. Nonetheless, sovereignty remained 213

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paramount, the deployment of military force objectionable, and R2P contested. As he has for too many issues, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sought to finesse controversy. His January 2009 report emphasized three supposedly equal pillars: state responsibility, capacity building, and international responses.3 According to Ramesh Thakur, “The report did not retreat from the necessity for outside military action in some circumstances but it diluted the central defining feature of R2P.”4 I would be harsher: the Secretary-General sought to avoid the third pillar, the sharp end of the R2P stick of using or threatening to use military force to stop mass atrocities. Indeed, by proceeding so gingerly, as Aidan Hehir argues, R2P may represent a regression of sorts from the unfashionable humanitarian intervention by diverting attention away from reaction.5 While the Secretary-General’s R2P report in 2012 purported to confront the “timely and decisive response” of his third pillar, it is a continuation of a thinly veiled effort to revert to the politically correct topics of responsibility and prevention; he proposed that “effective action under the first and second pillars may make action under the third pillar unnecessary.”6 This skittishness was crystal clear in the previous year’s report because, in the wake of the Libyan intervention, the more progress on the first two pillars, “the less recourse will there be to the third pillar.”7 Evasiveness was already evident in his July 2010 report on early warning8— as if better information and the establishment of a joint office were the real challenges or the real solution to making “never again” more than a slogan. The need for prevention is indisputable, but it is hard to fathom why UN officials and such scholars as Alex Bellamy find it “reasonable” to view R2P “as a policy agenda in need of implementation rather than as a ‘red flag’ to galvanize the world into action.”9 It is curious that “discussions of prevention continually return to the need for early-warning systems,” writes William Zartman, “when the real need is for an authoritative list of proximate triplines and for a determination to act upon them.”10 Indeed. As James Pattison reminds us, “Humanitarian intervention is only one part of the doctrine of the responsibility to protect, but . . . it is part of the responsibility to protect.”11 Over the last decade, we have experienced not too much but rather too little armed force to protect human beings. Other than a small British deployment in Sierra Leone in 2000 and an even smaller essentially French one in eastern Congo in 2003, after Kosovo in 1999 there was no substantial multinational effort until the UN Security Council authorized a no-fly zone to protect Libyans. David Rieff’s concern that “R2P’s most immediate relevance is that it can be used quickly and ef-

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fectively as a legal and moral justification for military intervention”12 is hard to understand when, for over a decade, the hard edge of R2P had largely disappeared from both policy and academic fashion. Where he is closer to the mark is that a halfhearted application of military force, rather than a serious commitment to serious war fighting, is an unholy and unwise compromise. Halting genocide and other mass atrocities occasionally requires deploying military force and always the threat to use it if negotiations are to succeed, other preventive measures are to be credible, and civilians are to be safe. The mere consideration of military force for Libya undoubtedly made the initial decision on other Chapter VII measures easier. Security Council resolution 1970 contained a package of an arms embargo, assets freeze, travel bans, and an inquiry by the International Criminal Court. These relatively robust stances, for the United Nations at least, were agreed upon unanimously in late February 2011 instead of being the most that might have been expected after months or years of protracted discussion. Lisa Hultman’s research shows that when peace operations are robust and have a mandate to protect civilians, violence against them decreases.13 The absence of a meaningful threat to actually deploy military force in 2010–2011 to oust Laurent Gbagbo and install Alassane Ouattara in Côte d’Ivoire illustrates what happens when a viable military option is not in the international tool kit. The eventual ouster of incumbent Ggagbo followed action by the 1,650-strong French Licorne force as the avant garde of the UN peace operation and a half-year of dawdling. The contrast with what happened in Libya as a result of Security Council resolution 1973, which specifically justified military strikes to avoid the massacre of civilians, suggests why military humanitarianism is a necessary, if insufficient, component of the responsibility to protect. The unwillingness to apply armed force abetted Gbagbo’s intransigence as Côte d’Ivoire’s unspeakable disaster unfolded. Was it really necessary to sustain war crimes, crimes against humanity, a million refugees, and a ravaged economy? International military action could and should have taken place earlier. After forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi violated the terms of UN Resolution 1973 and only thirty-six hours after the Security Council’s approval of the resolution, French, British, and US fighter jets and cruise missiles began to hammer Libyan military positions. Until those forceful actions, and despite tireless efforts by people like General Roméo Dallaire, who commanded the powerless UN troops in Rwanda in 1994,14 the assertive liberal intervention heyday of the 1990s seemed like ancient

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history. At that time, “Sovereign equality looked and smelled reactionary,” observes Jennifer Welsh. “But as the liberal moment recedes, and the distribution of power shifts globally, the principle of sovereign equality may enjoy a comeback.”15 Let us hope that Libya proves her wrong. Otherwise, as Simon Chesterman writes, there will be the continued “overwhelming prevalence of inhumanitarian nonintervention.”16 The anguished hue and cry about R2P as a ruse for Western imperialism seems quaint or disingenuous, but it remains resonant in the global South. While Libya and Côte d’Ivoire may have helped reorient policy- and decisionmakers toward realizing the centrality of the responsibility to protect for both normative and operational issues, those nations also have provoked doubts and stimulated anew thoughts of buyer’s remorse. Such ruminations were clear in the proposal from Brazil at the sixty-sixth session of the UN General Assembly in fall 2011, which argued, “The international community, as it exercises its responsibility to protect, must demonstrate a high level of responsibility while protecting.”17 Brazil’s support for human rights and unwillingness to be seen as unenthusiastic about R2P were clear, along with its unease about the use of military force for regime change. In this chapter, I revisit the politics of deploying or menacing military leverage and some key political and operational barriers to doing so. I begin with a discussion of the current status of R2P. I then examine the United Nations as an impartial or a partial forum prior to asking whether the current world organization can routinely mount effective responses to genocide. So that readers do not hold their collective breath, the answer to that question is probably “no.” The final sections identify institutional and political obstacles to meaningful reform as well as suggestions about what might be done to improve the odds of robust international action in the face of mass atrocities.

Whither R2P?

Given R2P’s declared goal of changing the discourse about a visceral humanitarian reaction and making mass atrocities a distant memory, how long can a norm be “emerging” before it has emerged? Whatever one’s views about the current consensus or lack thereof, the responsibility to protect certainly has shaped international conversations—diplomatic, military, and academic—about responding to conscience-shocking humanitarian disasters. R2P moves beyond the contested and counterproductive label of “humanitarian intervention.” Beginning with the international response

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in northern Iraq in 1991, this moniker had led to largely circular tirades about the agency, timing, legitimacy, means, circumstances, and advisability of using military force to protect human beings. The central normative tenet of the responsibility to protect is that state sovereignty is contingent and not absolute; it entails duties, not simply rights. In the eyes of legitimate members of the international community of states, after centuries of largely looking the other way, sovereignty no longer provides a license for mass murder. Every state has a responsibility to protect its own citizens from mass killings and other gross violations of their rights. If any state, however, is manifestly unable or unwilling to exercise that responsibility, or actually is the perpetrator of mass atrocities, its sovereignty is abrogated. Meanwhile, the responsibility to protect devolves to the international community of states, ideally acting through the UN Security Council. This framework’s dual responsibility—internal and external—draws upon work by Francis Deng and Roberta Cohen about “sovereignty as responsibility.”18 As envisaged in the 2001 ICISS report and embraced later by more than 150 heads of state and government at the UN’s 2005 World Summit,19 the reframing moved away from humanitarian intervention as a right. Deng, Cohen, the ICISS, and the World Summit emphasized the need—indeed, the responsibility—for the international community of states, embodied by the United Nations and mandated since its creation to deliver “freedom from fear,” to do everything possible to prevent mass atrocities. Deploying military force is an option after alternatives have been considered and patently failed. Military intervention to protect the vulnerable is restricted, in the summit’s language, to cases of “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity”—in short, “mass atrocities.” Using military force in extremis with a view toward “saving strangers”20 was the linchpin for the debate resulting from international inaction in 1994 in Rwanda (doing too little too late) and action in 1999 in Kosovo (according to some, doing too much too soon). The R2P agenda encompasses a host of responses to mass atrocities, ranging from prevention to postconflict rebuilding, and not merely the use of overwhelming military force to stop them after they begin. The UN World Summit set aside peacebuilding—or included it as part of prevention, thereby downgrading it. But the full and distinct spectrum of prevention, reaction, and rebuilding remains preferable. The integrity of the original ICISS conceptualization suffers when diluted or conflated so that prevention becomes an all-encompassing category without a meaningful policy edge.

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Whether using the original ICISS conception or the 2005 World Summit version, two specific challenges remain. First, R2P should not become synonymous with everything that the United Nations does. In addition to reacting and protecting civilians at risk, the value added of R2P consists of proximate prevention and proximate peacebuilding— that is, efforts to move back from the brink of mass atrocities that have yet to become widespread or efforts after such crimes to ensure that they do not recur. International action is required before the only option is the US Army’s Eighty-Second Airborne Division, and additional commitments to help mend societies are also essential in order to avoid beginning anew a cycle of settling accounts and crimes. In short, the responsibility to protect is not about the protection of everyone from everything. Broadening perspectives has opened the floodgates to an overflow of appeals to address too many problems. For example, part of the political support at the World Summit reflected an understandable but erroneous desire to mobilize support for development to overcome root causes of conflict. As bureaucrats invariably seek justifications for pet projects, we run the risk that everything may figure its way onto the R2P agenda. Arguing that we have a responsibility to protect people from HIV/AIDS and small arms, and the Inuit from global warming, is emotionally tempting. However, if R2P means everything, it means nothing. Second, at the other end of the spectrum, the responsibility to protect also should not be viewed too narrowly. It is not only about the use of military force. The broad emphasis is especially pertinent after Washington’s and London’s 2003 rhetoric disingenuously morphed into a vague “humanitarian” justification for the war in Iraq when weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda proved nonexistent. The Iraq War temporarily was a conversation stopper for R2P as critics looked askance upon the consideration of any humanitarian justification for military force. Contemporary foreign adventurism and imperial meddling in humanitarian guise were not more acceptable than earlier incarnations. Yet R2P breaks new ground in coming to the rescue. In addition to the usual attributes of a sovereign state that students encounter in international relations and law courses and in the 1934 Montevideo Convention—people, authority, territory, and independence—there is another: a modicum of respect for basic human rights. The interpretation of privileges for sovereigns has made room for modest responsibilities as well. When a state is unable or manifestly unwilling to protect the rights of its population—and especially when it perpetuates

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abuse—that state loses its sovereignty along with the accompanying right of nonintervention. The traditional rule of noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries does not apply in the face of mass atrocities. Moreover, the outdated discourse of humanitarian intervention is turned on its head and transformed from that properly detested in the global South. The merits of particular situations should be evaluated rather than blindly given an imprimatur as “humanitarian.” For anyone familiar with the number of sins justified by that qualifying adjective, this change marks a profound shift away from the rights of outsiders to intervene toward the rights of populations at risk to assistance and protection, and the responsibility of outsiders to help. In what Gareth Evans calculates to be “a blink of the eye in the history of ideas,”21 developments since the release of the ICISS report in December 2001 show that R2P has moved from the passionate prose of an international commission’s report toward being a mainstay of international public policy debate. Edward Luck aptly reminds us that the life span of successful norms is “measured in centuries, not decades,”22 but R2P already seems firmly embedded in the values of international society and occasionally in policies and tactics for a particular crisis. R2P certainly has the potential to evolve further in customary international law and to contribute to ongoing conversations about the qualifications of states as legitimate, rather than rogue, sovereigns. Merely listing contemporary headlines is impressive. Prior to the World Summit’s endorsement of R2P, in 2004 the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change issued A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, which supported “the emerging norm that there is a collective international responsibility to protect.”23 Kofi Annan endorsed it in his 2005 report, In Larger Freedom.24 In addition to the official blessing by the UN General Assembly in October 2005, the Security Council had made references to R2P on several occasions: the April 2006 resolution 1674 on the protection of civilians in armed conflict expressly “reaffirms the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139,” and the August 2006 resolution 1706 on Darfur repeats the same language with specific reference to that conflict. The first meaningful operational references with reference to the “responsibility to protect” came against Libya in 2011: resolution 1970 had unanimous support for a substantial package of Chapter VII efforts (arms embargo, asset freeze, travel bans, and reference of the situation to the International Criminal Court), and no state voted against resolution 1973, which authorized “all necessary measures” to enforce a no-fly zone and protect civilians. Subsequently

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in July 2011, in approving a new peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, R2P once again figured in resolution 1996. In addition, the UN Human Rights Council referred to R2P for the first time in resolution S-15/1, which led to the General Assembly’s resolution 65/60 that suspended Libyan membership in the Human Rights Council. UN administrative strengthening began in 2007 when UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon appointed a special adviser on the prevention of genocide (Francis M. Deng in 2007–2012, and Adama Dieng from mid2012) and another for promoting R2P (Edward C. Luck in 2007–2012). Ban has referred to the implementation of R2P as one of his priorities. As noted at the outset, however, the secretariat’s emphases have been overwhelmingly on the first two pillars of Ban’s conception (the protection responsibilities of individual states, international assistance and capacity building for weak ones), thereby hoping to sidestep controversy surrounding what launched the debate in the first place: the use of military force for human protection purposes. The R2P norm has moved quickly, but the concept is still young, as Luck notes: “Like most infants, R2P will need to walk before it can run.”25 Nonetheless, many victims will suffer and die if R2P’s adolescence is postponed. The process that the ICISS began continues to be a cause for civil society and supportive governments that push skeptical countries and the UN bureaucracy to take seriously Ban’s earlier rhetorical call to translate “words to deeds.”26 In mid-2009 and the following three summers, the General Assembly engaged in an “informal interactive dialogue,” further steps in R2P’s normative journey from an emerging to an internalized norm,27 which Ramesh Thakur and I called “the most dramatic normative development of our time.”28 Member states of the “Group of Friends” of the responsibility to protect in New York, the UN special advisers, and civil society successfully advanced the cause. Initially, many observers feared that the debate would lead to diluting the September 2005 commitment. Fears about normative backpedaling seemed concrete enough; for instance, on the eve of the debate, The Economist described opponents who were “busily sharpening their knives.”29 The Nicaraguan president of the General Assembly, Father Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, unsheathed his Marxist dagger and suggested “a more accurate name for R2P would be . . . redecorated colonialism.”30 However, R2P naysayers have surely been disappointed by the discernible shift from antipathy to wider public acceptance of the norm.31 Close reading of remarks by diplomats from ninety-two countries and two observers who addressed the plenary showed scant support for un-

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dermining R2P. Only Venezuela directly questioned the 2005 World Summit agreement, and only four of the usual suspects sought to roll back the earlier consensus (Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan, and Nicaragua). Countries that had suffered terrible atrocities continued to make rousing pleas to strengthen and implement R2P—for example, Rwanda, Bosnia, Guatemala, Sierra Leone, and East Timor. A wide variety of other countries—such as Chile, South Korea, and the entire West— continued their outspoken support. More surprising was the widening consensus with support from major regional powers that had previously been reticent or even hostile—including Brazil, Nigeria, India, South Africa, and Japan. Concerns remained about implementation, thresholds, and inconsistency. The 2009 General Assembly resolution 63/208 registered tepid but widespread support across regions. In August 2010 the conversation continued around the SecretaryGeneral’s report on early warning. Forty-two states and four observers spoke, and the vast majority once again reaffirmed support. Not surprisingly, the usual detractors (this time Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Algeria) continued to question the definition of R2P and previous agreements, but in December 2010 the General Assembly approved resolution 64/245, which established the joint office and regularized the staff positions working on genocide prevention and R2P. Whether Libya has accelerated or slowed down the internalization of the norm is difficult to say at this juncture. It is worth noting that “focal points” from capitals and New York gathered in May 2011 at the invitation of the foreign ministers from Costa Rica, Denmark, and Ghana32 and figured in the Secretary-General’s next report in July 2011.33 In spite of the stalemate in Libya, the conversation was less controversial than in the previous two summers, with fewer of the usual suspects claiming no consensus; the calm continued in July 2012 perhaps as a result of the inability to address the atrocities in Syria. The 2011 focus on regional organizations was especially timely in that regional diplomacy was crucial for the Libyan intervention, which involved the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Arab League, the Islamic Conference, and the African Union (AU). In Côte d’Ivoire, the AU’s diplomacy was ultimately unsuccessful but helpful in making the ultimate UN decisions, as was pressure by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to act militarily.34 Mustering the cross-cultural political will to give concrete and consistent protection to civilians is never easy, but Libya is pivotal for what Shannon Beebe and Mary Kaldor call “human security intervention.”35 Libya’s people were protected from the kind of murderous harm that

