“Never again” was one of the phrases most commonly used when international actors talked about the Holocaust (UN 2018). Generally speaking, history gives us more examples of mass atrocities than we can count. Many of these occurred under colonial rule and are partly forgotten by the Western world, but not by the descendants of the wronged Native people (Shakya & Rivas 2020). Up until the 19th century, mass atrocities did not play a big part in the morals of international politics, they were not condemned, but even considered legitimate political instruments (Kell & Schlotter 2005: 109). Only after the horrors of the Holocaust during Nazi Germany the international community (IC) reconsidered its standing on mass atrocities and its responsibility to act if an atrocity should happen. The newly founded United Nations (UN) were highly ambitious about promoting human security in the form of human rights, but unfortunately, change only happened slowly. While the Genocide Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) proved the UN’s good intentions, the documents and promises turned out to be no more than hollow words: During the Cold War the two blocks of the US and the West and the Soviet Union were more concerned about geopolitics and being at the top of the international order so that atrocities became instrumentalized in the rhetoric’s of each block to show its population and allies how bad the enemy was (Straus 2016: 4).
After the end of the Cold War, the world was once again hopeful and believed that human rights were at the core of international politics now more than ever. But humanitarian assistance in Iraq and Somalia as well as the Rwandan genocide of the Tutsi people and the ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica, Yugoslavia proved the IC wrong. Even though the narrative of “never again” had emerged after the Holocaust, states and the UN stood and watched the atrocities happen (Kurtz & Rotmann 2016: 24). The shame of the failure in the 1990s led to the introduction of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague based on the Rome Statute to implement a permanent court to try atrocity crimes instead of only having ad hoc trials for specific atrocity crimes (Straus 2016: 7). At the turn of the millennium, the UN reiterated the promise of the protection of human rights and following the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (ICISS), the “responsibility to protect”-principle (R2P) was introduced at the World Summit 2005. Since then, R2P has been the leading policy on the prevention of mass atrocities (General Assembly resolution 60/1).
This paper will follow the argument that there is a duty to prevent mass atrocities based on the changes in the premises of international law and international politics. As the developments in the second half of the 20th century showed, the IC became more and more set on preventing mass atrocities and continues to deliver on its promise to protect, enforce and promote human rights. Following this introduction, a conceptualization of mass atrocities will be given. Important conventions, policies and official documents of the UN will be analysed to show the understanding of the UN regarding the self-imposed duty to prevent mass atrocities. After that, means to promote the prevention of atrocities will be shown before the paper point out the limitations of the prevention of mass atrocities. The paper ends with a conclusion.
What are mass atrocities?
At the World Summit 2005, the General Assembly introduced the four types of mass atrocities with its R2P principle: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing (General Assembly resolution 60/1). Generally speaking, mass atrocity crimes are human rights violations against civilians on a grand scale (Straus 2016: 117), but the four types of crime differ regarding victimization and target group, context and other characteristics.
As discussions about the prevention of mass atrocities gained momentum after the Holocaust, genocide is arguably the atrocity crime most represented in research. Not only is there the field of genocide studies but also Holocaust studies (USHMM w.D.) At the Genocide Convention, genocide was defined as “acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” with acts including not only the killing of members of the victim group, but also other acts leading to the extinction of the group like preventing birth (UN 1948: 1). Lemkin, the academic father of the term “genocide” campaigned for a more loose term of the atrocity so that groups like social classes and political groups were to be included as well, but because of political pressure, the UN adopted only the narrower concept. Neither are other forms of identity like gender or sexual identity included in the original concept of the Genocide Convention. Therefore, scholars introduce new concepts like “gendercide” (Schaller 2011: 250f). A more inclusive definition is given by the anthropologist Hinton (2012: 9f): “We might simply define genocide as the more or less coordinated attempt to destroy a dehumanized and excluded group of people because of who they are.” Even though the social groups to be included in the definition of genocide are controversial, two aspects are undisputed. First, genocide victims are deliberately targeted because they belong to the victim group and second, genocidal acts always follow intent on the side of the perpetrators (Global Centre R2P 2018).
