The Teeth to Defeat Genocide
ROMÉO DALLAIRE & HUGH SEGAL
FEATURES | October 13, 2010
Changes in law, capabilities and posture – at home and internationally –
will inform the new century’s responsible interventions
Global Brief Magazine © 2010
In 1946, the General Assembly of the UN passed the following resolution:
“Genocide is the denial of the right to existence of entire human
groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual
human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the
conscience of mankind, results in great losses to humanity in the form
of cultural and other contributions represented by these groups, and is
contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations.
Many instances of such crimes of genocide have occurred, when racial,
religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or
in part. The punishment of the crime of genocide is a matter of
international concern. The General Assembly, therefore, Affirms that
genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world
condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices –
whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether
the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other
grounds – are punishable.”
These strong and compelling words condemn the practice of genocide, and
promise punishment to those who might conspire to do away with one group
based on race, ethnicity, religious or political persuasion. While the
words “never again” rang out internationally after the discovery in 1945
of the extent of the crimes against humanity committed during the
Holocaust, since that time, the world has witnessed further mass murder
in East Pakistan (Bangladesh), East Timor, Cambodia, Guatemala, Bosnia,
Rwanda, Zaire (the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Uganda, Kenya,
Zimbabwe and in Sudan’s Darfur region. This is merely a sampling of
modern cases in which violence was unleashed against civilians with
genocidal intent on ethnic, religious or national grounds. According to
the NGO Genocide Watch, there are 79 countries guilty of genocide and
related crimes against humanity, killing hundreds, thousands or millions
in order to eradicate a group or those simply deemed a problem because
of their very existence.
Governments and individual citizens agree that genocide is evil.
Governments and individuals also agree that genocide should be halted
when it begins to unfold or, better yet, prevented before it happens.
Yet, since 1945, history has shown that the domestic political will to
act preventatively is lacking among individual political leaders. The
sensitivities about one sovereign state interfering in the affairs of
another sovereign state lead to the inevitable response of inaction when
the worst occurs. It seems that it is deemed to be diplomatically odious
for democratic nations to be proactive on this issue, as it offends the
sensibilities of the cautious civil servants who are monitoring the
affairs of foreign nations – civil servants who might well be the first
to recognize the signs of impending genocide. Often, geopolitical
interests, such as oil or regional stability, get in the way of firm
prophylactic action before bodies are attacked like cordwood. Sometimes,
however, the absence of natural resources or other strategic interests
is a comfortable reason to look the other way, as appeared to be the
case during the Rwandan genocide. Fatigue with interventions or
hostilities elsewhere may also dull a country’s political will to
consider forceful action of a diplomatic or military nature. Of equal
importance is the fear of top leaders of democracies that they will be
embroiled in a quagmire once they commit to intervention, and that they
will be punished by voters at the polls should casualties among their
soldiers ensue. The costs of such intervention are hard to assess, both
in blood and treasure. But the costs of not intervening, as we saw in
the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda – in terms of strategic instability
and endless new structural costs to the international community – are at
least as high, without counting the raw cost to humanity of hundreds,
thousands or hundreds of thousands killed. Indeed, the stark and
horrific reality of a Rwanda or Cambodia is so far out of the realm of
the reasonable that admitting its advent or existence in the first place
is often unthinkable – as were the death camps of WW2.
Last year, the Will to Intervene Project, based at the Montreal
Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University,
released a report with detailed policy recommendations listed for the
Canadian and US governments. The report points directly to the UN
Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,
adopted in 1951, and which assures penalties for perpetrators. And yet,
the report finds that the obligations outlined in the resolution do not
create sufficient personal risk of punishment for those who contemplate
ethnic cleansing or genocide. The threat of prosecution has no teeth
when the international community itself stands on the sidelines for fear
of ‘interfering’ in the domestic affairs of another state, and for fear
of whipping up a backlash among the voting public at election time. That
lesson was learned in spades when the international community failed to
stop the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and subsequently had to deal in a
reactive manner with the humanitarian disaster that it triggered in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo and neighbouring countries. And that
lesson is exactly what prompted military intervention, under the aegis
of NATO, in Kosovo in 1999. And while the Kosovo intervention was
technically illegal, as it violated individual state sovereignty without
a prior Security Council mandate, the violation was tolerated based on
moral grounds. In that instance, the international community finally
admitted that it was not prepared to allow genocide to be carried out
twice in the Balkans, and this was absolutely the right thing to do!