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Muammar Qaddafi inflicted on unarmed civilians early in March 2011 and continued to menace against those “cockroaches” and “rats” who opposed him (the same terms used in 1994 by Rwanda’s genocidal government). As the situations in Tripoli and elsewhere across the Middle East unfold, acute dilemmas will remain for humanitarians and policymakers.36 If the operation fares reasonably well, the norm will be strengthened. If it goes poorly, future decisionmaking may be more problematic. It may thereby increase the decibel level of claims from naysayers who emphasize R2P’s potential to backfire. The repression of dissent in Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen, for instance, lends weight to claims from contrarians. Alan Kuperman argues that the expectation of benefiting from possible outside “intervention”—and he includes sanctions, embargoes, judicial pursuit, and military force under this rubric—emboldens substate groups of rebels either to launch or continue fighting, creating a moral hazard.37 There is no evidence that international mumbling has affected calculations by local militias and elites to initiate or prolong violence. Is robust humanitarianism destined to constitute a moral hazard? Perhaps, if there were an insurance policy for humanitarians as there is for banks, which permits the latter to be reckless with other people’s money. But there is no such global insurance policy; surely dissenters in Libya—and obviously those in Syria—understand that humanitarian talk is cheap. Moral hazard is not the problem but hollow rhetoric and collective spinelessness. If taken seriously, the moral hazard argument suggests that doing nothing is appropriate, thereby reissuing a license for mass murder to thug wannabes. Perhaps the most depressing example of the logic of state interests trumping the cosmopolitan logic of humanity is the glaring gap between what states pledge to do and what they actually do for the most vulnerable.38 Undoubtedly Libya will remain problematic for some time, but Côte d’Ivoire’s unspeakable disaster took place while the Security Council dithered, and its problems are not less numerous. Three times in March 2011 alone, the UN Security Council menaced the loser of the November 2010 elections and repeated its previous authorization to “use all necessary means to carry out its mandate to protect civilians.” But the UN soldiers on the ground did little until early April, when they along with French forces finally drove Gbagbo from his bunker. One might even have expected more robust action in that both the norms of democracy and the protection of civilians came together in West Africa. That said, military force is not a panacea, and its use is not a cause for celebration. At the same time, armed force was largely absent from

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the international R2P agenda until the action in Libya, a reality that substantiates the judgment by Gary Bass in his history of efforts to halt mass atrocities: “We are all atrocitarians now—but so far only in words, and not yet in deeds.”39 Politics, the topic of this volume, can almost always explain the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality: too little will with too little time and too few options for too many crises. The contrast in 2011 between international action in Côte d’Ivoire and Libya is stark, and those seeking to make “never again” more than aspirational should consider the limits of moral outrage and shocked consciences in explaining what also has not happened in Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Zimbabwe, as well as quite obviously in Syria.40 The Security Council’s skittishness since early 2003 in spite of mass murder and displacement in Darfur resembles the Council’s inability to address the even-longer-running woes of the DRC. Mediocre mediation in Zimbabwe completes the portrait of the dramatic disparity between lofty multilateral rhetoric and the lack of any meaningful collective political will not only to prevent but even to halt mass atrocities. The inability to do anything besides shrug collective international shoulders in the face of Syria’s continued atrocities and the failed efforts by Kofi Annan and then Lakhdar Brahimi as the joint envoy of the Arab League and the United Nations is even clearer. If Shakespeare is correct and past is prelude, these countries will continue to suffer. The odds of actually deploying sufficient military force to put a stop to atrocities in Darfur remain close to zero,41 especially after the January 2011 referendum that led to the breakup of Africa’s largest state. As of this writing, the uncertainties and violence in the relationship between north and south (as the United Nations’ 193rd member state) suggest continuing danger to international peace and security with little appetite for outside military intervention however great the threat to civilians. However disputed, if the numbers alone do not qualify the DRC as requiring robust R2P attention, the existence of rape along with the specific targeting of civilians would. Moreover, the underlying dynamics— the culture of impunity, hate speech, ethnic conflict, and a long history of ugly atrocities—are unsettling omens. The crimes of the past undoubtedly are ample indicators of future mass atrocities, if anyone is truly interested in R2P prevention. Yet the requirements for an effective outside military force and the political will to mount it are so overwhelming that the application of R2P for human protection purposes is even less likely now than a decade ago. Indeed, the central government in Kinshasa, as a

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follow-up to its dubious celebration of fifty years of independence, threatens to reduce the UN force as a means to assert its sovereignty. The limits of the Security Council’s tentativeness—even less active in Zimbabwe than in Darfur and the DRC—can be gleaned from the imprisonment at one point of over half of the opposition’s ministers in the so-called Inclusive Government. Stealing an election and instituting disastrous economic policies, no matter how egregious, do not constitute crimes against humanity under the Rome statute or atrocity crimes more generally. However, the massive forced displacement, human rights abuses, and deteriorating health conditions certainly could be considered harbingers of a mass atrocity context likely to trigger an R2P reaction. At a minimum, Zimbabwe provides yet another illustration of anemic regional and international political will to confront tyrants—seemingly a lesson learned in Côte d’Ivoire by Laurent Gbagbo, who felt empowered enough to flaunt international directives for six months. The Zimbabwe case suggests the difficulty of inducing governments to act against other states, even those whose policies result in high-profile calamities. If not Zimbabwe, what would qualify as an R2P self-induced atrocity? Syria demonstrates the extent to which normative advances are necessary but insufficient; and it also shows why continued efforts are worthwhile. It took more than a year of the murderous repression unleashed by President Bashar al-Assad before the Arab League and the United Nations appointed a joint envoy to Syria in the person of former UN SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan. The international actions, or rather inactions, in Syria indicate that a robust R2P response is not automatic. The gruesome death toll continued to mount, but perhaps historical perspective can provide a note of encouragement. A deafening silence greeted the 1982 massacre by Hafez al-Assad of what may have been 40,000 people in an artillery barrage of Hama, whereas his son’s machinations have encountered hostile reactions from a host of important actors: • The United Nations’ Joint Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and the Responsibility to Protect called for a halt to crimes against humanity. • The UN Human Rights Council condemned the crimes by a crushing vote and has published a thorough report detailing extensive crimes. • The United States, the European Union, and other states have imposed sanctions. • The Arab League has unequivocally condemned Assad’s actions, formulated a peace plan, sent human rights monitors, and sponsored a resolution in the Security Council.

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• The UN General Assembly initially condemned the violence and supported the peace plan with a two-thirds majority, and subsequently even more overwhelmingly condemned Bashar al-Assad’s unbridled crackdown on his population and specifically called for his resignation. The anemic response to Syria’s plight confirmed the growing ability of the international community of states to condemn abhorrent state conduct but an inability to agree on a common course of action even in the face of mass atrocities. While of little solace to the victims and their families, R2P is a principle and not a tactic. That principle remained intact in Syria, even if international action was considerably slower and less fulsome than in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire. Is there a danger of too much military humanitarianism? Hardly.

The UN: Impartial Forum or Political Prostitute?

Evaluating the pluses and minuses of the United Nations in any domain necessitates a clear definition of key actors and their contributions. To most observers, the UN is unitary, but the real organization consists of three linked components. Inis Claude long ago distinguished the arena for state decisionmaking—the First UN of member states42—from the Second UN of staff members and secretariat heads who are paid from assessed and voluntary budgets. The Third UN of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), experts, commissions, the private sector, and academics is a more recent addition to analytical perspectives.43 This broader embrace is more accurate and crucial to understanding the United Nations’ politics and comparative advantages. Building upon the lessons from the UN Intellectual History Project,44 assessing the organization’s role as a forum for implementing measures to prevent or halt mass atrocities requires us to ask: About which United Nations are we speaking? The easiest way to fudge an answer is pointing vaguely in the direction of the so-called international community. Though not quite fatuous, this moniker masks the politics and power that lurk beneath the surface; this sloppy shorthand conceals which actors are responsible for exacerbating or mitigating humanitarian problems, for standing in the way of or contributing to military forces to protect human beings.45 If accountability for success or failure is desirable—that is, determining which United Nations “failed” in Rwanda—it is essential to identify not obfuscate the identity of the culprits whose feet should be held to the fire.

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Public international lawyers are consistent and rely on the UN Charter for their definition of international community, “peace-loving [sic] states.” Over time, some observers and many social scientists have also included intergovernmental organizations in their definitions because they were created by states. Still other observers have added all groups, organizations, and even individuals who are interested in a particular problem. A requirement for any community is an agreed definition of who is included and a modicum of shared values. The existence of almost 200 member states provides an adequate definition for international lawyers of a membership criterion, but one that falls short of shared values; and the motley assortment of actors in other definitions means that there are no agreed criteria let alone clarity about values. Indeed, membership in the purported international community seems to change over time and by issue area. A 2002 cover of the magazine Foreign Policy says it all. A welldressed man (undoubtedly a permanent UN representative) is standing on the prow of a rowboat and looking through a monocular (or a pirate’s telescope) at a totally foggy horizon, accompanied by the caption, “Where Is the International Community?” The main feature continues inside under the overall heading, “What Is the International Community?” The answers in the nine essays share almost no common ground, which leads the editors to comment, “This feel-good phrase evokes a benevolent, omniscient entity that makes decisions and takes action for the benefit of all countries and peoples. But invoking the international community is a lot easier than defining it.”46 Someday we might have an international community in more than name. For the time being, however, it is fantasy not fact; and while policymakers undoubtedly will continue to be sloppy, academics should cease “employing the hackneyed phrase.”47 Readers can determine whether the United Nations is more often a member of the world’s oldest profession or a legitimate arbiter of contemporary international moral and political issues. For R2P, it has been mainly the latter.

Institutional Obstacles

The editors of this volume asked contributors several questions, and the answer to at least one seems clear: UN institutional mechanisms necessary for an effective response to halt mass atrocities are not in place. Before addressing two institutional reforms that would help reduce the distance between today’s and a more desirable world organization, I

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would like, once again, to specify the most discussed change that would not help even if it were to occur: reforming the Security Council.48 No single topic has wasted more diplomatic energy and academic ink than altering the Security Council. We can readily agree that no institution is more out of sync with current geopolitical realities. The notion of “legitimacy” is often attached to the pleas for reforming the Security Council—specifically the number of members and the veto—as if wider representation and new procedures would necessarily mean more legitimacy. However, legitimacy emanates less from the sheer number of diplomats sitting around a table and the procedures used and more from doing the right thing at the right time, or at least occasionally doing so.49 We can heartily agree that the principal organ charged with maintaining international peace and security created in 1945 and updated in 1965 requires an overhaul. At the same time, it is equally easy to appreciate why every solution raises as many problems as it solves, and why no alteration is likely in my lifetime. Reform efforts are a microcosm of a perpetual problem: the United Nations is so consumed with getting the process right that it routinely downplays consequences. Increased legitimacy is composed not only of process and purpose but also of performance. A Security Council that grows into a rump General Assembly would not stimulate activism. It would be too large to conduct serious negotiations but too small to represent the membership as a whole. Recommended changes would do nothing to foster better decisionmaking about the use of force in Darfur or the DRC or Zimbabwe and would not have changed the outcomes for Côte d’Ivoire and Libya—indeed, an expanded Security Council would undoubtedly inhibit action. Will the inability to move ahead with dramatic reforms compromise UN credibility on matters related to the future use of force? The answer—no more than in the past. If we take the Security Council off the agenda, two other institutional items should be on it because of their relevance for implementing the responsibility to protect. First, we require a capacity for multilateral military force that does not rely on the United States. Downsizing of armed forces over the last twenty years means an insufficient worldwide supply of equipment and manpower to meet the demands for military intervention for human protection purposes. There are bottlenecks even in the US logistics chain—especially airlift capacity—that make improbable a rapid international response to a fast-moving, Rwanda-like genocide, even by the country that accounts for half of global military expenditures and cannot afford to. 50 Using the conventional military

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logic that it takes four units to sustain one in the field, in 2011 about half of the US Army was tied down in Afghanistan and Iraq and a quarter of its reserves overseas, while about a third of the National Guard was committed to the war on terror.51 Questions are being raised even about Washington’s capacity to respond to a serious national security threat or a natural disaster like Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, let alone humanitarian “distractions.” In this regard, President Barack Obama was clear about the limits of the possible US contribution to the Libyan operation. Moreover, too little doctrinal rethinking about R2P has taken place within the US or other Western militaries, although Harvard’s Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project is helping to foster such rethinking.52 In spite of the November 2010 “shellacking” in the mid-term elections, the Obama administration built upon the report from a bipartisan Genocide Prevention Task Force led by Madeleine Albright and William Cohen.53 As argued earlier, we have witnessed a values breakthrough after centuries of more or less passive and mindless acceptance of the proposition that mass atrocities are a domestic affair. In August 2011 Obama issued the Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities (PSD10), which stated clearly, “Preventing mass atrocities and genocide is a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.”54 In addition to asking individual agencies to assess how to accomplish this task, PSD-10 also created an interagency Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), an important step in embedding the norm in a bureaucracy. Moreover, the president issued a proclamation that bars entry to US territory of persons who organize or participate in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or serious violations of human rights. The APB gathered for the first time at the White House on April 23, 2012, which coincided with the annual remembrance day of the Holocaust. Sixty-seven years after the end of that tragedy and eighteen after the beginning of Rwanda’s nightmare, the president announced that for the first time the United States would produce a National Intelligence Estimate of the potential for mass atrocities around the world. Obama mentioned that the effort was part of his administration’s efforts at “institutionalizing” how the US government mobilizes to prevent and halt mass atrocities. The White House highlighted a strategy in which the prevention of mass atrocities was both a moral responsibility and a national security interest. To halt at least some future conscience-shocking cases of mass suffering, there will be no alternative to military coercion. There is some flexibility for action in minor crises. For instance, the prediction that

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major powers other than the United States would not respond at all with military force to a new humanitarian emergency after September 11 proved too pessimistic. France led a European Union (EU) force into Ituri, DRC, in summer 2003 and temporarily halted an upsurge of ethnic violence, which demonstrated to Washington that the EU could act outside of the continent independently of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Europe’s takeover from NATO of the Bosnia operation in December 2004 as well as efforts in Chad, the eastern DRC, and Côte d’Ivoire are additional examples of a capacity beyond the US one. And, of course, military assets from France and the United Kingdom were essential to the air operations against Libya. Yet there is little evidence that European (or Canadian or Australian) populations or governments are willing to devote more public resources to their militaries. The free-rider problem has worsened over the last two decades as the percentage of total non-US military spending in NATO has dropped from about 50 percent during the Cold War to 25 percent at present. Could an EU security identity underpin a more operational responsibility to protect in modest crises? Spending on hardware falls considerably short of targets, but the number of European troops deployed abroad has doubled over the last decade and approaches the so-called Headline Goals, which set targets for the European Union in terms of military and civilian crisis management.55 Nonetheless, the blunt tongue-lashing of NATO allies by the well-respected outgoing US secretary of defense William Gates in his June 2011 remarks in Brussels were on target—Atlantic allies have to commit to more and wiser military spending, and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen went as far as to hope that “Libya can act as a wake-up call” that might at least initiate in Europe “a debate on whether to reverse the decline in defense spending . . . and [pursue] multinational approaches.”56 Europeans should share more of the burden of humanitarian bootson-the-ground, even if US airlift capacity, military muscle, and technology are required for larger and longer-duration deployments. The imposition of the no-fly zone in Libya demonstrated once again that, for better or worse, the United States in the Security Council as elsewhere is what US Secretary of State Dean Rusk once described as the fat boy in the canoe: “When we roll, everyone rolls with us.”57 Even if leading from behind and with Washington playing a secondary role, NATO allies had to rely on US airborne early warning and control systems (AWACS) and refueling airplanes as well as intelligence gathering and suppression of air defenses. Upgrading African capacities is a very long-run undertaking. The bullish Article 4(h) of the AU’s Constitutive Act provides for

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intervention in grave circumstances but is as yet unused.58 In the near term, unless European and other populations support higher expenditures for their armed forces, there is little alternative to the overworked global policeman. Hence, we will have the kind of deployments for human protection purposes that we have seen since 1999—few and far between. With or without more robust armed force, less worrying about the decentralization of the United Nations’ humanitarian capabilities would result in better assistance to and protection of civilians menaced by mass atrocities. My intent in this chapter is not to rehearse the well-documented competition within the UN system, the difficulties in dealing with internally displaced persons, and the often-ineffective linkages between UN military and humanitarian operations. Nonetheless, I will repeat a long-standing yet orphaned proposal: create a consolidated UN agency to assist and protect war victims. This amalgamation would entail the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) along with the UN Secretariat’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Such a consolidation would have the advantage not only of addressing squarely the problems of assisting and protecting refugees and others in “refugee-like situations”—mainly internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have no legal or institutional home—but also of attenuating the legendary waste and turf battles among UN organizations. It would involve consolidating parts of the UN organization proper and thus not require constitutional changes. Ironically, such a seemingly unthinkable reform almost came about in 1997, when newly elected Secretary-General Kofi Annan ordered a systemwide review of the organization with special attention on humanitarian and human rights operations.59 Then under-secretary-general Maurice Strong’s penultimate draft had an appendix that fleshed out the longer-term possibility of creating a consolidated UN humanitarian agency. Other UN agencies—especially UNICEF and WFP—as well as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) through their US consortium InterAction saw a threat: UNHCR would loom over them in size and authority, and their budgets and personnel would dwindle and someday be subsumed in a new consolidated agency. Annan backed off in light of the fierce opposition led by donors who preached coherence and consolidation but had their own agendas as well—including protecting the territory and budget allocations of their favorite intergovernmental organizations and NGOs in quintessential patron-client relationships. The