War crimes are defined in the Rome Statute of the ICC, Art. 8 and include the “wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment […], wilfully causing great suffering […], extensive destruction and appropriation of property […], compelling a prisoner of war or [another] protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or [another] protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement, taking of hostages”, attacks against civilians and peacekeeping humanitarian assistance forces as well as the use of particular weapons or assault forms. War crimes are violations of international humanitarian law that occur based on an individual perpetrator and only occur in the context of an armed conflict. The group identity of victims does not matter (UN w.D.a).
The concept of crimes against humanity may be traced back up until slavery and the slave trade (UN w.D.b). It has yet to be codified in an international treaty, but is defined in the Rome Statute of the ICC: “The crime against humanity means acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population” and includes acts like killing, torture, deportation, sexual violence, and apartheid. Crimes against humanity are usually widespread or systematic (Global Centre R2P 2018). Therefore, they are intentional like genocide.
Last, but not least, ethnic cleansing takes a special role in atrocity crimes as it “has not been recognized as an independent crime under international law” so there is no acknowledged definition (ibid.). The term was coined by a Serbo-Croation expression which emerged “in the context of the 1990’s conflict in the former Yugoslavia” (UN w.D.c). An expert commission of the Security Council (UNSC) described ethnic cleansing as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area” (Security Council S/25274: 16). It remains unclear whether ethnic cleansing should be a category of atrocity crimes on its own as depending on specific cases as ethnic cleansing can fall under the definition of the other three atrocity crimes (UN w.D.c).
What is the legal framework for the prevention of mass atrocities?
After the horrors of the two World Wars in the first half of the 20th century, a change of morals in international politics happened which showed a clear incentive of the IC and namely the UN believing in a duty to protect civilians from their state’s authorities and therefore to prevent mass atrocities. After having pinpointed the empirical changes in international politics in the introduction, the following part will shed some more light on the underlying changes in international political theory and the resolution of states to shape international politics around the protection of civilians and human rights.
Especially after World War Two, international law was modernized and shifted towards a stronger protection of civilians and therefore to a restriction of national sovereignty. Before that change, the premises of classical international law had been that the nation-state was the only entity in the IC that mattered and that national sovereignty based on the model of the peace of Westphalia stood at the centre of international politics (Krell & Schlotter 2018: 112f). At the start of the 20th century, “international norms, policies, and mechanisms to prevent and respond to atrocity were virtually non-existent” (Straus 2016: 1f) because it contradicted the strong belief in the states’ sovereignty. Modern international law, on the other hand, follows the premise that war between states cannot be justified leading to a prohibition of violence and a duty to observe peace for member states of the UN. As mentioned, national sovereignty was restricted to keep the peace (Krell & Schlotter 2018: 118). Additionally, the UN focused on the protection of human rights. With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) that was introduced in 1948 by the General Assembly, the member states of the UN formulated the basic human rights which include that every human being is entitled to the right to peace and freedom and is not to be discriminated against based on features like race, religion or ethnicity (UN w.D.d).
At the World Conference of Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, the UN stated that human rights were universal and indivisible (Brock 2016: 8f). But even before the UDHR, human rights and international politics based on a peaceful IC were coined in the UN Charter. The preamble of the Charter states “We the people of the [UN] determined […] to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women” (UN Charter). Article 1 focuses on the above-all goal to “maintain […] peace” and “remove [potential] threats to the peace” (ibid.). To achieve this goal, the UNSC is equipped with special rights for peaceful intervention in conflicts and a procedure of military interventions in Chapters VI and VII in the Charta (ibid.). Because of the Genocide Convention in 1948, the UN and its member states stated that “genocide […] is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish” (UN 1948: 1).
Because of the modernization of international law and the focus on human protection in international politics in general, the General Assembly of the UN adopted the principle of “responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity” (also R2P) at the World Summit 2005 (General Assembly Resolution 60/1: 30). It not only states the responsibility of each member state to protect its population, but it also gives the UNSC the right to intervene if an atrocity should happen. In the official document of the World Summit 2005, the General Assembly also stressed the importance of the UN and the willingness to strengthen its institutions. This extension of protection of civilians may also be traced back to the failures of UN peace missions in the 1990s, namely in Rwanda and Bosnia (Straus 2016: 5f). Since then, R2P has been considered an important norm in international politics that states are supposed to not break for following through on their goal of being a good global citizen (Hehir 2019: 60).
