How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/
ABSTRACT *
This article argues that a duty to prevent mass atrocities has emerged from changes in international law and international politics since 1945, and examines why that duty remains difficult to discharge. The four categories of atrocity crime named at the World Summit of 2005 are set out and distinguished, with attention to the disputed boundaries of the definition of genocide and to the anomalous status of ethnic cleansing, which has never been codified as a crime in its own right. The legal framework is then traced from the Charter and the Genocide Convention through the Universal Declaration to the responsibility to protect and its three pillars. A section on prevention distinguishes systemic from targeted measures and cautions against the metaphor of a toolbox, since instruments that work in one setting may not work in another. The final part addresses the limits: enforcement that depends on goodwill, the veto power of the permanent members of the Security Council, a framework centred on states in conflicts where the state is not the aggressor, and the perception among states of the Global South that the doctrine is applied to them and not by them. The author concludes that reform of the Council, greater involvement of non-state actors, and attention by states of the Global North to prevention at home are the conditions for the doctrine’s credibility.
KEYWORDS *
Mass atrocity prevention, responsibility to protect, genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, Security Council veto, sovereignty, risk factors, Global South, Libya, responsibility while protecting
INTRODUCTION
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 peoples (Shakya and Rivas 2020). Up until the 19th century, mass atrocities did not play a large part in the morals of international politics; they were not condemned, but even considered legitimate political instruments (Krell and Schlotter 2018: 109). Only after the horrors of the Holocaust during Nazi Germany did the international community reconsider its standing on mass atrocities and its responsibility to act if an atrocity should happen. The newly founded United Nations was 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 proved the good intentions of the United Nations, the documents and promises turned out to be no more than hollow words for a long period: during the Cold War the two blocs of the United States and the West and of 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 of each bloc 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 genocide committed against the Tutsi in Rwanda and the massacre of Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, proved the international community wrong. Even though the narrative of never again had emerged after the Holocaust, states and the United Nations stood and watched the atrocities happen (Kurtz and Rotmann 2016: 24). The shame of the failure in the 1990s led to the introduction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, based on the Rome Statute, to establish a permanent court to try atrocity crimes instead of only having ad hoc tribunals for specific situations (Straus 2016: 7). At the turn of the millennium, the United Nations reiterated the promise of the protection of human rights, and following the report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, the responsibility to protect was introduced at the World Summit of 2005. Since then, it has been the leading policy on the prevention of mass atrocities (General Assembly resolution 60/1).
This paper follows 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 international community 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 United Nations will be analysed to show its understanding of the self-imposed duty to prevent mass atrocities. After that, means to promote the prevention of atrocities will be shown, before the paper points out the limitations of the prevention of mass atrocities.
MAIN CORPUS
What are mass atrocities?
At the World Summit of 2005, the General Assembly introduced the four types of mass atrocity with its responsibility to protect 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.). In 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 destruction of the group, such as preventing births (UN 1948: 1). Lemkin, the academic father of the term genocide, campaigned for a broader definition of the crime, so that groups such as social classes and political groups would be included as well, but because of political pressure the United Nations adopted only the narrower concept. Nor are other forms of identity such as gender or sexual identity included in the original concept of the Genocide Convention. Therefore scholars have introduced new concepts such as 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 Article 8 of the Rome Statute and include 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, the taking of hostages, attacks against civilians and against peacekeeping and humanitarian assistance personnel, as well as the use of particular weapons or methods of attack. War crimes are violations of international humanitarian law that arise from the acts of an individual perpetrator and occur only 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 to slavery and the slave trade (UN w.D.b). It has yet to be codified in a dedicated international treaty, but is defined in the Rome Statute: crimes against humanity are acts committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, and include acts such as killing, torture, deportation, sexual violence, and apartheid. Crimes against humanity are widespread or systematic (Global Centre R2P 2018). They are therefore intentional, as genocide is.