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final version of the 1997 reorganization was largely a repackaging of the former UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs as OCHA. The oldwine-in-a-new-bottle routine was not lost on the final group of eminent persons organized during the Annan era, the High-Level Panel on UN Systemwide Coherence on Development, Humanitarian Assistance, and the Environment. Not surprisingly, its recommendations for consolidation, or “delivering as one,” have largely met the same inglorious fate as earlier calls, including Robert Jackson’s 1969 Capacity Study.60 The United Nations’ default setting is “coordination,” the mere mention of which rightfully makes eyes glaze over because there is no power of the purse to compel collaboration—resulting in what former UN official Antonio Donini dubbed “coordination by default.”61 Prospects for successful coordination for R2P or anything else depend on getting the main UN operational agencies (UNHCR, UNICEF, UNDP, and WFP) and those outside the UN framework (International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC], International Organization for Migration [IOM], and the largest international NGOs) to pull together. Wherever and whenever the United Nations orchestrates an overall humanitarian response, there is no structural explanation for coherent and effective efforts; rather, they depend on good faith, personalities, luck, and serendipity. As numerous NGO and UN officials lament, “Everyone is for coordination but nobody wants to be coordinated.” It is time, certainly within the context of an international responsibility to protect civilians from mass atrocities, to consolidate the various moving parts of the core UN system.62

Political Obstacles

Tomes have been written, including my own,63 about the political constraints that hamper or paralyze UN decisionmaking. Nonetheless, two changes are not only sensible but also essential to halt mass atrocities. Both relate to the way that states approach multilateral diplomacy. The first stems from the diplomatic burlesque in UN circles on First Avenue in Manhattan or on the Avenue de la Paix in Geneva.64 The artificial divide between the aging acting troupes from the industrialized North and from the developing countries of the global South provide the main drama. Launched in the 1950s and 1960s as a way to create some diplomatic space for international security and economic negotiations by countries on the margins of international politics, the once-creative voices of the Non-Aligned Movement and the Group of 77 developing

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countries have now become prisoners of their own rhetoric. These rigid and counterproductive groups—and the resulting artificial divisions and toxic atmosphere—end up constituting almost insurmountable barriers to diplomatic initiatives. Serious conversation is virtually impossible and is replaced by meaningless posturing in order to score points in a conference room or in the media back home. The responsibility to protect is not really a North-South issue, although that seemingly is the only way that the United Nations can frame any issue. The result of the mindless group system is to magnify the voices of a small number of R2P spoilers—in the General Assembly they typically include Cuba, Venezuela, Sudan, and Zimbabwe and occasionally are supplemented by Malaysia, Nicaragua, and South Africa. Excessive time and energy are routinely expended merely to pacify what are a diminishing number of diehard opponents. On occasion, states have forged creative partnerships across the fictitious borders that supposedly divide industrialized and developing countries. Less posturing and role-playing is a prerequisite for the future health of the world organization. Examples of wide-ranging coalitions across continents and ideologies include those for the treaty to ban land mines and establish the International Criminal Court. Similar pragmatism has helped foster sufficient agreement to authorize actions to halt mass atrocities. Issues-based and interest-based coalitions of the willing are necessary in order to move beyond the empty performances in the North-South theater. The responsibility to protect has demonstrated how these divisions can be overcome with many countries from the global South crossing the fictional “northern border” and actively championing the cause, including support for action in Libya as well as Côte d’Ivoire. The second removable political obstacle consists of confronting head-on state sovereignty and the national interest calculations that circumscribe decisionmaking about halting mass atrocities. The R2P debate itself suggests that the toughest nut in international relations—the enduring concept of the system of sovereign states dating back to the 1648 Treaties of Westphalia—may be somewhat easier to crack than is usually imagined. The basis for UN membership reflects the equality of states, at least on paper. As a result of sovereignty’s grip and continuing influence, the international system functions amid a growing number of anomalies between virtually all of the life-menacing threats facing the planet and existing structures to make international decisions to do something about them. The calculated vital interests of major powers create obstacles to UN action in halting mass atrocities. And smaller

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and poorer, or newer and less powerful, states are as attached to their sovereignty as the major powers. Governmental decisionmakers and so-called realist scholars of international relations agree that narrowly defined vital interests are the only basis on which to make commitments or avoid them. The United Nations looks aberrantly but fondly back to the gold standard of sacrosanct state sovereignty and remains its most formidable bastion even as technological advances, globalization, and transboundary problems proliferate and make national borders of less and less consequence. While it may seem far-fetched to frontally attack this political obstacle, R2P illustrates how slowly and deliberately to recast national interests in terms of good global citizenship and enhancing international responsibilities. A prescription for the Westphalian system’s ailments consists of energetic recalculations of the shared benefits of fostering the provision of global public goods and respecting international commitments. Democratic member states, whether large or small, should theoretically find this pill relatively easy to swallow because they have a long-term, rational, and vital interest as well as a moral responsibility to promote multilateral cooperation. At least a therapeutic benefit results from uttering “good international citizenship,” a term that Gareth Evans coined to describe the relationship between the provision of basic rights and wider international security.65 Nothing illustrates this better than the responsibility to protect. While imposing the primary responsibility for human rights on governmental authorities, R2P argues that if a state is unwilling or unable to honor its responsibility—or, worse, is the perpetrator of mass atrocities—then the responsibility to protect human rights shifts upward to the international community of states. The appeal to common interests is not only moral but also could be viewed as enlightened self-interest. An international system in which genocide and mass atrocities remain policy options is unstable and insecure as well as abhorrent. R2P illustrates how to move in the direction of reframing state sovereignty more broadly, a values breakthrough after centuries of passively accepting the proposition that state sovereignty was a license to kill.

Conclusion

After summarizing the current international status of R2P and illustrating the absence of military intervention for human protection purposes, I looked for improvements in the form of establishing a capacity for

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multilateral military action without primary reliance on the United States and consolidating UN agencies responsible for humanitarian delivery and protection. As I continue to search for ways to rediscover the momentary passion and commitment of the collective mea culpa after Rwanda’s genocide, the absence of political will is clear, as is the lowkey approach of the current UN secretariat under Ban Ki-moon. Until Libya, the acceptable middle ground for policy debate had shifted away from the need to find military means to halt a future repetition of the 1994 mass murder of some 800,000 Rwandans. Attention on the thirty-eighth floor had favored the critics of the so-called new militarism—a minority third-world lament about R2P as the Trojan Horse of neo-imperialism. Ironically, such official tentativeness means that the responsibility to protect can sometimes be a hindrance to authorizing military force for human protection purposes—the area where R2P has “the greatest potential to save strangers, and yet faces its greatest challenges.”66 In light of the robust military response after the Libyan resolutions, some member states appear reluctant to utter “responsibility to protect” unless coercive measures are under discussion; this reluctance, ironically, is inconsistent with R2P prevention and early and flexible responses—that is, the heart of the current Secretary-General’s strategy. Clausewitz is the usual point of departure for those who argue that diplomats should step aside when negotiations fail and let soldiers pursue politics by other means. Ironically, the responsibility to protect requires that diplomats succeed in securing agreement on the deployment of military force. Diplomats stand aside after they have succeeded, and soldiers do what diplomats cannot—halt mass atrocities. Today the central challenge of the responsibility to protect is no longer inadequate normative consensus. The red herring of imperialism is often tossed into the debate pool as a distraction. There is ample cultural evidence across the global South to sustain robust and justifiable humanitarian action;67 support by countries in the region for outside intervention in Libya was noteworthy and perhaps a harbinger. “Though some critics fret that RtoP could prove to be a humanitarian veneer by which powerful states could justify military intervention in the developing world, more often the problem has been the opposite,” Edward Luck commented. “They have looked for excuses not to act, rather than for reasons to intervene.”68 Or as the moral philosopher Michael Walzer echoed, “It is more often the case that powerful states don’t do enough, or don’t do anything at all, in response to desperate need than that they respond in imperialist ways.”69 Perhaps robust action in Libya will make policy- and decisionmakers realize that the problem was not too much military intervention for

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human protection purposes but rather nothing significant between 1999 and 2011. Politics and military capacity ultimately are the most important factors in determining when, where, why, and how to protect and assist affected populations.70 The 2011 international action in Libya was unusual in that the moral and legal as well as political and military dimensions came together under the R2P rubric. If the aftermath of the Libyan intervention goes reasonably well, it will put additional teeth in the fledgling R2P norm; if it goes badly, international opposition will redouble and make future decisions even more difficult. Foot-dragging and vetoes by the usual suspects in Security Council debates over Syria is one obvious result. Nonetheless, international action in 2011 suggests that it is not quixotic to utter “never again”—that is, no more Holocausts, Cambodias, and Rwandas—and occasionally to mean it.

Notes 1. International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, The Responsibility to Protect: Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001), and Thomas G. Weiss and Don Hubert, The Responsibility to Protect: Research, Bibliography, Background (Ottawa: International Development Research Centre, 2001). For interpretations by commissioners, see Gareth Evans, The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2008); and Ramesh Thakur, The United Nations, Peace and Security: From Collective Security to the Responsibility to Protect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). The author’s version of the normative itinerary is Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2012). 2. Parts of this argument appeared in Thomas G. Weiss, “RtoP Alive and Well after Libya,” Ethics and International Affairs 25, no. 3 (2011): 287–292. 3. Ban Ki-moon, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, Report of the Secretary-General (January 12, 2009), UN Doc. A/63/677. 4. Ramesh Thakur, The Responsibility to Protect: Norms, Laws and the Use of Force in International Politics (London: Routledge, 2011), p. 150. 5. Aidan Hehir, The Responsibility to Protect: Rhetoric, Reality and the Future of Humanitarian Intervention (Houndsmill, Basingstoke, UK: PalgraveMacmillan, 2012). 6. Ban Ki-moon, The Responsibility to Protect, Pillar III: Timely and Decisive Response, Report of the Secretary-General (July 24, 2012), UN Doc. S/2012/578, para. 15. 7. Ban Ki-moon, The Role of Regional and Sub-regional Arrangements in Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, Report of the Secretary-General (June 27, 2011), UN Doc. A/65/877, para. 11. 8. Ban Ki-moon, Early Warning, Assessment, and the Responsibility to Protect, Report of the Secretary-General (July 14, 2010), UN document A/64/864.

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9. Alex J. Bellamy, “The Responsibility to Protect: Five Years On,” Ethics and International Affairs 24, no. 2 (2010): 143–169. 10. I. William Zartman, “Preventing Identity Conflicts Leading to Genocide and Mass Killings” (New York: International Peace Institute, 2010), p. 4. 11. James Pattison, Humanitarian Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect: Who Should Intervene? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 250. 12. David Rieff, “Saints Go Marching In,” National Interest, no. 114 (July/ August 2011): 6–15. 13. Lisa Hultman, “Keeping Peace or Spurring Violence? Unintended Effects of Peace Operations on Violence Against Civilians,” Civil Wars 12, nos. 1–2 (2010): 29–46. 14. Frank Chalk, Roméo Dallaire, et al., Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2010). 15. Jennifer Welsh, “Implementing the Responsibility to Protect: Where Expectations Meet Reality,” Ethics and International Affairs 24, no. 4 (2010): 428. 16. Simon Chesterman, “Hard Cases Make Bad Law: Law, Ethics, and Politics in Humanitarian Intervention,” in Just Intervention, edited by Anthony F. Lang Jr. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), pp. 46–61. 17. “Letter Dated 9 November 2011 from the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General” (November 9, 2011), UN Doc. A/66/551-S/2011/701, p. 1. 18. Roberta Cohen and Francis M. Deng, “Normative Framework of Sovereignty,” in Francis M. Deng, Sadikiel Kimaro, Terrence Lyons, Donald Rothschild, and I. William Zartman, Sovereignty as Responsibility: Conflict Management in Africa (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996). pp. 1–33. 19. UN General Assembly Resolution, 2005 World Summit Outcome (October 24, 2005), UN Doc. A/RES/60/1, paras. 138–140. 20. Nicholas J. Wheeler, Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 21. Evans, Responsibility to Protect, p. 28. 22. Edward C. Luck, “The Responsibility to Protect: The First Decade,” Global Responsibility to Protect 3, no. 4 (2011): 387–399. 23. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility (New York: United Nations, 2004), para. 203. 24. Kofi Annan, In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All (New York: United Nations, 2005). 25. Edward C. Luck, “The United Nations and the Responsibility to Protect,” Policy Analysis Brief, Muscatine, IA: Stanley Foundation, 2008, p. 8. 26. Ban Ki-moon, “On Responsible Sovereignty: International Cooperation for a Changed World,” Address of the Secretary-General, Berlin, July 15, 2008, UN Doc. SG/SM/11701. 27. For the theory of normative advance, see Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (1998): 887–917; Thomas Risse, Stephen Ropp, and Kathryn Sikkink, The Power of Human Rights: International Norms

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and Domestic Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). 28. Ramesh Thakur and Thomas G. Weiss, “R2P: From Idea to Norm—and Action?” Global Responsibility to Protect 1, no. 1 (2009): 22. 29. “An Idea Whose Time Has Come—and Gone?” The Economist, July 23, 2009. 30. “Statement by the President of the General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, at the Opening of the 97th Session of the General Assembly,” July 23, 2009. 31. For accounts of the 2009–2012 debates, see Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect: http://globalr2p.org/publications. 32. Global Center for the Responsibility to Protect, “Meeting of National Focal Points on R2P Convened by Costa Rica, Denmark, and Ghana, New York, 17 and 18 May 2011,” New York, June 2011, http://globalr2p.org. 33. Ban, Role of Regional and Sub-regional Arrangements, para. 28. 34. Thomas J. Bassett and Scott Straus, “Defending Democracy in Côte d’Ivoire,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 4 (2011): 130–140. 35. Shannon D. Beebe and Mary Kaldor, The Ultimate Weapon Is No Weapon: Human Security and the New Rules of War and Peace (New York: Public Affairs, 2010). 36. Michael Barnett and Thomas G. Weiss, Humanitarianism Contested: Where Angels Fear to Tread (London: Routledge, 2011). 37. Alan J. Kuperman, “Mitigating the Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from Economics,” Global Governance 14, no. 2 (2008): 219–240; Kuperman, “The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans,” International Studies Quarterly 52, no. 1 (2008): 49–80; and Kuperman, “Darfur: Strategic Victimhood Strikes Again?” Genocide Studies and Prevention 4, no. 3 (2009): 281–303. 38. David Held, Cosmopolitanism: Ideals and Realities (Cambridge: Polity, 2010). 39. Gary J. Bass, Freedom’s Battle: The Origins of Humanitarian Intervention (New York: Knopf, 2008), p. 382. 40. See Thomas G. Weiss, “Halting Atrocities in Kenya: Acting Sooner Rather Than Later,” in Great Decisions 2010 (New York: Foreign Policy Association, 2010), pp. 17–30. 41. Samuel Totten, “Editor’s Introduction,” Genocide Studies and Prevention 4, no. 3 (2009): 277–280. 42. Inis L. Claude Jr., Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Prospects of International Organization (New York: Random House, 1956); and Claude, “Peace and Security: Prospective Roles for the Two United Nations,” Global Governance 2, no. 3 (1996): 289–298. 43. Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, and Richard Jolly, “The ‘Third’ United Nations,” Global Governance 15, no. 1 (2009): 123–142. 44. Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, and Thomas G. Weiss, UN Ideas That Changed the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009). Details on other books and activities are available at www.unhistory.org. 45. Deborah D. Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan K. Sell, eds., Who Governs the Globe? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

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46. “What Is the International Community?” Foreign Policy (September/ October 2002): 28–47. 47. Berit Bliesemann de Guevara and Florian P. Kühn, “The International Community Needs to Act: Loose Use and Empty Signaling of a Hackneyed Concept,” International Peacekeeping 18, no. 2 (April 2011): p. 149. 48. Thomas G. Weiss, “Overcoming the Security Council Impasse: Envisioning Reform,” Occasional Paper 14, Berlin: Friederich Ebert Stiftung, 2005. 49. Thomas G. Weiss, “Fundamental UN Reform, a Non-Starter or Not?” Journal of Global Policy 2, no. 2 (2011): 196–202. 50. Alan J. Kuperman, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001). 51. Patrice C. McMahon and Andrew Wedeman, “Sustaining American Power in a Globalized World,” in American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World, edited by David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, and Andrew Wedeman (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 12–14. 52. Victoria K. Holt and Tobias C. Berkman, The Impossible Mandate? Military Preparedness, the Responsibility to Protect and Modern Peace Operations (Washington, DC: Stimson Center, September 2006). Recently, and seemingly triggered by Libya, the US military is moving toward the imminent adoption of a handbook developed by the Mass Atrocity Response Operations (MARO) project at Harvard University led by Sarah Sewell. 53. Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen, “Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers,” Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Academy of Diplomacy, and US Institute of Peace, December 2008. 54. “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities/PSD-10,” August 4, 2011, www.whitehouse.gov. 55. Javier Solana, A Secure Europe in a Better World (Brussels: European Council, 2003), http://ue.eu.int/uedocs/cms_data/docs/pressdata/en/reports /76255.pdf. 56. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, “NATO After Libya: The Transatlantic Alliance in Austere Times,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 4 (2011): 2–6. 57. Quoted by Lincoln Palmer Bloomfield, Accidental Encounters with History (and Some Lessons Learned) (Cohasset, MA: Hot House Press, 2005), p. 14. 58. Kwame Akonor, “Assessing the African Union’s Right of Humanitarian Intervention,” Criminal Justice Ethics 29, no. 2 (August 2010): 157–173. 59. Kofi Annan, “Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform,” New York: United Nations, July 1997. For details, see Thomas G. Weiss, “Humanitarian Shell Games: Whither UN Reform?” Security Dialogue 29, no. 1 (1998): 9–23. 60. High-Level Panel on UN Systemwide Coherence on Development, Humanitarian Assistance, and the Environment, Delivering as One (New York: United Nations, 2006); and United Nations, A Capacity Study of the United Nations Development System (Geneva: United Nations, 1969), 2 vols., document DP/5. 61. Antonio Donini, The Policies of Mercy: UN Coordination in Afghanistan, Mozambique, and Rwanda, Occasional Paper 22, Providence, RI: Watson Institute for International Studies, 1996.