The concept of R2P follows the constructivist logic that because the states endorse R2P, they are less likely to exercise mass atrocity crimes as the states’ themselves agree that atrocity crimes are morally wrong. In the first years after the adoption of R2P after the resolution of the World Summit 2005, it remained unclear what R2P was to look like exactly. It was only clear that the peacekeeping missions of the UN should shift the focus from humanitarian intervention to the protection of victims in atrocity crimes as the humanitarian intervention was to be believed to be vulnerable to easy abuse for intervening in foreign states’ affairs and therefore was considered by some scholars and political actors as neo-imperialistic. “R2P represents the voice of potential victims, not the voice of presidents and generals” (Popovski 2019: 504). In 2009, the UN introduced the three pillars of R2P (General Assembly resolution A/63/677) for more clarity regarding the implementation of the new international norm. With these pillars, the IC re-emphasizes that first and foremost, states are responsible to protect their citizens from mass atrocities (pillar one). Other actors on the international stage can help given governments follow through on that responsibility by offering advice and assistance (pillar two). Only with pillar three is the general IC directly involved in the prevention of mass atrocities – or rather in the response to mass atrocity crimes as the keywords are the “timely and decisive response” (ibid.: 2). While the IC acknowledges unanimously the duty to prevent mass atrocities, the implementation of this duty falls first under the realm of national sovereignty and the IC is to get involved when atrocities are already in motion.
What can prevention of mass atrocities look like?
As already stated, the prevention of mass atrocity crimes is first and foremost assigned to states. Prevention should take place at a domestic level, imposed by the governments and other institutions like courts and parliaments. The goal of prevention is the protection of the state’s civilians. This can be achieved by different means and states can resort to different strategies. But while scholars and policy advisors talk about policymakers having a “toolbox” full of different prevention tools, the metaphor can be misleading (Straus 2016: 132). While prevention must consist of different strategies and actions to be successful, the “tools” cannot be used with the same outcome in two different settings. For example, stopping hate speech against a minority to prevent genocide will firstly not always work and secondly may not work in the same way in two different settings as situations that could lead to atrocities are context-sensitive. For successful prevention, it is, therefore, crucial to make a comprehensive assessment of the situation at hand. Also, tools are usually used one at a time.
When it comes to atrocity prevention, policymakers should not waste precious time relying only on one strategy or action at a time, but rather implement different strategies and actions right from the beginning to increase the chances of preventing mass atrocity crimes. The first step to the successful prevention of mass atrocities is the comprehensive assessment of the situation at hand. Identifying the risk factors and the level of escalations are crucial steps for that (Reike et al. 2013: 5f). Seven risk factors have been identified to be potentially leading (not mono-causally) to mass atrocities: “the presence of war and armed conflict”, “economic and/or social instability and crisis”, “an exclusionary ideology”, “an authoritarian government”, “leadership and elite population of the population [to strengthen] self-interested ends”, “group-dynamics and ‘conformity effects’”, and “a history of previous atrocities” (ibid.). At the first step of atrocity escalation, the risk factors emerge, then follows the upheaval and mobilisation, for example, through the dissemination of the predators’ ideology., followed by imminent emergency (ibid.).
The less escalated a conflict, the easier and more successful to prevent it with the right strategies. But, it is not necessary to wait to take measures of prevention until risk factors emerge. Systematic prevention of mass atrocities including strengthening democratic institutions, reducing discrimination and general conflict prevention decreases the probability of atrocity crimes occurring (Straus 2016: 136f). In the case of an imminent atrocity crime, a more targeted approach to prevent the crime is needed. A criminological approach can help to still prevent the crime by focusing on three factors: the perpetrator, the victim, and the situation (Reike et al. 2013: 8). The perpetrators, therefore, can be threatened to be punished if they should follow through on the atrocity crime, victims can be protected from the perpetrators by the police, and the situation can be de-escalated by mediation between perpetrator group and victim group.