Last but not least, ethnic cleansing takes a special place among atrocity crimes, as it has not been recognized as an independent crime under international law, so there is no agreed definition (ibid.). The term derives from a Serbo-Croatian expression which emerged in the context of the conflict in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s (UN w.D.c). An expert commission reporting to the Security Council 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 contested whether ethnic cleansing should be a category of atrocity crime in its own right, as depending on the case it can fall under the definitions of the other three (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 took place which showed a clear commitment of the international community, and namely of the United Nations, to a duty to protect civilians from their own state’s authorities and therefore to prevent mass atrocities. After having identified the empirical changes in international politics in the introduction, the following part will shed more light on the underlying changes in international political theory and on the resolve of states to shape international politics around the protection of civilians and human rights.
Especially after the Second World War, international law was modernized and shifted towards a stronger protection of civilians and therefore towards 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 international community that mattered, and that national sovereignty on the Westphalian model stood at the centre of international politics (Krell and 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 they contradicted the strong belief in state sovereignty. Modern international law, on the other hand, follows the premise that war between states cannot be justified, leading to a prohibition of the use of force and a duty to observe peace for member states of the United Nations. As mentioned, national sovereignty was restricted in order to keep the peace (Krell and Schlotter 2018: 118). Additionally, the United Nations focused on the protection of human rights. With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, introduced in 1948 by the General Assembly, the member states formulated the basic human rights, which include that every human being is entitled to freedom and is not to be discriminated against on grounds such as race, religion or ethnicity (UN w.D.d).
At the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in 1993, the United Nations stated that human rights were universal and indivisible (Brock 2016: 8f). But even before the Universal Declaration, human rights and international politics based on a peaceful international community were expressed in the Charter. The preamble states that the peoples of the United Nations are determined to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, and in the equal rights of men and women. Article 1 sets out the overriding goal to maintain international peace and security and to remove threats to the peace. To achieve this goal, the Security Council is equipped with powers for the peaceful settlement of disputes and for enforcement action under Chapters VI and VII of the Charter. In the Genocide Convention of 1948, the United Nations 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 the protection of persons in international politics in general, the General Assembly adopted the principle of the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity at the World Summit of 2005 (General Assembly resolution 60/1: 30). It not only states the responsibility of each member state to protect its population, but also provides for collective action through the Security Council if an atrocity should occur. In the outcome document, the General Assembly also stressed the importance of the United Nations and the willingness to strengthen its institutions. This extension of the protection of civilians may also be traced back to the failures of United Nations peace missions in the 1990s, namely in Rwanda and Bosnia (Straus 2016: 5f). Since then, the responsibility to protect has been considered an important norm in international politics, one that states are not supposed to break if they are to follow through on their goal of being a good global citizen (Hehir 2019: 60).
The concept follows the constructivist logic that because states endorse the responsibility to protect, they are less likely to commit mass atrocity crimes, as they themselves agree that such crimes are morally wrong. In the first years after the adoption of the principle it remained unclear what it was to look like exactly. It was only clear that United Nations peacekeeping should shift the focus from humanitarian intervention to the protection of victims of atrocity crimes, as humanitarian intervention was believed to be vulnerable to abuse as a pretext for interference in the affairs of other states, and was therefore considered by some scholars and political actors as neo-imperialist. “R2P represents the voice of potential victims, not the voice of presidents and generals” (Popovski 2019: 504). In 2009, the United Nations introduced the three pillars of the responsibility to protect (General Assembly resolution A/63/677) for more clarity regarding the implementation of the new international norm. With these pillars, the international community re-emphasises that first and foremost states are responsible for protecting their citizens from mass atrocities. Other actors on the international stage can help governments to follow through on that responsibility by offering advice and assistance. Only with the third pillar is the wider international community directly involved in the prevention of mass atrocities, or rather in the response to them, as the keywords are timely and decisive response (ibid.: 2). While the international community acknowledges the duty to prevent mass atrocities, the implementation of that duty falls first under the realm of national sovereignty, and the international community becomes 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 the domestic level, undertaken by governments and other institutions such as 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 advisers 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 should rather implement different strategies and actions right from the beginning to increase the chances of preventing mass atrocity crimes. The first step to successful prevention is a comprehensive assessment of the situation at hand. Identifying the risk factors and the level of escalation are crucial steps (Reike et al. 2013: 5f). Seven risk factors have been identified as potentially leading, though not mono-causally, to mass atrocities: the presence of war and armed conflict; economic or social instability and crisis; an exclusionary ideology; an authoritarian government; the mobilisation of the population by leaders and elites for self-interested ends; group dynamics and conformity effects; and a history of previous atrocities (ibid.). At the first step of escalation, the risk factors emerge, then follow upheaval and mobilisation, for example through the dissemination of an exclusionary ideology, followed by imminent emergency (ibid.).