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62. For an argument about consolidating the development system that increasingly interacts with the humanitarian organization, see Stephen Browne and Thomas G. Weiss, “Making Change Happen: Enhancing the UN’s Contributions to Development,” New York: World Federation of United Nations Associations, 2012. 63. Thomas G. Weiss, What’s Wrong with the United Nations and How to Fix It, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Polity, 2012). 64. Thomas G. Weiss, “Moving Beyond North-South Theatre,” Third World Quarterly 30, no. 2 (2009): 271–284. 65. Gareth Evans, “Foreign Policy and Good International Citizenship,” 1990, http://www.gevans.org/speeches/old/1990/060390_fm_fpandgoodinternationalcitizen.pdf. 66. Nicholas J. Wheeler and Frazer Egerton, “The Responsibility to Protect: ‘Precious Commitment’ or a Promise Unfulfilled?” Global Responsibility to Protect 1, no. 1 (2009): 114–132. 67. Rama Mani and Thomas G. Weiss, eds., The Responsibility to Protect: Cultural Perspectives from the Global South (London: Routledge, 2011). 68. Edward C. Luck, “The Responsibility to Protect: Growing Pains or Early Promise?” Ethics and International Affairs 24, no. 4 (2010): p. 361. 69. Michael Walzer, “On Humanitarianism,” Foreign Affairs 90, no. 4 (2011): 77. 70. See Simon Chesterman, Just War or Just Peace? Humanitarian Intervention and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

10 Developing the Political Will to Respond Adam Lupel and Ernesto Verdeja

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he twentieth century was a time of great progress and great violence. Most troubling, that violence often included attacks against civilians, and this continues today: the genocides of Rwanda and the Balkans closed out the twentieth century, while the atrocities of Darfur opened the twenty-first century—and more recently, the extraordinary violence against civilians in Syria has raised the specter of mass atrocity crimes yet again. At the same time, political and scholarly attention to the need to address this violence has not been lacking. At the 2005 UN World Summit, heads of state unanimously pledged to support the work of the SecretaryGeneral’s special adviser on the prevention of genocide, and affirmed the international responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. And in 2011, President Obama declared the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities a “core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.”1 In academic circles, the literature on genocide prevention and intervention has grown significantly, in parallel with new networks that bridge the scholarly and policymaker communities.2 Many works on genocide and peacemaking have narrowly focused on individual countries, providing in-depth analyses of specific cases.3 Our approach has been complementary but different. Although we have drawn on individual cases, our approach has been to focus on the distinct institutional levels, actors, and tools available to the international community when confronting genocide and mass atrocities. We began by analyzing the definition of genocide and the causes of mass violence. We then surveyed the actors, strategies, and policies that are available to prevent these atrocities and, when required, to intervene to stop them, 241

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analyzing the impediments to timely and robust action along the way. The chapter authors discussed national, regional, international, and transnational actors and institutions, and they have analyzed the specific tools available, including risk assessment models, early warning systems, mediation and preventive diplomacy, civil society pressure, and military intervention. We have shown that how the international system responds to genocide and mass atrocity depends upon how these elements interact, and how the politics of national interest and international diplomacy play out at each turn. In this chapter we draw together elements from the previous discussions, examining the political obstacles to effective international action, and conclude the volume by discussing how the development of political will remains the critical ingredient to any effective international response to mass atrocities.

Define the Crime

We began the volume by examining how differing understandings about the definition of genocide can affect international responses. The definition of genocide articulated in the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide continues to be the legally binding definition in international law as inscribed in the Rome statute of the International Criminal Court. In his chapter, Ernesto Verdeja shows how the Convention’s focus on ethnic, national, racial, and religious identities—to the exclusion of political groups or economic classes—and its wide range of prohibited acts, from simple killing to the more complex causing of “mental harm,” has led to confusion and resulted in a proliferation of debates over the very definition of the crime. This confusion has made it easier for actors to exploit one definition over the other, depending upon their interests, and has led to distracting debates on whether a particular conflict constitutes genocide rather than on how to stem ongoing violence. Verdeja points to the Clinton administration’s “terminological acrobatics” in avoiding the word “genocide” when discussing the violence in Rwanda for fear that it would trigger an obligation to act militarily. In his chapter, Iavor Rangelov discusses how Save Darfur’s efforts to get a designation of genocide from the US government distracted from the need to develop concrete ways to protect civilians. In effect, the political debate became about whether the conflict in Darfur was genocide and not about how to end the crisis. Such disputes over naming have resulted in a tendency to move beyond the narrow focus on genocide to broader references to mass atroc-

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ities and the responsibility to protect. Here the stress is on the need to respond to mass violence against civilians, whether it fits one definition of genocide or another. At a certain point, arguing over whether ongoing violence against civilians constitutes genocide can serve simply to stall action—as Timothy Murithi discusses in his chapter with regard to regional organizations—or to postpone the difficult task of finding multifaceted solutions to complex problems—as Rangelov shows with regard to transnational civil society. Indeed, as Verdeja notes, in the last fifteen years, international prosecutors have focused on the broader categories of war crimes and crimes against humanity, in part to steer clear of the pitfalls associated with having to prove a crime was an act of genocide. However, for the purposes of prevention, clarifying the operative definition of genocide remains important. How policymakers define the crime determines how they seek to prevent and stop it. As Verdeja illustrates, genocide shares many features with other forms of political violence, but it also differs in distinct ways. He argues that policymakers should adopt an inclusive and sociologically accurate conception that moves beyond the limits of the Genocide Convention and focuses on the systematic targeting of a group for destruction, regardless of ethnic, national, racial, or religious identity. Frances Stewart also argues that making distinctions among acts of mass violence remains important. In her chapter, she reviews the extensive quantitative literature on the causes of civil war and genocide, distinguishing among demographic, socioeconomic, and political factors. She finds that while countries with low per capita income are at higher risk of civil war, genocide is most closely correlated with intermediateincome countries; and while autocratic regimes are the most likely to institute genocidal policies, unstable transitional regimes are most at risk of civil war. As Stewart shows, while genocide and civil war often overlap, there are important differences and similarities in the factors that lead to the outbreak of genocide and civil war that policymakers should consider when crafting international responses. Importantly, she argues that when assessing the risks of a short-term emergency response, stopping genocide must have priority over the prevention of civil war. While we cannot assume that the effects of civil wars are categorically negative—historically, some positive change has followed some conflicts—genocides have no redeeming qualities. Of course, in the long term, conflict prevention will contribute to the prevention of genocide, as the existence of civil war is a major disposing condition of genocidal violence. Thus, to avoid the need for short-term emergency action by international actors, Stewart recommends a series of long-term

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policy responses to decrease the likelihood of both genocide and civil war. These responses include the institution of inclusive political and socioeconomic policies, checks on executive power, and the incorporation of international human rights conventions into national constitutions. The analysis of such structural elements—including the form of government, the character of ethnic divisions, and the degree of international openness—can also help international actors assess the risk of genocidal violence in any given society. Barbara Harff discusses this at length in her chapter. However, she argues that in addition to structural risk factors, reliable early warning mechanisms must focus on more dynamic factors, such as political crises and the seizure of power by extremists, to understand when genocidal violence is in fact imminent and in need of an international response. After a review of current conflict risk assessment models and early warning systems, Harff concludes that, regrettably, early warning is often a “late warning” of atrocities already being committed. She advocates for a more systematic and social scientific approach to risk assessment and early warning, but critically, Harff notes that even the best early warning models are insufficient if they do not come with tools to determine how best to respond. For example, she suggests, if hate propaganda is determined to be a key accelerator of genocidal violence, international actors could plan to take measures to jam radio stations when they are used to incite violence during crises. The key, of course, is to connect “early warning” with “early response,” so that intervention can indeed stop crimes and save lives, or— even better—prevent mass atrocities from occurring in the first place. Thus, the remaining chapters of the volume examine the international actors that can provide such responses, the variety of institutional levels at which they act, and the tools at their disposal.

Many Actors, Many Tools

As interest in conflict prevention has grown internationally, from the development of the responsibility to protect (R2P) principle to a concentrated focus on preventive diplomacy, an increasing number of actors have become involved in conflict prevention at a variety of institutional levels, and new tools have been developed while old tools have evolved. The field of preventive diplomacy alone includes states, international organizations, civil society groups, regional organizations, and private individuals. As the normative consensus around R2P widens, the success or failure of the principle will depend upon how it is made op-

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erational through international responses that potentially include such a broad collection of actors using a variety of different tools. The UN Secretary-General released a report in July 2012 that sought to provide a strategy for the implementation of the responsibility to protect. It stresses the importance of using all tools available to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing.4 It discusses the range of tools available under the UN Charter, including coercive and noncoercive measures as specified in Articles VI to VIII. In particular, the report highlights preventive diplomacy, public advocacy, fact-finding missions and commissions of inquiry, monitoring and observer missions, threats of referral to the International Criminal Court (ICC), targeted sanctions, and coercive military force, among other tools. The report states that while R2P is about prevention, prevention and response are closely related. Broadly speaking, diplomacy is the essential noncoercive tool for international actors working to facilitate the prevention or resolution of conflict. However, one of the principal tools of diplomacy is the threat of more coercive responses. Successful diplomacy depends upon leverage of one kind or another, which can be based upon the threat of coercive measures or the promise of economic or political benefits.5 In his chapter, I. William Zartman examines the use of mediation and preventive diplomacy to stop identity-based conflicts from spiraling out of control. Zartman outlines two broad types of measures that may be pursued specifically to ensure that an identity-based conflict does not escalate into genocidal violence: structural measures and attitudinal measures. Structural measures include either negotiating the acceptance of a shared political system that provides reassurances of security and representation to all sides, or where this is not possible, securing the separation of conflicting groups. Attitudinal measures are those that seek to change the attitudes of the conflict’s parties, which for Zartman include informal processes facilitating interparty dialogue, formal processes of mediating between parties in peace negotiations, and more antagonistic processes of signaling measured but concrete consequences for instigating further conflict. Such processes include threatening to use the more coercive options in the international response tool kit, such as sanctions, prosecutions, and ultimately military intervention. In the final analysis, Zartman argues that mediation must work to restore the political willingness and capacity of the state to respond to the needs and wishes of its entire people. Many actors are engaged in the practice of conflict prevention from the local level to the transnational, including not just high-level diplo-

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macy but critical work on the ground by domestic actors and civil society. Zartman points to the key role that local actors, especially police, play in preventing ethnic conflicts from spiraling out of control. However, when an ethnic conflict over issues of political power or state resources does rise to the brink of violence, an outside mediator is needed, as the animosity between the opposing sides generally undermines the possibility of direct negotiations. Public and private actors can both be involved in such preventive diplomacy. Nevertheless, in the late stages of conflict negotiations, effective mediators are almost always state-sponsored, either directly or through an interstate or regional organization. Kofi Annan’s successful mediation in Kenya after the 2008 election-related violence, for example, was mandated by the African Union (AU).6 Regional organizations have a growing and varied role to play in responding to genocide and mass atrocities. Timothy Murithi discusses the early and late intervention roles that regional organizations play. He argues that regional organizations are well situated to raise the alarm about impending crises. For example, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) high commissioner on national minorities has a mandate to provide early warning about ethnic tensions that could threaten regional peace and security. As a part of his mandate he is empowered to investigate OSCE member states without their express permission and to make action-oriented recommendations as required. However, his role remains one of diplomacy and inquiry, not coercion. As Commissioner Knut Vollebaek said of his role in 2011, “I send letters, not troops.”7 The AU, on the other hand, does on occasion send troops, as it has done twice in missions to Sudan—first on its own starting in 2004 and later in partnership with the United Nations starting in 2007—as well as in Somalia. The Constitutive Act of the African Union establishes the right to intervene militarily in member states in cases of mass atrocity. And along with its Peace and Security Council—which mirrors the UN Security Council—the AU is developing a Standby Force for the purpose of such deployments. In addition to their potential role in direct interventions, regional organizations can also confer or withdraw legitimacy on conflicting parties, which represents an important tool of leverage over a recalcitrant state. In this way, Murithi argues, when regional organizations are proactive and united, they can be effective in pressuring their member states in the interest of preventing conflict. Unfortunately, Murithi notes, in the case of Africa this has been “more the exception than the

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rule.” Geographical proximity can be both a benefit and a hindrance. It can be beneficial in facilitating local knowledge for early warning and in providing short distances for rapid responses, but it can also be a hindrance because of the political divisions among member states and the likely ties between regional governments and perpetrator regimes. Consequently, Murithi argues, in order to be effective, regional organizations should develop specific genocide prevention strategies with builtin political mechanisms to trigger responses to crises and practical capacities to match principles with concrete actions. Observers hope that the African Peace and Security Architecture, which includes the African Standby Force, will in part serve this function in the future. While peacekeeping deployments and final-status negotiations are the province of states and intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), private actors also have a role to play in conflict prevention. Zartman discusses how official mediation efforts are often informed by nongovernmental organization (NGO) research and assisted by various private sector partners. Furthermore, “track II” diplomacy, in which private individuals meet informally with conflict parties to find common ground in preparation for formal talks, is now a recognized part of any conflict prevention tool kit.8 In addition, Zartman points to the important role of local civil society in the implementation of peace accords negotiated by international actors. After the diplomats go home, local communities are often responsible for ensuring that peace endures. In the post–Cold War era, transnational civil society has taken on an increasingly high-profile role in mobilizing international responses to genocide and mass atrocities. In his chapter, Iavor Rangelov analyzes the diverse orientations and contested politics of civil society groups. He looks at the history of civil society mobilization in response to mass atrocities, and he examines the particular case of Save Darfur. He argues that while the function of transnational civil society is often seen as akin to a whistle-blower raising awareness about a crime, its most significant contribution has been the long-term promotion of humanitarian norms and the cause of having them enshrined in international law. In his chapter, Colin Keating also credits civil society for being an integral part of the process by which the protection of civilians was placed onto the official agenda of the Security Council. The contributors to this volume make clear that individual states, intergovernmental institutions, regional organizations, private citizens, and civil society groups all have a positive role to play in preventing conflict. However, the prospect of multiple actors pursuing peace in a single conflict can also present a problem. When multiple institutions

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mobilize behind multiple initiatives, the challenge of coherence and coordination among them becomes acute, with potentially dire consequences. Indeed, if a single conflict becomes too crowded with a variety of third parties, warring parties may begin to “forum shop” and play a variety of processes and actors against one another, with little real intention of coming to an agreement or ending the violence.9 Preventive diplomacy and direct intervention are thus most effective when the key external actors work together and share a common interest in conflict resolution. This was also a key theme of the SecretaryGeneral’s 2012 report on the implementation of R2P. Responses to mass atrocities are most successful when international actors cooperate with regional partners, and mediation and preventive diplomacy are most effective when the third parties to a conflict “work together, speak with one voice, and use their relative strengths in a complementary fashion.”10 When leading powers have diverging interests, outside intervention can arguably do more harm than good, at best sustaining a stalemate longer than necessary, and at worst transforming a civil conflict into a proxy war.