NATO’s New Strategic Concept Committee has been chaired by former US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She is experienced and respected
world-wide, and was an excellent choice to provide a balanced and fair
report on the many security challenges that NATO must face in this new
century. Albright is, as well, a passionate proponent of the prevention
of genocide. In December 2008, she and former US Defense Secretary
William S. Cohen, as co-chairs of the Genocide Prevention Task Force,
released the report entitled Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for US
Policymakers. In it, the authors point out that, still today, leaders
within the US and elsewhere debate whether forceful military action in
1994 could have prevented the massacres in Rwanda, or whether
international forces in 2003 could have stopped the militia attacks in
Darfur. The military actions to protect Kurds in Iraq in 1991, and
Kosovar Albanians in 1999, are cited as successful humanitarian
interventions. The Albright-Cohen report sums up the art of the possible
in its executive summary, which says, in part: “We conclude in this
report that preventing genocide is an achievable goal. Genocide is not
the inevitable result of ‘ancient hatreds’ or irrational lead-ers. It
requires planning and is carried out systematically. There are ways to
recognize its signs and symptoms, and viable options to prevent it at
every turn if we are committed and prepared. Preventing genocide is a
goal that can be achieved with the right organizational structures,
strategies, and partnerships – in short, with the right blueprint.”
The problems that the international community faces in preventing future
genocides are not insurmountable. However, they must first be
identified. First and foremost, the requirement that authorization from
the UN Security Council and consent from its permanent five (P5) members
are necessary prior to taking any coercive action is a delay that has,
and will continue, to cost lives. There is rarely agreement on action of
any kind when the current mindset disallows action that is ‘perceived’
as violating state sovereignty. The ‘respect of sovereignty’ requirement
has resulted in the UN seldom authorizing operations, even in such cases
when a state is effectively killing its own civilians en masse. And, of
course, it is self-evident that the requirement for consent is difficult
to obtain and impedes possible peace operations when a government itself
is complicit in the violence, or has an economic interest in looking the
other way – as in the case of Sudan relative to oil, and the Chinese
position in the country and on the P5.
Specifically, we need to look at Article 1 of the North Atlantic Treaty,
which states: “The Parties undertake, as set forth in the Charter of the
United Nations, to settle any international dispute in which they may be
involved by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and
security and justice are not endangered, and to refrain in their
international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner
inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” The strict
adherence to the UN Charter’s non-intervention bias when dealing with
genocide is far too narrow. Consideration should be given to the
addition of a new article to the North Atlantic Treaty dealing
specifically with genocide and other mass atrocity crimes. This new
article should override all other objections, and should connect
directly with the doctrine of ‘the responsibility to protect.’ That
responsibility is what brought Canadian troops to Bosnia, and Canadian
air assets to the Kosovo engagement with other NATO countries.
The policy recommendations listed in the Albright-Cohen Report and Will
to Intervene Report have brought structural changes to the US
Departments of State and Defense, with senior officials of rank and
reach now formally designated to be on genocide watch, linking defence,
diplomacy and intelligence agencies and the White House. This is very
much to President Obama’s credit in recognizing that preventing genocide
is more than a humanitarian issue. It is also in the national interest
of the US to do so, given the security and economic threats that mass
atrocities generate.
While the Obama administration is demonstrating leadership on this
issue, missing are similar initiatives of other partners in NATO and the
broader world community. A global initiative by Canada to first put its
own genocide alert infrastructure in place, working cooperatively with,
and parallel to, the Obama administration, and implementing the
recommendations of the Will to Intervene Report for building capacity in
the Government of Canada and the Canadian Forces, and second, to seek
similar initiatives in places like NATO Headquarters, the Commonwealth
Secretariat, La Francophonie and the UN itself, would be a step in the
right direction.
Legitimacy in international politics is about more than sterile
definitions of sovereignty. It comes also by clearly indicating those
events and actions that are explicitly not to be tolerated – ever!
Moreover, those who preach genocidal options, or call for the
eradication of UN member states, need to be targeted with intense,
proactive international initiatives, sanctions, isolation and pressure,
including the threat of military action, if others who stand by idly are
not to be responsible for the insanity that transpires. Because when
genocide is not confronted, insanity soon follows. And with the
unthinkable come the knock-on effects from the commission of mass
atrocities in distant lands, to which we are closely connected in a
globalized world: pandemics, terrorism, piracy, organized crime, human
trafficking, uncontrolled migration, diminished access to strategic raw
materials, and the eventual erosion of social cohesion at home when
expatriate or diaspora populations seek action that is not forthcoming
from their own host governments. The transnational chaos that genocides
produce renders it imperative that we put this item higher on our list
of foreign policy priorities.
General Roméo Dallaire (ret’d), is a Canadian Senator (Liberal),
Vice-Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and
Defence, and Co-Founder of the Will to Intervene Project.
Senator Hugh Segal (Conservative), is Chair of the Special Senate
Committee on Anti-Terrorism and a member of the Will to Intervene
Project’s Research Steering Committee.
From: A. Papazian