Unfortunately, governments and institutions are often not strong enough or even involved when atrocity crimes are upcoming. Then, the IC must step in to prevent the atrocity crime from happening. Like with the domestic approach of prevention, the goal remains the protection of civilians, especially the protection of the victim group. Therefore, the IC can use different means like diplomacy or coercion as well as humanitarian or military means. Last but not least, there are also several strategies available for preventing atrocities: general conflict prevention, shielding civilians, the nudging, threatening or the general use of soft power on the perpetrators, sanctions, and at a last resort, a peace-keeping mission sanctioned by the UNSC (Straus 2016: 115ff, 139f; General Assembly resolution 60/1).
What problems may arise in the prevention of mass atrocities?
While the moral duty to prevent mass atrocities is uncontested in the IC, the implementation of R2P and the application of policies regarding the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes has limits and is ground for wide-ranging critique.
First, being a norm in the international political order, which is an anarchic one, leads by nature to limitations. The adaption of the norm was a significant step to prevent further mass atrocities, but it is based on the goodwill of the nation-states. The norm was not introduced to prevent the great majority of states to stop carrying out further mass atrocities, but to prevent single states that accept the use of violence against civilians and find it a legitimate political instrument from the exercise of these grand-scale human rights violations. But this specific target group is less likely than the rest of the states to follow through and act on the international norms because domestic policies are more important for political actors than international standing. Additionally, while there is a new norm in the international order, the mechanisms of enforcement remain weak. Not acting when mass atrocity crimes happen may be scorned, but there are no consequences for the IC if they decide to look the other way and ignore an ongoing atrocity in a country, regardless of whether it is state-sponsored or not (Hehir 2019: 59ff; 174).
At the centre of the R2P, we find the UNSC, which in itself is argued to be a flawed concept. The UNSC is the committee responsible for sanctioning the peacekeeping missions and R2P interventions if the IC should decide that it is time for a response to an atrocity crime. But, the five permanent members (P5) (US, Russia, China, France, UK) can always make use of their veto powers to prevent a resolution and therefore a peacekeeping mission. Therefore, critics state that the P5 use the UNSC to promote domestic interests and act according to them and not on the will of the IC, which can lead to stalemates and non-acting even though the majority of the UN member states would approve a peacekeeping mission (Hehir 2019: 173; Popovski 2019: 515). UN member states as well as non-state actors have been campaigning for the “voluntary restraint of the use of the veto by the [P5] in mass atrocity situations” as the political bargains and power politics harm the credibility of the UN and its will to ensure and promote peace worldwide (Global Centre R2P w.D.) but of course, also abandons countless victims and civilians in their time of dire need.
Even with those calls for more responsibility, there are numerous examples of P5 members placing national interests above the R2P. Especially the ongoing civil war in Syria leads regularly to outcries in the IC and civil society. The national strategies of the P5 are contradicting each other with the Western countries supporting the Syrian opposition, Russia supporting Bashar al-Assad, and China not wanting to intervene at all. With those opposing positions, a hardline stalemate has formed in the UNSC which paralyzes the IC and stops all efforts of protecting Syrian civilians who are doomed to suffer because of power politics (Al-Oraibi 2021). As the IC and victims cannot rely on a voluntary restraint of using the veto right regarding mass atrocity situations, a reform of the UNSC is needed as a supportive means in the general strategy of preventing mass atrocities.
Generally speaking, the focus on state actors can prove problematic. With the emergence of newer theories of international relations, the importance of non-state actors has gained influence over the last decades. But the framework of the international order, especially in the UN, still puts the nation-state at the centre of international politics even though states have proven unwilling to follow through on international norms in the past – like in the Syrian war. Non-state actors could be useful, if not crucial, in the prevention of and the response to mass atrocity crimes. The (international) media, human rights organizations and other advocates can use soft power to influence perpetrators (Popovski 2019: 510). The consideration of non-state actors is not only important regarding the protection of civilians. Atrocity crimes do not always have to be state-sponsored and these crimes can be committed by other groups like in the cases of Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Yemen. Focusing only on traditional security concepts and only dealing with states cannot prevent further escalation in those conflicts where the state is not the aggressor (Ercan 2022: 295f).