Obstacles to Effective Action

With so many actors utilizing so many tools to respond to mass violence, one might expect the story lines of success to be numerous. But too often international responses are either too late or too weak, for numerous reasons. Colin Keating cites five obstacles to effective action: complexity, the defense of absolute sovereignty, issues of trade and finance, the narrow pursuit of national interest, and calculations about trade-offs between peace and justice. However, one theme runs consistent throughout our volume. Time and again, political divisions among international actors present the principal obstacle to timely and decisive action. The potential for third-party political divisions to hinder international responses to genocide and mass atrocity is most evident on the UN Security Council. In his chapter, Keating points to a number of historical cases in which geopolitics and national interest limited the options for promoting timely and decisive responses to mass atrocities. Keating highlights the lack of agreement on the Security Council over the use of force as the principal reason why the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) fell so far short in Bosnia. While a large majority of the General Assembly supported the Bosnian Muslims, the Security Council was divided. Veto-wielding Russia, in particular, argued against taking sides, but early on the United Kingdom and France were also reluc-

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tant to provide UNPROFOR with a more robust mandate. Keating suggests that a delicate geopolitical calculation was at work at the time. Taking forceful action in Bosnia risked undermining the democratization of Russia by fueling nationalist sentiments, which would have strengthened the hand of the recently deposed communists and risked a return of the Cold War. In this way, geopolitical fears trumped the imperative to protect. By now, the story is well known that political calculations also contributed to the Security Council’s failure to respond effectively to the Rwandan genocide. China opposed any reference to genocide on the Council, and the United States had no interest in supporting another UN peacekeeping operation in the wake of the failed mission in Somalia. However, in his chapter, Keating argues that one can discern a positive trend over the course of the post–Cold War period that lends itself to a more optimistic view of international efforts to protect civilians. In part, this positive trend has developed as a response to the failures of the mid-1990s. Keating documents an extraordinarily productive period on the Security Council between June 1998 and September 2000 in which a series of thematic debates, presidential statements, and resolutions established the protection of civilians as a regular part of the official agenda. While this trend did not develop without setbacks or strong voices of opposition, especially in response to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, it helped spur the development of the normative principles that led to the international recognition of R2P in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document. However, normative agreement has not proven to be sufficient to guarantee that international actors, including the Security Council, will act when the time comes. Again and again we have seen that political differences among the principal actors block the bridge between normative agreement and practical action. In his chapter, Thomas Weiss argues that there are two main types of obstacles to effectively responding to genocide and mass atrocities. In addition to political obstacles, he argues that a lack of institutional capacity presents a serious barrier to effective international responses. To remedy this, he suggests first the need for a greater multilateral military capacity that does not rely on the United States; second, he argues for a greater consolidation of the UN humanitarian system. He envisions an amalgamation of the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Development Programme, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the World Food Programme, and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

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On the one hand, addressing the institutional obstacles to effective action would smooth the way to overcome the political challenges. Many member states have opposed operations because they are deemed too difficult or too costly and threaten to take scarce resources away from domestic initiatives. If more robust and streamlined international capacity to act existed, member states would see operations as less politically difficult to sell at home. On the other hand, accomplishing such institutional reform requires enormous political will in itself. That is, improving capacity would help to smooth the political path for effective responses, but institutional reform is impossible without the political will to make it happen. Weiss sees two principal forms of political obstacles at the international level: tensions between the global North and South, and narrow preoccupations with national interest and the defense of an old notion of state sovereignty as absolute. Although the halting of mass atrocities is not an issue that should divide the world by the North/South axis, the issue is often framed that way in international debates because of developing countries’ concerns that powerful nations will use R2P as a pretext to invade or interfere with domestic affairs. This was most recently evident in the debates that followed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intervention in Libya. By 2011, there was broad agreement among UN member states about the principle of R2P, but the conflict in Libya revealed that this normative progress had not translated into agreement about its application, especially with regard to the use of force.11 In 2011, the Security Council reiterated the R2P principle when it passed resolution 1973 authorizing military intervention in Libya with five abstentions and no votes in opposition. However, many member states then felt betrayed as a mandate to protect civilians became a mission to overthrow the government. As NATO forces led by the United States and France moved from establishing a no-fly zone to full support of the effort to unseat Muammar Qaddafi, the charge of overreach became a common refrain, highlighting the dispute in international affairs over the limits of sovereignty and the necessary justification for military intervention.12 This dispute became even more pronounced in October 2011 when—citing the need to respect Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity—Russia and China vetoed a Security Council draft resolution condemning Bashar al-Assad’s crackdown on antigovernment protestors.13 As we have seen repeatedly, disagreement over the proper response or suspicion about the true motives of one power or another can lead to inaction.14 This point holds not only for military intervention, as Weiss

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contends, but also for the implementation of policies to address the root causes of violence, as Stewart discusses in her chapter; the most effective use of early-warning mechanisms, as Harff shows;15 and the mobilization of political actors to cooperate with preventive diplomacy, as described by Zartman. Even the engagement by civil society can be a messy affair. As Rangelov shows in his chapter, civil society also has its political divisions. As he argues, the contributions of civil society come about through “contestation rather than consensus.” Transforming this contestation at all levels into effective action against mass atrocities is not only a matter of the short-term mobilization of political will at the moment action is needed but also the long-term creation of a system in which preventing mass atrocities is the norm. That is, even if the impediments of the old vision of absolute sovereignty are transcended, the problem of political will is likely to endure.

Focus on Political Will

As Barbara Harff suggests, the concept of “political will” is indeed fuzzy. However, it remains the critical ingredient in any recipe to establish a reliable international response strategy. We understand political will in Hannah Arendt’s sense of the capacity to come together to act in concert—in this case, the ability to commit to collective action to prevent or stop genocide and mass atrocities.16 But how can this be accomplished when so many levels and actors in play often work at cross-purposes? Ultimately, generating political will is itself a political and practical challenge: the possibility of fomenting and sustaining such will needs to be addressed in practice, with sensitivity to the particularities of each case. The political coalitions, actors, and tools mobilized in any given situation have to be determined by the actual circumstances of the time and place of the crisis, and cannot be deduced theoretically or by reference to an established set of procedures. As stated in the Secretary-General’s report, “Each situation is distinct.”17 However, the analyses presented in this book point to the possibility of creating political will in the long term by focusing on the following four areas: universal norms, common interests, particular incentives, and visionary leadership. Universal norms. First, it is important to work toward the further development, diffusion, and ultimate internalization of norms against the use of mass violence on civilians and for the recognition that international actors must cooperate to prevent or stop such violence.18 Since the release

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of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty’s report on R2P in 2001, the responsibility to protect has gone a long way toward becoming an accepted norm of international affairs. Such progress is evident in the stark contrast between the international outrage in 2012 and the relative international silence in 1982 after massacres in Syria. But this normative progress is cold comfort to the victims of today, as it has yet to result in a regular system of response on behalf of the victims of atrocity. In fact, in the wake of the NATO intervention in Libya, it became clear that broad international agreement on the substance of the R2P principle is dampened by significant disagreement on its application, particularly when it comes to using military force. The further development of specific rules and procedures for protecting civilians in a variety of situations would help to establish objective criteria for engagement by international actors, and serve to promote the universalizing of norms to protect civilians from atrocity crimes by reducing the perception of selectivity or political bias and assuaging fears of abuse by major powers. Common interests. Second, there is a need to cultivate awareness that stemming atrocity crimes is in the common interest of all states. In the terms of the Canadian Will to Intervene Project, preventing atrocities should be seen domestically as a vital national interest common to all.19 This theme is also important in the final report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force, cochaired by Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen, and Barack Obama’s 2011 “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities,” which led to the creation of the interagency Atrocity Prevention Board the following year.20 Historically, states have not always seen matters this way. Governments around the world have made other calculations. The 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square served Chinese state interests, and the mass slaughter of suspected communists in Indonesia in 1965–1966 benefited the Suharto regime and US interests during the Cold War.21 The task is to change the interest calculation both domestically and internationally. Mass violence against civilians causes refugee flows that can cross international borders, fuels regional instability, and damages transnational economies. Furthermore, mass atrocities in any one place can undermine the whole international system of collective security by calling into question the ability of the UN Security Council to live up to its responsibility as the authority tasked by law with maintaining international peace and security. National interest rather than moral imperative remains the dominant basis of state action in international affairs. If more states understand the prevention of genocide as being in their own interest, the greater the chances that they will cooperate to find effective responses. Particular incentives. Third, strategies of response have to incorporate an analysis of the particular interests at play in any situation, includ-

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ing the parties engaged in violence as well as the international actors best situated to influence the situation on the ground. Deriving a momentary consensus to move against Qaddafi was facilitated because he had no strong allies with an interest to come to his defense. On the other hand, al-Assad of Syria was able to count on the support of Russia due to the latter’s important economic and military interests in Syria, which include a naval base and significant trade relations. In any situation it must be asked: What incentives are there for international actors to engage or disengage? How can these be addressed? Can the international community or regional powers provide material or political incentives for local actors? Barbara Harff cites the possibility of aid promises or security assurances. William Zartman discusses how support for the establishment and capacity building of institutions that promote cooperation can play a significant role in shaping the political incentives of political elites. And Timothy Murithi discusses how the promise of greater regional ties can be a stabilizing force, as it was in post–Cold War Europe. Any international involvement in a conflict environment must be sensitive to the local political context and make use of local knowledge. As Colin Keating explains, the perceived complexity of conflict zones can lead to paralysis. Developing strategies that incorporate an analysis of local incentive structures can help to clarify what needs to be done. Visionary leadership. Finally, strong leadership is needed to maintain international commitments to prevent mass atrocities. The AlbrightCohen report, Preventing Genocide, calls leadership the “indispensable ingredient” in its blueprint for US policymakers. Leadership at the highest level can clarify what’s at stake, set priorities, and provide the political cover for others to act when risks are involved. This leadership can come from well-placed individuals, powerful nation-states, or even energetic civil society groups. Colin Keating, for example, credits Kofi Annan’s individual leadership with advancing the normative development of the protection agenda, which ultimately resulted in the consensus acceptance of the principle of the responsibility to protect in 2005. And the Will to Intervene Project, codirected by Roméo Dallaire and Frank Chalk, has insisted that democratic states must play the critical leadership role in preventing genocide and mass atrocities. Democratic states have the moral authority, but they also are the most susceptible to pressure from civil society when “leadership at the top is absent.”22 Concentrating on each of these areas—universal norms, common interests, particular incentives, and visionary leadership—can help to make the notion of political will less fuzzy, and in turn help to transcend one of the most potent obstacles to effective responses to genocide. In

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the end, military intervention by international forces in a recalcitrant country will always be controversial. It will always entail a complicated political calculus with some unknown consequences, and for the foreseeable future, it will remain difficult to avoid an element of selectivity: sometimes there will be intervention, sometimes not, depending upon the local context and the international interests at play. Thus, the ultimate success in stopping genocide and mass atrocities will depend upon long-term strategies to prevent them from happening in the first place. But, when they do, we know it is critical that international actors come together in their commitment to respond, so that the gap between the rhetoric of responsibility and the reality of action does not remain too wide to cross. Lives depend upon it. We can be certain.

Notes 1. Barack Obama, Presidential Study Directive 10, Washington, DC, August 4, 2011. See also, the White House Office of the Press Secretary, “Fact Sheet: A Comprehensive Strategy and New Tools to Prevent and Respond to Atrocities,” Washington, DC, April 23, 2012. 2. For example, the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network (GPANET), Engaging Governments on Genocide Prevention (EGGP) network, the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), and the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS). 3. Samuel Totten and William S. Patterson, eds., Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, Third Edition (London: Routledge, 2009); Bruce D. Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure, A Project of the International Peace Academy (New York: Lynne Rienner, 2001); Edward Kissi, “Rwanda, Ethiopia and Cambodia: Links, Faultlines, and Complexities in the Study of Comparative Genocide,” Journal of Genocide Research 6, no. 1 (March 2004): 115–133; Steven Burg and Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2000); Jean Callaghan and Mathias Schönborn, Warriors in Peacekeeping: Points of Tension in Complex Cultural Encounters (Frankfurt: George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, 2004); Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 4. Ban Ki-moon, Responsibility to Protect: Timely and Decisive Response (July 25, 2012), report of the Secretary-General, UN Doc. A/66/874. 5. Chester A. Crocker, “Peacemaking and Mediation: Dynamics of a Changing Field,” Coping with Crisis Working Paper Series, New York: International Peace Academy, March 2007, pp. 1–2. 6. Elisabeth Lindenmayer and Josie Lianna Kaye, “A Choice for Peace? The Story of Forty-One Days of Mediation in Kenya,” New York: International Peace Institute, August 2009. 7. International Peace Institute, “Promoting Integration and Preventing Conflict in Multiethnic Societies: Challenges and Opportunities,” New York, April 14, 2011, www.ipinst.org.

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8. Charles Homans, “Track II Diplomacy: A Short History,” Foreign Policy (July/August 2011), www.foreignpolicy.com. 9. Crocker, “Peacemaking and Mediation,” p. 6. 10. Ban Ki-moon, Responsibility to Protect, pp. 6–7. 11. Stanley Foundation, “R2P: The Next Decade,” Policy Memo, Muscatine, IA, February 1, 2012. 12. Daniel Larison, “Overreach Could Mean the End of R2P,” World Politics Review, June 28, 2011. See also the comments by Hardeep Singh Puri, permanent representative of India to the United Nations, at “The Responsibility to Protect: An Emerging Principle,” International Peace Institute meeting, June 28, 2011, www.ipinst.org. 13. “Security Council Fails to Adopt Draft Resolution Condemning Syria’s Crackdown of Anti-Government Protestors, Owing to Veto by Russian Federation, China” (October 4, 2011), UN Doc. SC/10403, www.un.org. 14. See also Christoph Mikulaschek and Paul Romita, “Conflict Prevention: Toward More Effective Multilateral Strategies,” New York: International Peace Institute, December 2011, p. 9. 15. See in particular her chapter’s description of the short life of the Humanitarian Early Warning System in this volume. 16. Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970). 17. Ban Ki-moon, Responsibility to Protect, p. 6. 18. On norm development, see Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink, “International Norm Dynamics and Political Change,” International Organization 52, no. 4 (Autumn 1998): 887–917; Susan D. Hyde, “Catch Us If You Can: Election Monitoring and International Norm Diffusion,” American Journal of Political Science 55, no. 2 (April 2011): 356–369. 19. Frank Chalk, Roméo Dallaire, et al., Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 2010), pp. 5–7. 20. Madeleine K. Albright and William S. Cohen, “Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers,” Washington, DC: US Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Academy of Diplomacy, and US Institute of Peace, December 2008; the White House, “Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities,” Office of the Press Secretary, August 4, 2011, www.whitehouse.gov. 21. Thanks are due to Alex Bellamy for this point. 22. Chalk, Dallaire, et al., Mobilizing the Will to Intervene, p. xviii.

Acronyms

ABA AMIS APB APC ASEAN ASF AU AWACS CC10 CCDP CCR CDR CGSD CICC CMCA CPA DPKO DRC ECOWAS EGGP ELF EU EW FAO FAST FEWER FMLN

American Bar Association African Mission in Sudan Atrocities Prevention Board armored personnel carrier Association of Southeast Asian Nations African Standby Force African Union airborne early warning and control systems Allied Control Council Law no. 10 Centre for Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding Center for Conflict Resolution Coalition for the Defense of the Republic Center on Globalization and Sustainable Development Coalition for the International Criminal Court Commission on Mediation, Conciliation, and Arbitration Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Sudan) UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations Democratic Republic of Congo Economic Community of West African States Engaging Governments on Genocide Prevention ethnolinguistic-fractionalization index European Union early warning Food and Agriculture Organization Early Analysis of Tensions and Evidence Forum for Early Warning and Early Response Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional 257

258

Acronyms

GDP GIEWS

gross domestic product Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture GPANET Genocide Prevention Advisory Network G-7 Group of Seven nations HCA Helsinki Citizens Assembly HCNM High Commissioner on National Minorities HEWS Humanitarian Early Warning Service HIs horizontal inequalities HPG/ODI Humanitarian Policy Group, Overseas Development Institute IA International Alert IAGS International Association of Genocide Scholars ICC International Criminal Court ICISS International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty ICRC International Committee of the Red Cross ICTR International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia IDPs internally displaced persons IGO intergovernmental organization INCAS International Conflict and Security JEM Justice and Equality Movement LTTE Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam MARO Mass Atrocity Response Operations project Mercosur Common Market of the South MINUSTAH UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti MONUC UN Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo MSF Médecins Sans Frontières NAFTA North American Free Trade Agreement NAM Non-Aligned Movement NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NCP National Congress Party (Sudan) NED National Endowment for Democracy NGO nongovernmental organization OAS Organization of American States OAU Organization of African Unity OCHA Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs OSCE Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

Acronyms

P5 PDD25 PITF PKF PSC PSD-10 R2P Renamo ROE RPF SLA SLM-M SPLM/A SRSG SSRC UK UN UNAMID UNAMIR UNCG

259

five permanent members of the UN Security Council Presidential Directive Decision 25 Political Instability Task Force peacekeeping forces Peace and Security Council (Africa) Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities responsibility to protect National Resistance Movement (Mozambique) rules of engagement Rwandan Patriotic Front Sudan Liberation Army Sudan Liberation Movement of Minni Arkoi Minnawi Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army special representatives of the Secretary-General Social Science Research Council United Kingdom United Nations African Union/UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide UNDP UN Development Programme UNHCR Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees UNMIK United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo UNMIL UN Mission in Liberia UNMISET UN Mission of Support in East Timor UNOCI UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire UNPREDEP UN Preventive Deployment Force UNPROFOR UN Protection Force UNTAET UN Transitional Administration in East Timor UNTSO UN Truce Supervision Organization US United States WFP World Food Programme

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The Contributors

Barbara Harff is professor of political science emerita at the US Naval Academy and has been distinguished visiting professor at Clark University’s Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. She helped plan the 2004 Stockholm International Forum on the Prevention of Genocide and is a founding member of the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network. Her books include Genocide and Human Rights: International Legal and Political Issues (1984) and, with Ted R. Gurr, Ethnic Conflict in World Politics (1994, revised edition 2003). Colin Keating was founding executive director of the Security Council Report (2004–2011), which produced regular reports on the work of the UN Security Council. Previously he was the New Zealand ambassador to the UN during 1993–1996 and served on the Security Council in 1993–1994. He was Council president during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and led the Council mission to Somalia. He has also chaired the Security Council Committee on Sanctions against Iraq and was actively involved in UN reform, serving as co-chair of the General Assembly working group on reform at that time. Subsequently, he was appointed as secretary of justice of New Zealand. Adam Lupel is editor and senior fellow at the International Peace Institute (IPI) in New York, where he directs the production and dissemination of all IPI books, policy reports, and related publications. His research focuses on issues of sovereignty, globalization, and the international politics of genocide. He is the author of Globalization and Popular Sovereignty: Democracy’s Transnational Dilemma (2009) and coeditor of Peace Operations and Organized Crime: Enemies or Allies? (2011; with James Cockayne). Timothy Murithi is head of programme at the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation and research fellow at the African Gender Institute, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He worked previously at the Institute for Security Studies; the Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford; the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), Geneva, Switzerland; and as an adviser to the African Union. He is author of numerous publications, including The Ethics of Peacebuilding (2009),

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The Contributors

and coeditor of The African Union Peace and Security Council: A Five Year Appraisal (2012; with Hallelujah Lulie). Iavor Rangelov is global security research fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science and co-chair of the London Transitional Justice Network. He is a fellow of the European Foreign and Security Policy Studies (EFSPS), which supported his postdoctoral research and visiting fellowships at the European Policy Centre, Brussels; EU Institute for Security Studies, Paris; Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals, Barcelona; and T.M.C. Asser Instituut, The Hague. Frances Stewart is emeritus professor of development economics and director of the Centre for Research on Inequality, Human Security, and Ethnicity (CRISE) at the University of Oxford. She has an honorary doctorate from the University of Sussex. In 2009 she received the Mahbub ul Haq Award from the United Nations for lifetime services to human development, and in 2013 she was awarded the Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought by the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University. Her books include Technology and Underdevelopment (1976), Planning to Meet Basic Needs (1985), and War and Underdevelopment (2001). She was also a co-author of UNICEF’s influential study Adjustment with a Human Face (1987) and the leading author and editor of Horizontal Inequalities and Conflict: Understanding Group Violence in Multiethnic Societies (2008). Ernesto Verdeja is assistant professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame and board member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the Institute for the Study of Genocide. He is the author of Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence (2009), and coeditor of Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives (2013; with Joyce Apsel) and Globalization, Social Movements and Peacebuilding (2013; with Jackie Smith). Thomas G. Weiss is presidential professor of political science and director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and research professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Previously, he has been president of the International Studies Association, chair of the Academic Council on the UN System, director of the UN Intellectual History Project, editor of the journal Global Governance, and research director of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Among his recent publications are Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas in Action (2012) and Humanitarian Business (2013). I. William Zartman is Jacob Blaustein Professor Emeritus of International Organizations and Conflict Resolution at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and member of the International Steering Committee of Processes of International Negotiations (PIN) Program, Clingendael, Netherlands, and a member of the International Academic Advisory Council on Mediation of the UN Department of Political Affairs. His numerous publications include The Global Power of Talk (2012; with Fen Osler Hampson); Negotiation and Conflict Management: Essays on Theory and Practice (2010); Cowardly Lions: Missed Opportunities to Prevent Deadly Conflict and State Collapse (2005); Rethinking the Economics of War: The Intersection of Need, Creed, and Greed (2005; coedited with Cynthia J. Arnson); and Ripe for Resolution (1989).

Index

Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, 118, 199–200 Abuja Peace Talks, 128, 149 Accountability: balancing peace and justice in intervention, 203–204; ICTR success, 191–192; measures of, 122–123; UN failures and successes, 225–226 Aceh people, 116 Ad Hoc Committee on the Genocide and Human Rights Treaties, 139 African Great Lakes, 5 African Heads of State and Government, 163, 166 African Mission in Sudan (AMIS), 149, 168–169, 175, 196 African Standby Force, 166, 172 African Union (AU): Côte d’Ivoire civil war, 198–199; Darfur conflict, 149, 157, 167–169, 171–172, 196; effective genocide prevention, 165–166; importance of regional organizations in prevention, 14; protecting political stability, 173–174; R2P, 221; right to intervene, 162, 246; Rwanda genocide, 163–165; Somalia and Comoros intervention, 159; upgrading African capacity for intervention, 229–230 African Union Constitutive Act, 184, 246 African Union/UN Hybrid Operation in

Darfur (UNAMID), 149, 168–169, 196 Agency of mediation, 125 An Agenda for Peace, 7, 161 Ahtisaari, Martti, 116 Aideed, Mohamed Farrah, 189 Akayesu case, 28–32 Albright, Madeleine, 85, 228, 252 American Bar Association (ABA), 139 Amnesty International, 45(n60) Annan, Kofi: envoy to Syria, 223, 224; Kosovo conflict, 195; mediation, 125, 130; Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, 108; R2P endorsement, 219; Rwanda crisis response assessment, 172; UN review, 230; UNSC advances, 205 Annulled autonomy, 116 Arab League: failed response in Darfur, 171–172; global influence, 10; importance of regional organizations in prevention, 14; lack of effectiveness, 173–174; Syria intervention, 169–171, 224 Arab Parliament, 170 Argentina, 91, 108–109, 164, 190 Armed conflict: as factor in political instability, 110(n11); global trends, 1946–2010, 51(fig.); modeling mass killing, 100 Armenian massacre, 36, 67, 90, 92 Arusha, Tanzania, 163

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284

Index

Aryans, 112 al-Assad, Bashar, 123, 170, 224–225, 250 al-Assad, Hafez, 224 Atrocities Prevention Board (APB), 228, 252 Attitudinal solutions, 119–120 Australia: transfer of children, 43(n24) Authoritarian regimes: genocide preconditions, 68; genocide risk assessment, 72; human rights violations, 10; lack of conflict, 59–60; political prevention policies, 75–76 Autogenocide, 91 Autonomy, 8, 60, 115–116 Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (Lemkin), 23, 24, 42(n8) Bahrain, 37, 96, 222 Ban Ki-moon, 111, 170, 214, 220, 234, 245 Bangladesh: genocide case studies, 36 Barbarity, 22–23 al-Bashir, Omar, 10, 145, 149, 168 Belgium: Rwanda intervention, 188–190 Bellamy, Alex, 182 Ben Ali, Zine El Abidine, 123 Biafra, 36, 50, 55, 60, 93–95, 116, 143. See also Nigeria Biden, Joseph, 148 Biological genocide, 25–26 Births, preventing, 26–27 Black-white relations, 119–120 Booh-Booh, J. R., 188 Bosnia and Herzegovina: defining ethnic groups, 28; genocide case studies, 36; inadequacy of the UN response, 185–188, 248–249; international protectorate, 143–144; safe havens, 145–146; targeting reproduction, 26–27 Bosnian Serbs and Croatians, 112, 128 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz, 123, 125 Boutros-Ghali, Boutros, 161, 164, 172 Brazil: Libya intervention, 201; R2P, 216 Brockmann, Miguel d’Escoto, 220 Brown v. Board of Education, 119 Burma (Myanmar), 96, 97(table) Burundi: group motivations in conflict, 57; mediation, 125, 127–128

Bush administration, 148 Cairo summit, 163 Cambodia: class-based genocide, 49, 64; dehumanization of potential victims, 105; determining genocide, 91–92; genocide case studies, 36; state as genocidal agent, 113 Cameroon, 99(table) Canada: Rwanda intervention, 190 Capacity to inflict violence, 34–35 Carlsson, Ingvar, 178(n54) Carter, Jimmy, 125 Case studies, 90–92 Ceasefires: Darfur, 167; peacekeeping forces, 117; Rwanda, 191 Cedras, Raoul, 125 Center for International Development and Conflict Management, 101 Center for Systemic Peace, 48 Central African Republic (CAR), 99(table) Centralization of power: genocide risk assessment, 72 Centre for Conflict, Development, and Peacebuilding (CCDP), 207 Chechnya: early prevention by police forces, 118 Children: global outrage over abuse of, 205; transfer of, 27, 43(n24); UN protection, 193 China: Darfur conflict, 148; resistance to Syria intervention, 250; resistance to Zimbabwe intervention, 197; risk assessment, 96; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 97(table); Rwanda intervention, 188; Sri Lanka’s civil war, 197; Tiananmen Square, 252; UNSC actions, 184; UNSC intervention debate, 194 Chomsky, Noam, 139 Christopher, Warren, 106 Churchill, Winston, 142 Civil society: actors and discourses in genocide, 137–141; as agents of mediation, 126; clashing agendas, 139–140; conflict prevention, 245–246; Darfur crisis, 135–136, 146–150; defining and describing, 136–137; defining genocide, 37; effect on UNSC involvement, 205;

Index emergence as political force for change, 14; emergence in human rights advocacy, 11–12; global trends in armed conflict, 1946–2010, 51(fig.); influencing state policy, 11–12, 247; response to genocide, 141–146 Civil war: causal factors for civil war and genocide, 71(table); Côte d’Ivoire, 198–200; defining, 48–49; defining genocide and, 50–51; demographic composition, 52–54; economic and political causes of, 13, 65; genocide characteristics and, 47, 243; genocide connection to authoritarian regimes, 75–76; globalization as a constraint or cause of, 62; group motivation for conflict, 56–59; political motivations and constraints, 59–62; prevention efforts, 7; risk assessment model, 94–100; root causes of, 51–62, 71(table); Rwanda’s resumption of, 188; socioeconomic and political causes of, 54–59; state crises and political upheaval in, 67–70 Civilians: Côte d’Ivoire civil war, 198–200; expanding protection for, 197; increasing violence against, 241; Libyan violence against, 221–222; military force as protection for, 215; as part of UNSC agenda, 249; protection of Sri Lanka’s, 197–198; Save Darfur movement distracting from, 242; UNSC protection, 192, 193, 207; Zimbabwean violence, 196–197 Class groups, 49, 59 Clinton, Bill, 37, 141, 189, 242 Cluster munitions, 142 Coalition for the Defense of the Republic (CDR), 112 Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC), 143 Coercive accountability, 122–123, 245 Cohen, William S., 37, 85, 86, 228, 252 Cold War: early warning concept, 88 Collective action, 183–184 Collective identities, 22–24 Colombia, 55 Colonialism: extermination, 36; roots of civil war and genocide, 92–93

285

Commission on Global Governance, 158 Common interests, stemming atrocity crimes as, 252 Comoros: regional intervention, 159 Complex interdependence, 5 Complexity factor of intervention, 183, 188, 201–202 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), 128, 196 Conflict: genocide, 39–40; group motivation, 56–59; political HIs and political exclusion, 61; primary stages of, 18(n27); trends in ethnic conflict, 1945–2004, 52(fig.). See also Civil war Conflict cycle bell curve, 18(n27) Conflict prevention, 7–8, 102, 245–246 Conflict resolution, 111–112 Congo, Democratic Republic of (DRC), 214; dialogue initiation, 122; EU force in, 229; nongovernmental groups committing genocide, 91; peace and security architecture, 166; pregenocidal situations, 87; R2P, 223–224; risk assessment, 95; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 98(table); Rwandan genocidaires’ retreat to, 191, 192; UNSC mission, 192, 194, 195 Congo, Republic of, 117 Constitutions: AU, 165–166; building checks to executive power, 75; design influencing civil conflict, 60 Convention on Cluster Munitions, 142 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. See UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Correlates of War, 48 Côte d’Ivoire: agency of mediation, 125; conflict and intervention, 198–200; decelerating violence, 103; early prevention by police forces, 118; early warning, 108; military option, 215; R2P, 221, 222–223; UNSC lack of political will, 224; UNSC peacekeeping, 195 Counterinsurgency campaigns, 32, 40 Coups, 68

286

Index

Crimes against humanity: Darfur, 45(n60); ethnic cleansing, 40; genocidal intent, 32; genocide and, 21; ICTY and ICTR, 142; International Military Tribunal, 42(n9); kulaks, 29–30; postwar tribunals, 42(n10); war crimes, genocide, and, 38–39 Crimes against peace, 42(n9) Croatia, 139 Cultural genocide, 25–26, 27, 42(n6) Culture: defining ethnic groups, 28; equality of cultural recognition as prevention policy, 73; genocide as attack on collective identity and, 22–24 Cyprus: institutional separation, 116 Dallaire, Romeo, 215 Darfur, 139; Abuja mediation, 128; AU intervention, 157, 167–169, 170–171; civil society actors, 144–145; dolus specialis requirement affecting policy, 34; framing the violence as genocide, 45(n60); genocide case studies, 36; identity conflict, 112; inability to protect civilians, 223; mobilizing civil society, 141; political will to respond, 146–150; racial nature of conflict, 29; regional organizations’ failures, 173; Save Darfur movement distracting from civilians, 242; spending on, 173; transnational advocacy and mobilization, 135–136; UNSC lack of political will, 223; UNSC response, 196; war and genocide, 47. See also Sudan Dayton talks, 128 de Waal, Alex, 146 Deaccelerators, 104 Death: annulled autonomy leading to, 116; civil war, 50; modeling genocide, 93–94; rate for civil war, 48–49 Decentralization of UN capabilities, 229–230 De-escalation through mediation or negotiation, 18(n27) Dehumanization of potential victims, 105

Democide, 49, 64, 68 Democratic League of Kosovo, 141 Democratic regimes: genocide preconditions, 68; human rights violations, 10; lack of conflict, 59–60; prevention policy, 75–76 Demographic causes of genocide, 64–65 Demographic composition of civil war, 52–54 Demographic polarization index, 52–53 Deng, Francis, 126, 220 al-Deqbasi, Ali Salem, 170 Despotic genocide, 63 Development, social and economic, 218 Developmental genocide, 63, 65 Dialogue initiation, 120–122, 126 Diasporas, 140 Dictators, coercive accountability and, 123 Dieng, Adama, 220 Diplomacy: OAU use of, 163; obstacles to UN decisionmaking, 231–232; preventive, 161, 244–245, 248 Dirty wars (Argentina), 91 Discrimination: political exclusion and dominance, 69–70; risk assessment and early warning, 96, 107 Disease, ethnic cleansing and, 40 Distant prevention, 114 Distrust or hatred, 67 Doha process, 169, 196 Dolus specialis (special intent), 32–35 Domestic policy: US in the UN, 187 Domestic sovereignty, 5 Dynamic modeling of conflict data, 101 Early warning programs, 13; crisis and instability, 105–106; early response and, 244; early warning indicators, 104–105; expanding international involvement, 108; origins and history of, 88–90; past and present efforts, 101–102; political considerations, 106–108, 250–251; R2P and, 214–215, 221; reliability, 85; reliance on US systems, 229–230; risk assessment and, 85; Rwanda, 188; shortcomings of current models, 102–103; terrorism, 89; triggering genocide, 86; UN efforts, 11 East Timor: international involvement,

Index 108; NGO monitoring, 138; UNSC concerns about civilians, 193–194; UNSC mission, 192; UNSC peacekeeping, 195 Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), 198, 221 Economic decline, role in conflict, 56, 65 Economic interdependence, 110(n11) Economic interests: economic growth as prevention policy, 72–73; economic repression as genocide, 24, 25–26; incentive for engagement, 107; individual motivations for conflict, 55; international connectedness of, 5; root causes of genocide, 13; sources of genocide, 65; UNCG protection, 29–30; war and genocide, 47 Education: ideology of hatred, 73–74 Egypt: leadership change, 123 El Salvador, 91; dialogue initiation, 121; institutional separation, 116; rebels’ resistance to mediation, 124 Elections: Côte d’Ivoire’s delays, 198–199; Libya intervention, 222; power sharing, 119; triggering violence, 75; US mid-term congressional power shift, 228; Ushahidi software, 145; violence after Kenya’s, 246; Zimbabwe’s postelection violence, 196–197, 224 Enough!, 37 Entrepreneurs: attitudinal change, 120 Eritrea, 116, 125 Escalation to sustained violence, 18(n27) Ethiopia, 97(table), 112, 125 Ethnic cleansing, 2, 7, 21, 36, 40, 49, 116, 194 Ethnic conflict: civil war as, 51; trends, 1945–2004, 52(fig.) Ethnic groups: defining genocide in terms of, 35; defining Jewishness, 31–32; defining racial groups, 29; demographic composition and civil war, 53; group motivation in conflict, 57; political exclusion and dominance, 69–70; risk assessment, 95; UNCG protection, 27–28 Ethnicide: large scale killing episodes since 1956, 63(table)