Newer concepts of R2P integrating non-state actors in the R2P concepts could also help with another limitation. Even though the concept of R2P brought a rhetorical shift from “humanitarian intervention” to a focus on the responsibility of the state to protect its population (Evans & Sahnoun 2002: 101), in international politics and the academic debate the question remains whether states use the R2P to follow through on intervening abroad to push domestic interests (ibid.; Popovski 2019: 503). This debate gained momentum after the R2P peacekeeping mission in Libya in 2011, which saved thousands of civilians’ lives, but also led to a regime change which in turn led to criticism in the IC (Mabera & Spies 2016: 208). The states of the Global South, in particular, emphasise the need for R2P, but express concerns and doubts about the intentions of Western states regarding their motives for peace missions. Advocates of the R2P as a global norm point out the origins of the R2P principle in Africa, with the two African UN Secretary Generals Boutros-Ghali and Annan highlighting the need for a shift towards the human security paradigm (ibid.: 211) among other notions of the preliminaries of R2P. Also, the unanimous vote to adopt the R2P principle at the World Summit 2005 as well as the concept being “sprung from many corners of the world and developed in global discussions” (Popovski 2019: 502) is used to point out the global approach of R2P. And while non-Western states generally support the idea of a duty to prevent atrocities, the translation of the abstract international norm into feasible actions is another topic with states being reminded of colonial and imperial times. The resolution of the Security Council 1973 on Libya allowing the peace forces “to take all necessary measures […] to protect civilians” arguably fed into the fears of non-Western states as they worried about an impending overthrow of the Libyan regime by Western powers (Mabera & Spies 2016: 208ff).
Brazil even became “a key actor in the global discussions about R2P” (Stuenkel 2016: 620), introducing the policy of “responsibility while protecting” which campaigns for clear and strong limitations for the use of force for peacekeeping forces during their peacekeeping missions to prevent mixing the R2P with the pursuit of national interests and imperialistic ideas. Other postcolonial views argue that the focus of R2P lies on the Global South. The liberal theory on genocide and mass atrocities argues that genocide “can only occur either in totalitarian regimes or in failing states in the so-called third world” (Schaller 2011: 249) and therefore, liberal democracies of the Global North think of R2P as a foreign policy issue and instrument only (Richmond & Visoka 2022: 1242). As Straus (2016: 133ff) noted, the prevention of mass atrocities starts at a domestic level. In most, if not all, European democracies and in the US alarming signs of risk factors of potential atrocities – if those conflicts should escalate – are visible. Straus (2016: 78) identifies hate speech as an instrument to provoke violence. Former US president Trump is probably the most prominent example of significant actors when it comes to hate speech, proclaiming racist statements and actions like building the wall between the US and Mexico (The Guardian 2019). And while femicides have been leading to outcries all over Latin America for years (Dannemann 2019), European law enforcement authorities still struggle with the prosecution of gender-based violence (Hellmann 2023). Ironically, the European Union (EU) supports an initiative in Latin America for stopping gender-based violence (Dannemann 2019). It would be an exaggeration to talk about imperialistic ideas with examples like these, yet, understandably, states of the Global South see a double standard behind the intentions of the Global North regarding the R2P.
Conclusion
While there is no doubt for the IC that there is a duty to prevent mass atrocities and to protect civilians from resulting horrible harm, the implementation of the R2P comes with problems that need addressing if the IC wants to stand united in its task to protect civilians. The UN has set an ambitious goal and introduced the R2P and the definition of the three atrocity crimes genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as well as other legal frameworks the basis for feasible action. With R2P as a widely acknowledged international norm, mass atrocity crimes should be prevented in the future and if not, at least responded to. However, when the norm should be translated into action in the case of an occurring atrocity crime, the typical problems of international politics and global governance arise. Namely the anarchic situation, the sole focus on the nation-state and sovereignty, but especially a (perceived) North-South slope and power politics in the UNSC complicates aiding civilians in times of need. Possible solutions in the international setting would be a reform of the UNSC, a stronger involvement of non-state actors and a refocusing of states of the Global North on the prevention of mass atrocities at home to address the feeling of states of the Global South regarding imposed liberal views. Additionally, the general focus on domestic prevention of atrocities before conflicts between groups arise will help prevent atrocity crimes and protect civilians without international intervention.
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