287

Ethnolinguistic-fractionalization index (ELF), 52–53 European Union (EU): DRC intervention, 229; increasing military capacity and responsibility, 229–230; Save Darfur movement, 146–147; Syria sanctions, 224 Evans, Gareth, 144 Exclusion, 61 Executive power: integration through power sharing, 119; prevention policy including checks to, 74–75 Extermination, 22–23 External forces. See Mediation External sovereignty, 6 Extremists: risk assessment for onset of genocide, 13 Family planning, 27 FAST system, 87, 101 Federalism, 60–61, 62 Folke Bernadotte Academy, 107 Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 88 Food security, monitoring, 105 Food shortages, 88 Forced impregnation, 26 Foreign Policy magazine, 226 Formulator, mediators as, 127 Forum for Early Warning and Early Response (FEWER), 102 France: Côte d’Ivoire conflict, 103, 199; Operation Turquoise, 137–138; opposition to Bosnia intervention, 248–249; UN role in Bosnia, 185–187; Vendée massacres, 36 Fund for Peace, 101 Gbagbo, Laurent, 198–200, 215, 224 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade/World Trade Organization, 100 Geneva Conventions (1949), 38 Genocide: Bosnian atrocities despite UNSC protection, 185; causal factors for civil war and genocide, 71(table); causes and meaning, 12–13; civil war and, 48–49; conceptual and etymological origins of, 22–24; constitutional design contribution, 69; core modern accepted cases, 36; crimes against humanity, war crimes,

288

Index

and, 38–39; cultural, 25–26, 42(n6); defining, 21–22, 37, 39, 46(n67), 47, 49, 93–94, 242–244; defining civil war and, 50–51; demographic causes of, 64–65; economic sources of, 65–67; ethnic cleansing and, 40; euphemisms for, 33, 35–36; globalization as a constraint or cause of civil war, 62–70; modeling, 92–94; politics of naming, 159–161; risk assessment model, 95; state crises and political upheaval, 67–70; UNCG definition, 25. See also UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Genocide Prevention Project, 102 Genocide Prevention Task Force, 37, 228, 252 Genocide scholars, 87–88, 90 Geographic arena of genocidal events, 50, 247 Germany: Herero genocide, 93; Libya intervention, 201. See also Holocaust Ghana, 50, 190 Global community. See International community Global humanitarian regime, 14 Global Information and Early Warning System on Food and Agriculture (GIEWS), 88, 105, 106 Globalization: as a constraint or cause of civil war, 62; preparing for regionalism, 158–159 Gonçalves, Jaime, 121 Good international citizenship, 233 Gore, Al, 89, 91 Gramsci, Antonio, 136 Greed motive of conflict, 54 Grievance motive of conflict, 54, 55, 58 Group benefit, conflict and, 55, 89 Group destruction: defining genocide, 49; early warning indicators, 104; elite genocide motives, 105; ethnic cleansing, 40; genocide versus war crimes and crimes against humanity, 38, 39 Group motivation in conflict, 54–59 Group of 77, 231–232 Guatemala, 99(table), 121 Guinea-Bissau, 125 Gulf War, 143

Habyarimana, Juvénal, 1, 163 Haiti: agency of mediation, 125; UNSC peacekeeping, 195 Han Sung-joo, 178(n54) Hannay, David, 164 Hate propaganda, 103, 107, 108 Hatred, ideology of, 73–74 Health sector: prevention dilemma, 182 Hegel, G. W. F., 136 Helsinki Citizens Assembly (HCA), 143–144 Herero genocide, 93 Heterogeneity: demographic composition and civil war, 52–53 High Commissioner on National Minorities (HCNM), 126 High-risk countries, 108 Holocaust, 44(n47); as basis for genocidal research, 90; as “crime without a name,” 142; defining genocide, 24; defining Jewishness, 31–32; dehumanization of potential victims, 105; economic motives, 65; Lemkin’s view of genocide, 42(n8); motive and intent, 94; state as genocidal agents, 112; state crises and political upheaval in genocide, 67 Horizontal inequalities (HI), 13; group motivations in conflict, 57–58; political exclusion, 61; as prevention policy, 73; social cleavages, 66 Hu Jintao, 148 Human rights: Arab League addressing atrocities in Syria, 169–171; constitutional incorporation, 75; early warning programs triggering genocide, 86; enforcement position on intervention, 144; NGO monitoring abuses, 138; state sovereignty and, 4, 6 Human Rights Watch, 45(n60), 138 Human security intervention, 221–222 Humanitarian crises, monitoring for, 106 Humanitarian Early Warning Service (HEWS), 88, 106 Humanitarian intervention, 143, 144, 213–219 Humanitarian Policy Group, 107–108 Humanitarian regimes, civil society role in creating, 145–146

Index Hungary, 108 Hussein, Saddam, 143 Hutu population. See Rwanda Hybrid approaches to conflict resolution, 12 Identity: defining Jewishness, 31–32; genocide as attack on collective identity, 22–24; group motivation in conflict, 57; group transfer of children, 27; objective and subjective approaches to defining groups, 30–31; UNCG protected groups, 27–30 Identity conflict, 14; genocide as final stage, 112; separation process, 115–118 Ideological genocide, 63 Ideological groups: large scale killing episodes since 1956, 63(table) Ideology: clashing agendas of civil society, 139–140; country risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 97–99(table); driving conflict, 55; early warning programs triggering genocide, 86; genocide definitions debate, 35; of hatred, 73–74; mass killing model, 100–101; motive in the Holocaust, 94; obstructing action in Rwanda, 188; risk assessment, 95; roots of civil war and genocide, 92 Immediate prevention, 114, 243 Imperialism clouding R2P action, 234 Implementing the Responsibility to Protect, 8 In Larger Freedom, 219 Incentives for response, 252–253 Inclusive government, 74 Income inequality: role in conflict, 56. See also Horizontal inequalities Income per capita, 66 Independence, postcolonial, 92–93, 116 Indigenous groups: horizontal inequalities (HI), 73 Individual intentionality, 33 Individual motivation in conflict, 54–56, 89 Individuals as victims, 25 Indonesia: federalism causing conflict, 60; genocide case studies, 36; individual motivations for conflict,

289

55; international actors’ access to, 145; mixed case, 91; NGO monitoring of human rights, 138; politics-based genocide, 29–30, 49; protecting state interests, 252; secessionist conflict, 116 Inequalities: horizontal and vertical, 57; individual motivations for conflict, 56. See also Horizontal inequalities Infant mortality rates, 100, 110(n11) Informal interactive dialogue, 197, 220 Institutional capacity obstructing effective intervention, 249–250 Institutional reforms: UNSC, 226–231 Integration, institutional, 118–119 Intent to commit genocide, 32–35, 38, 94 Intentional mass killing, 23 InterAction, 230 Interdependence, complex, 5 Interdependence sovereignty, 5 Internal sovereignty, 6 International Alert, 102 International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, 169 International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), 144, 213, 252. See also Responsibility to protect International Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milo≈¸sevi´ c, 139 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 143 International community: accountability for success or failure, 225–226; clashing agendas of civil society, 139; Darfur advocacy, 135–136; defining genocide, 242–244; early warning systems, 88–89; elements of response, 2; popular mobilization for intervention, 2; pressure on states, 2; preventive diplomacy, 244–245; R2P, 8–9, 111, 219–220; state sovereignty and, 5–6; too little protection, 214–215. See also Civil society International Conflict and Security (INCAS), 102 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 4 International Criminal Court (ICC): accountability measures, 122; Darfur, 196; genocide and other forms of

290

Index

political violence, 25, 38–39; imperialist argument for genocide, 139; increasing awareness of genocide, 87–88; international actors’ access to conflict zones, 145; nonstate actors’ role in creating, 143; Omar al-Bashir indictment, 10; transcontinental coalitions forming, 232; UN report on R2P implementation, 245 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY): defining groups, 31; establishment of, 142–143; ethnic cleansing, 40; Jelisi´ c, case, 31; protected groups, 30; rejection of, 139; UNCG, 25; UNCG prohibited acts, 26 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): Akayesu case, 28–29; conception and establishment of, 142, 191–192; political and economic group persecution, 29–30; positive impact of, 187; protected groups, 30; specific intent requirement, 33; UNCG prohibited acts, 25, 26 International Crisis Group, 37, 102 International government organizations (IGOs): mediation, 125, 126 International law: defining genocide, 159–160; defining racial groups, 29; genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, 38; UNCG, 24–25 International legal sovereignty, 5 International Military Tribunal, 42(n9) International organizations and institutions, 11, 14. See also United Nations International response. See Civil society, global; International organizations; Regional organizations and institutions; State International Stockholm Forum, 87 Internet: mapping conflict in Kenya, 145 Inter-Sudanese Peace Talks, 149 Intervention: defining, 7–8; obstacles to effective action, 248–251; popular mobilization for, 2; protection-ofcivilian missions, 18(n21); R2P measures, 8–9, 122–123; response elements, 2–3

Intrastate conflict. See Civil war Iran, 37, 98(table) Iraq, 249; early prevention by police forces, 118; need for intervention, 120; R2P, 218; transnational actors’ roles, 144 Israel: 2006 war in Lebanon, 195 Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Abuja mediation, 128; dialogue initiation, 121; ripeness of mediation, 130 Jelisi´ c case, 31 Jewish population: genocide case studies, 36; horizontal inequalities, 73; objective approach to group definition, 31–32. See also Holocaust Jewish World Watch, 102 Jordan, 96 Judiciary: coercive accountability, 122 Just war position on interference, 144 Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), 167 Justice case, 42(n10) Kaldor, Mary, 140 Kayishema case, 30–32 Kelman, Herbert, 121 Kenya, 37, 125, 145 Killing, UNCG prohibition on, 26 Knowledge, genocidal intent and, 32–33 Konaré, Alpha Oumar, 167 Kosovo, 214; Albanian diaspora, 141; annulled autonomy, 116; R2P, 217; UNSC concerns about civilians, 193; UNSC intervention debate, 194–195; UNSC missions, 192; UNSC pushback after, 205, 206 Kosovo Liberation Army, 141 Kouchner, Bernard, 143 Krsti´ c, Radislav, 43(n16, n20), 44(n36), 46(n72), 208(n14) Kulaks, 29–30, 36 Kupolati, Rufus, 178(n54) Kyrgyzstan: early prevention by police forces, 118 Land mine ban, 142 Language, 28, 73 Latent conflict, 18(n27) Latin America: horizontal inequalities and conflict, 59

Index Leadership, importance of, 253 Leadership instability, 100 Lebanon: integration through power sharing, 119; UNSC intervention, 195–196 Legal prohibition of genocide, 4 Legislative power: integration through power sharing, 119 Legitimacy, political: civil society and, 137; dialogue conferring, 122; of mediators, 127–128; regional organizations, 14–15, 157, 162; UNSC institutional reforms, 227 Lemkin, Raphael, 21–24, 42(n8), 90, 142 Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), 112 Liberia: UNSC peacekeeping, 195 Libya: leadership change, 123–124; need for intervention, 120; political sphere, 183; as prevention challenge, 181; R2P and, 214–215, 221–223, 250, 252; shifting UN response and political will, 234–235; UN Human Rights Council, 220; UNSC response, 200–201, 206, 215–216 Local organizations: early prevention by police forces, 117, 246 Lomé, Togo, 165 Luck, Edward, 126, 219, 220 Macedonia: Abuja mediation, 128; international involvement, 108; PKF interposition, 117 Macrolevel phenomena, 40 Mamdani, Mahmood, 147 Mandela, Nelson, 125 Marginality from the world system, 69 Marx, Karl, 136 Mass atrocities, 11, 37, 243 Mass Atrocity Response Operations Project (Harvard University), 228 Mass killings: defining genocide, 23, 49; economic motives, 65; genocide model, 100–101; large-scale killing episodes since 1956, 62, 63(table); mass killing frequency at different quartiles of development, 66(fig.) Massacres, UNCG prohibition on, 26 Mbeki, Thabo, 125 Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), 143

291

Media: civil society media paradigm, 141; engaging civil society, 145; impact on state policy, 11–12; UN failure in Rwanda, 1–2 Mediation: agents and parties, 124–130, 133(n33); attitudinal solutions, 119–120; choosing the moment, 128–130; conflict cycle, 18(n27); contributing factors, 130–131; defining, 111–112; dialogue initiation, 120–122, 126; institutional integration, 118–119; purpose of, 113–114; R2P pillars, 13–14, 111–112; risk assessment and early warning, 107; Rwanda, 163; separation, 115–118; structural and attitudinal measures, 119–120, 245 Méndez, Juan, 103, 108 Militarization, 110(n11) Military force: AU standby force, 246–247; institutional reforms, 227–228; institutional separation, 116; necessity of, 228–229; R2P, 213–215, 217–218, 222–223; reducing US contribution to, 229–230; regional organizations’ lack of, 162 Milo¸sevi´ c, Slobodan, 128 Mischling Jews, 31 Mladi´ c, Ratko, 187 Modeling genocide, 92–94 Modeling risk assessment, 94–101 Modernization, 122 Mogadishu factor, 189 Moral debasement, 23, 24 A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, 219 Motive for genocide, 32, 50, 94 Mozambique, 94, 121 Mubarak, Hosni, 123 Multiethnic societies, 53, 57, 74–75, 93, 108 Multilateral military action, 15 Multireligious societies, 53, 74 Murder, 38, 40 Mwinyi, Ali Hassan, 163 National groups: defining, 43(n27); defining Jewishness, 31–32; UNCG protection, 27–28

292

Index

National Resistance Movement (Renamo; Mozambique), 121 National security and national interests: Bosnia intervention, 186–187; importance of stemming atrocity crimes, 252; motivating intervention, 15–16; Obama’s commitment to genocide prevention, 241; obstacles to UN decisionmaking, 232–233; partiality and the pursuit of, 202–203; questioning US ability to respond, 228; risk assessment and early warning indicators, 106–107; security interdependence, 175; US commitment to atrocities prevention, 228–229 Nation-state: defining national groups, 43(n27) Natsios, Andrew, 148 Natural disasters, 145, 228 Nazi Germany. See Holocaust Nepal: horizontal inequalities and conflict, 58; UNSC peacekeeping, 195 New military humanism, 139 New Zealand: ICTR conception, 191; recognizing Rwandan genocide, 190; UNSC support, 186 Nigeria: Abuja mediation, 128; Côte d’Ivoire civil war, 199; Darfur intervention, 167; dialogue initiation, 121; early prevention by police forces, 118; recognizing Rwandan genocide, 190; risk assessment, 95; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 99(table). See also Biafra Nkrumah, Kwame, 177(n19) Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 183, 202, 205, 231–232 Nongovernmental groups, genocide by, 91 Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): access to conflict zones, 145; as agents of mediation, 126; civil society and, 137, 141; early warning efforts, 102; impact of conflict on civilians, 192; mediation, 125, 247; UN institutional reforms, 230–231 Nonintervention doctrine, 163–164 Nonviolent protest, 100 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 117, 185–186, 229, 250

North Korea, 99(table) Northern Ireland: early prevention by police forces, 118; institutional separation, 116; mediation, 127–128; peacemaking negotiations, 121 North-South tensions as obstacle to UN decisionmaking, 231–232, 250 Nunn, Sam, 125 Nuremberg tribunal, 24, 142 Obama, Barack, 145, 241, 252 Obasanjo, Olusegun, 167 Objective approach to defining groups, 30 Oil resources causing conflict, 56 Olympic Games (2008), 148 One-sidedness of genocidal events, 50 Operation Provide Comfort, 144 Operation Turquoise, 137–138 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE): as agents of mediation, 126; early warning measures, 246; peacekeeping forces, 118; prevention policies, 162 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 133(n33), 163, 165 Organization of American States (OAS), 10 Oslo Accords, 121 Ottawa Convention, 142 Ottoman Empire, 2, 93 Ouattara, Alassane, 199, 215 Our Global Neighborhood, 158 Pakistan, 96, 97(table) Palestine: institutional separation, 116 Partiality, 202–203 Peace and Security Council (AU), 166, 246 Peacebuilding: AU initiative, 166; R2P formulation, 213–214 Peacekeeping operations, 87; AU initiative, 166; Bosnia, 187; contributions of, 11; Côte d’Ivoire civil war, 198–200; international involvement, 108; reinforcing separation, 116–118; Rwanda, 165; UNCG identification, 161; UNSC commitment to, 195; US policy, 190–191; US push to shut down Rwanda effort, 189

Index Peacemaking: AU initiative, 166–168; dialogue initiation, 121; OAU preventative diplomacy, 163; UNGC identification, 161 Pérez de Cuellar, Javier, 121 Peru: human rights conventions, 75 Philippines, 57, 58 Physical genocide, 25–26 Pinter, Harold, 139 Poland: Nazi war crimes trials, 42(n10) Police forces: early prevention, 117, 246 Policy. See Prevention “Policy Analysis Brief,” 182 Political exclusion and dominance, 61, 69–70 Political groups, 49; destruction of, 23; large-scale killing episodes since 1956, 63(table); UNCG protection, 29–30; war and genocide, 47. See also Politicide Political Instability Task Force, 89, 91, 100, 106, 113 Political prevention policies, 74–76 Political stability: early warning programs, 89; genocide risk assessment, 96; indications of future instability, 110(n11); mass killing model, 100; political context of crisis and instability early warning, 105–106; regional responsibility for, 159 Political will, 107, 204, 224, 234, 251–254 Politicide: Cambodia, 91; case studies, 36; defining, 30, 93–94; early warning and risk assessment, 13; genocide and, 49; large-scale killing episodes since 1956, 62; preconditions for, 68; pregenocidal situations, 88; risk assessment model, 95; Rwandan genocide, 39–40 Politics, 62; causes of civil war, 59–62; hindering effective UNSC response, 248–251; normal politics as prevention, 113; obstacles to UN decisionmaking, 231–233; political factors in genocide, 13, 67–70; resistance to prevention, 182; risk assessment and early warning program, 106–108

293

Polity II measure of power concentration, 69 Powell, Colin, 125, 169 Power: checking executive power, 74–75; integration through power sharing, 119; motivating intervention, 15–16; Polity II measure of power concentration, 69 Pregenocidal situations, 86–87 Presidential Study Directive on Mass Atrocities (PSD-10), 228 Preventing Genocide report, 253 Prevention: African Union, 165–166; awareness of pregenocidal situations, 87–88; conceptual variations of genocide, 36–37; coordinated implementation, 107–108; defining, 7; dilemma of timing and action, 181–184; dolus specialus requirement, 32–35; early warning, 87; identity protection, 113; longterm policy choices, 243–244; mediation, 113–114; OAU use of preventative diplomacy, 163; policy formation, 72; political policies, 74–76; R2P formulation, 213–214; regional organizations, 162; socioeconomic policies, 72–74. See also Mediation; Responsibility to protect Prevention dilemma, 182–184 Preventive diplomacy, 161, 244–245, 248 Prisoners of war, 38 Protection dimension: UNSC in Bosnia, 185 Protection-of-civilian missions, 18(n21) Protocol Relating to the Peace and Security Council, 166 Proximity as benefit and obstacle to intervention, 15, 247 Public international lawyers, 226 Qaddafi, Muammar, 200–201, 250 Qualitative methods of risk assessment, 86, 90 Quantitative methods of risk assessment, 86, 101 R2P. See Responsibility to protect Racial groups: defining, 28–29; defining

294

Index

Jewishness, 31–32; destruction of, 23; UNCG protection, 27–28 Rape, 26–27, 93–94, 223 Rational choice economics, 55 Rebel forces: Arab League addressing atrocities in Syria, 169–171; arming, 103, 107; causes of rebellion, 55–56; DRC, 91; globalization financing, 62; mediation, 124–125, 128; Mozambique, 94; R2P, 222; resistance to mediation, 124–125; Rwanda, 1, 39–40; triggers and deaccelerators, 104 Recent conflict and genocide, 61–62, 95 Regime change: causal factors for civil war and genocide, 70–72 Regime inconsistency, 110(n11) Regime type: country risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 97–99(table); economic and political causes of genocide, 13; genocide risk assessment, 95; motivating civil war, 59–60; political prevention policies, 75–76; state crises and political upheaval in genocide, 68–69 Regional organizations and institutions: advantages in intervention, 157–158; agency of mediation, 125; Arab League addressing atrocities in Syria, 169–172; contextualizing regionalism, 158–159; early and late intervention roles, 246; emergence as political force for change, 14–15; global interdependence, 10–11, 174–176; intervention pathologies, 160–161; political will to prevent genocide, 172–174; prevention policies, 162; preventive diplomacy, 244–245; R2P, 124. See also African Union Relative deprivation, 56, 57 Religious groups: cultural and religious genocide, 25–26; defining, 29; defining Jewishness, 31–32; demographic composition and civil war, 53; destruction of, 23; group motivations in conflict, 57; largescale killing episodes since 1956, 63(table); UNCG protection, 27–28 Rent-seeking motives, 65 Reproductive rights, 26–27

Resource control: group motivation for conflict, 57; individual motivation for conflict, 55, 56; risk assessment and early warning, 107; UN operations, 191 Responsibility to protect (R2P): accountability measures, 122–123; backfire potential, 222–223; balancing sovereignty and intervention, 8; civil society role in creating, 145–146; defining genocide, 242–243; effectiveness, 223–224; global opinion of, 220–221; humanitarian intervention, 219; informal interactive dialogue, 220; institutional reforms, 227–228; international values, 219–220; lack of forceful intervention, 15; Libya intervention, 221–222, 250; mediation, 14; military force pillar, 214, 217–218; normal politics as prevention, 113; as North-South issue, 232; original formulation of, 213–214; polarization over Darfur, 148; pregenocidal situations, 88; prevention-response connection, 182; preventive diplomacy, 244–245, 248; protection of the population, 124; responsibility spectrum, 218–219; Rwanda genocide and, 144; state sovereignty, 216–219; strengthening early warning programs, 108; three pillars of, 111; as universal norm, 252; Western imperialism, 216 Right to interfere, 143 Ripening in mediation, 128–130 Risk assessment, 13; alternative to the genocide model, 100–101; country risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 97–99(table); current efforts, 101–102; early warning programs and, 85; factors used in the current risk assessment model, 94–100; highrisk countries, 96–100; indications of future instability, 110(n11); modeling, 94–101; origins and history of, 88–90; political considerations, 106–108; prevention policies, 72; reliability, 85–87; shortcomings of current models, 102–103; task force research, 106; terrorism, 89

Index Rød-Larsen, Terje, 121 Rugova, Ibrahim, 141 RuSHA case, 42(n10) Rusk, Dean, 229 Russia: Côte d’Ivoire civil war, 199; Libya intervention, 201; opposition to Bosnia intervention, 248–249; resistance to UNSC actions, 184; resistance to Zimbabwe intervention, 197; secessionist conflict, 116; UN role in Bosnia, 185–186; UNSC intervention debate, 194; UNSC response in Yemen and Syria, 206 Rwanda: Abuja mediation, 128; AU intervention, 163–165; civil society failure, 137, 149–150; Darfur intervention, 167; defining ethnic and racial groups, 28, 29; defining genocide, 37; dehumanization of potential victims, 105; early warning programs triggering genocide, 86; failure of prevention and mediation, 1–2, 9, 172–173, 188–192; genocide and war, 39–40; genocide by nongovernmental groups, 91; genocide case studies, 36; group motivations in conflict, 57; identity conflict, 112; military force debate, 217; minority exclusion, 74; political will to respond, 150; rebels’ resistance to mediation, 124; risk assessment, 96–100; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 98(table); shifting UN response and political will, 234; state as genocidal agent, 113; UN inactivity, 188–192; UN peacekeeping failure, 1–2; UN response, 172–173; understanding ethnicity, 30; US refusal to define as genocide, 242 Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, 165 Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), 1, 163 Sahnoun, Mohamed, 144 Salim, Salim Ahmed, 164 Sanctions: China and Russia’s resistance to, 184; Darfur, 146–147; as preventive measure, 122; Syria, 224 Sant’Egidio, 121 Saudi Arabia, 98(table) Save Darfur movement, 14, 135–136, 146, 149, 150, 242

295

Scale in genocidal events, 50 Scholars, genocide, 87–88, 90 Secession, 116 Security coalition, 193–194 Self-government, 115–116 Semiauthoritarian regimes, 10 Sentinel Project for Genocide Prevention, 37 Separation, 115–118 Separatist rebellions, 55, 58 September 11, 2011, 229 Serbs, 112, 128, 139 Sexual violence, UNCG prohibition against, 26–27 Short-term emergency response, 243 Sierra Leone, 214; African security council, 177(n19); UN intervention, 192, 194 Social cleavages, 66 Social Science Research Council (SSRC), 107 Societal crises: state crises and political upheaval in genocide, 67 Socioeconomic and political causes of civil war, 54–59, 61–62, 64, 91 Somalia: African Union intervention, 246; peace and security architecture, 166; regional intervention, 159; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 98(table); UN failure in, 172; US failure in, 189 South Africa: AU constitutions, 165–166; Côte d’Ivoire civil war, 199; dialogue initiation, 121; early prevention by police forces, 118; structural and attitudinal change, 120 South Africa Peace Movement, 121 South Sudan, 116, 166, 196, 220 Sovereignist position on interference, 144 Sovereignty: as factor in intervention decisions, 202; models of, 5–6; obstacles to UN decisionmaking, 232–233; preventative mediation, 114–115; R2P, 213–219; reluctance to intervene, 161; transformation of, 3–6 Soviet Union: class-based genocide, 49, 64; federalism causing conflict, 60; kulaks, 29–30, 36 Specific intent, 32–35

296

Index

Spielberg, Steven, 148 Srebrenica genocide, 26, 146, 157, 187 Sri Lanka: cultural recognition equality, 73; identity conflict, 112; rebels’ resistance to mediation, 124; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 99(table); UNSC actions, 184; UNSC failure to protect civilians, 197–198 Stanton, Greg, 101–102 Starvation, 38; ethnic cleansing and, 40; UNCG prohibition against, 26–27 State Failure Task Force, 89 State government: Cambodia, 91; defining genocide in terms of, 49; early prevention by police forces, 117; as genocidal agents, 112; integration through power sharing, 119; preventive diplomacy, 244–245; protecting vulnerable populations, 2; R2P, 9–10, 111–112; resistance to intervention, 173; resistance to mediation, 124–125; role in genocidal events, 50 State sovereignty. See Sovereignty State-led discrimination, 100 Stockholm International Forum to Prevent Genocide (2004), 108 Structural measures: aiding risk assessment, 244; causes of genocide, 113; conflict prevention and resolution, 7, 114–115; integration, 118–120 Subjective approach to defining groups, 30–32 Subnational organizations. See Civil society, global; Local organizations; Regional organizations and institutions Sudan: Abuja mediation, 128; African Union intervention, 246; pregenocidal situations, 87; risk assessment, 96; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 97(table); UNSC response, 196; US diaspora, 141. See also Darfur Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), 167 Sudanese Liberation Movement of Minni Minnawi (SLM-M), 128 Summary Risk Index Score, 95 Swiss Foreign Ministry, 101 Swiss Peace Foundation, 87

Switzerland, 108 Syria: Arab League intervention, 169–171; inadequacy of international response, 224; leadership change, 123; protecting the population, 124; R2P backfire potential, 222; resistance to intervention, 206–207; risk assessment, 96; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 97(table); UNSC actions, 184, 250; UNSC debate over intervention, 235 Systematic research, 89–90, 102 Systemic prevention, 7 Terrorism, 89, 228, 229 Thailand: group motivations in conflict, 57 Theory-praxis nexus, 15 Tibet: genocide case studies, 36 Tigreans, 112 Tokyo tribunal, 24, 142 Torture, UNCG prohibition against, 26 Totalitarian state, 68 Trade openness, 95, 100 Transferring people: children, 27, 43(n24); ethnic cleansing, 40; war crimes, 38 Trigger events, 104 Tsunami relief, 145 Tunisia: leadership change, 123 Turkey: postcolonial behavior, 93 Tutsi rebels. See Rwanda Typologies of genocide, 63–64 Uganda, 99(table), 112 UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), 189–190, 191–192 UN Charter, 245; regionalism, 159; state sovereignty versus universal human rights, 4 UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), 230, 249 UN Commission of Experts on the Yugoslavia Wars, 40 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG; 1948): creation and approval of, 24–25; defining genocide, 13, 22, 35–37, 46(n67), 47, 159–161, 242; elements and points of contention, 25; intent to commit genocide,

Index 32–35; labeling Darfur genocide, 150; mobilization of, 142; nature of genocide, 22; prohibited acts, 26–27; prohibiting genocide, 4–5; protected groups, 27–32; US struggle over ratification, 139 UN Development Programme (UNDP), 126, 230, 249 UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change, 219 UN Human Rights Council, 200, 220, 224 UN Intellectual History Project, 225 UN Interim Administration in Kosovo (UNMIK), 193 UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 106, 249 UN Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 230–231, 249 UN Office of the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, 102, 108, 224, 241 UN Operation in Côte d’Ivoire (UNOCI), 198, 199 UN Preventative Deployment Force (UNPREDEP), 117 UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR), 185, 187, 248–249 UN Secretariat’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), 230–231 UN Security Council: AU Peace and Security Council and, 246; balancing peace and justice, 203–204; Bosnia intervention, 185–188; commitment to prevention and protection, 193–194; complexity factor of intervention, 183–184, 201–202; composition of, 205; Côte d’Ivoire civil war, 198–200; Darfur, Zimbabwe, and Sri Lanka missions, 148, 196–198; defense of absolute sovereignty, 202; dolus specialis requirement affecting policy, 34; factors affecting change in policy, 204–207; geopolitics limiting response, 248–251; inaction in the 1990s, 192–193; Informal Interactive Dialogue, 197–198; institutional reforms, 227–231; intervention

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debate, 194–195; Libya intervention, 200–201, 215–216; obstacles to forceful response, 15; partiality and the pursuit of national interest, 202–203; responsibility to protect, 8; Rwanda failure, 1–2, 138, 164, 172–173, 188–192; sovereignty and R2P, 217; stemming atrocities as protection of state interests, 252–253; Sudan peacekeeping, 168–169; Syria intervention, 224–225; trade and finance issues, 203; US primary role in, 229–230; war in Lebanon, 195–196 UN Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET), 194 UN World Summit (2005), 2, 8, 144, 183, 217–218, 241 United Kingdom: Bosnia intervention, 185–187, 248–249; Rwanda intervention, 164, 172, 188 United Nations: accountability for successes and failures, 225–226; as agents of mediation, 125, 126; Arab League addressing atrocities in Syria, 170–171; conflict prevention, 7; Darfur conflict, 149; global civil society, 11; institutional obstacles to effective response, 226–231; peacekeeping forces, 116–117; political obstacles to decisionmaking, 231–233; preparing for regionalism, 158; protecting civilian population, 108; R2P, 219–220; R2P implementation strategies, 245; regional organizations and, 14–15; safehaven for Iraqi Kurds, 143. See also entries beginning with UN United States: Abuja mediation, 128; atrocities prevention, 228–229; Bosnia intervention, 186; clashing agendas of civil society, 139; Darfur intervention, 169; genocide prevention as security issue, 241; labeling Darfur genocide, 150; peacekeeping policy, 190–191; Political Instability Task Force, 113; R2P military pillar, 227–228; Rwanda crisis, 164, 172, 189–191; Save Darfur movement, 146–148; Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 169;

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Index

Sudanese diaspora, 141; Syria sanctions, 224; UN nonintervention in Rwanda, 164 Universal norms, 16, 251–252 Uppsala Conflict data, 48 US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 169 Ushahidi software platform, 145 Utilitarian genocide, 65 Uzbekistan, 99(table)

Winter, Roger, 148 Women: global outrage against abuses, 205; rape of, 26–27, 93–94, 223; UN protection, 193 World Food Programme (WFP), 88, 230, 249 World Summit. See UN World Summit World War II: coining genocide, 23; defining Jewishness, 31–32; postwar tribunals, 42(n10)

Vandalism, 22–23 Vendée massacres, 36 Venezuela: R2P, 221 Vertical inequalities, 57 Veto power, 203 Visionary leadership, 253 Vollebaeck, Knut, 246

Yeltsin, Boris, 186 Yemen, 206–207, 222 Youth bulge as factor in conflict, 53–56, 78(n32) Yugoslavia, former: defining genocide, 25; divided civil society, 140; early prevention by police forces, 118; ethnic cleansing, 40; federalism causing conflict, 60; nonstate involvement in genocide, 49. See also International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia; individual countries

War and conflict. See Civil war; Conflict War crimes: crimes against humanity, genocide and, 38–39, 42(n9); Darfur, 45(n60); ethnic cleansing, 40; genocidal intent, 32; genocide and, 21; ICTY and ICTR, 142; kulaks, 30 War on terror, 228 West Africa, 5 Westphalian sovereignty, 5 Wikileaks, 106 Will to Intervene report, 37

Zaire (Katanga), 55 Zimbabwe: agency of mediation, 125; risks for genocide and politicide, 2011, 98(table); UNSC lack of political will, 224; UNSC response, 196–197

About the Book

W

hat are the causes of genocide and mass atrocities? How can we prevent these atrocities or, when that is no longer possible, intervene to stop them? What are the impediments to timely and robust action? In what ways do political factors shape the nature, and results, of international responses? The authors of Responding to Genocide explore these questions, examining the many challenges involved in forging effective international policies to combat genocidal violence.

Adam Lupel is senior fellow at the International Peace Institute. He is au-

thor of Globalization and Popular Sovereignty: Democracy’s Transnational Dilemma and coeditor of Peace Operations and Organized Crime: Enemies or Allies? Ernesto Verdeja is assistant professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame. His recent publications include Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence.

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