The less escalated a conflict, the easier and more successful it is to prevent with the right strategies. But it is not necessary to wait until risk factors emerge to take measures of prevention. Systemic 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 is needed. A criminological approach can help to prevent the crime by focusing on three factors: the perpetrator, the victim, and the situation (Reike et al. 2013: 8). Perpetrators can be threatened with punishment if they should follow through on the atrocity crime, victims can be protected from the perpetrators, and the situation can be de-escalated by mediation between the groups.
Unfortunately, governments and institutions are often not strong enough, or are themselves involved, when atrocity crimes are imminent. Then the international community must step in to prevent the crime from happening. As with the domestic approach, the goal remains the protection of civilians, especially of the victim group. The international community can use different means, such as diplomacy or coercion, as well as humanitarian or military means. There are also several strategies available: general conflict prevention, shielding civilians, nudging, threatening or the general use of soft power on the perpetrators, sanctions, and, as a last resort, a peacekeeping mission authorised by the Security Council (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 international community, the implementation of the responsibility to protect and the application of policies regarding the prevention of and response to atrocity crimes has limits and is the ground for wide-ranging critique.
First, being a norm in an international political order which is anarchic leads by its nature to limitations. The adoption of the norm was a significant step to prevent further mass atrocities, but it rests on the goodwill of nation-states. The norm was not introduced to prevent the great majority of states from carrying out mass atrocities, but to prevent those states that accept the use of violence against civilians and find it a legitimate political instrument from committing these large-scale human rights violations. But this specific target group is less likely than the rest of the states to act on international norms, because domestic politics matters more to 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 international community if it decides 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 responsibility to protect we find the Security Council, which in itself is argued to be a flawed institution. The Council is the body responsible for authorising peacekeeping missions and interventions if the international community should decide that it is time for a response to an atrocity crime. But the five permanent members can always make use of their veto to prevent a resolution and therefore a mission. Critics state that the permanent members use the Council to promote their own interests and act according to them and not on the will of the international community, which can lead to stalemate and inaction even though the majority of member states would approve a mission (Hehir 2019: 173; Popovski 2019: 515). Member states as well as non-state actors have been campaigning for the voluntary restraint of the use of the veto by the permanent members in mass atrocity situations, as the political bargains and power politics harm the credibility of the United Nations and its will to ensure and promote peace worldwide (Global Centre R2P w.D.), and of course also abandon countless victims and civilians in their time of dire need.
Even with those calls for more responsibility, there are numerous examples of permanent members placing national interests above the responsibility to protect. Especially the civil war in Syria has led regularly to outcry in the international community and civil society. The national strategies of the permanent members contradicted each other, with Western countries supporting the Syrian opposition, Russia supporting Bashar al-Assad, and China unwilling to intervene at all. With those opposing positions, a stalemate formed in the Council which paralysed the international community and stopped efforts to protect Syrian civilians, who were left to suffer because of power politics (Al-Oraibi 2021). As the international community and victims cannot rely on a voluntary restraint in the use of the veto in mass atrocity situations, a reform of the Council 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 recognition over the last decades. But the framework of the international order, especially in the United Nations, 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, as in the Syrian war. Non-state actors could be useful, if not crucial, in the prevention of and the response to mass atrocity crimes. 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, as 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 integrating non-state actors could also help with another limitation. Even though the responsibility to protect brought a rhetorical shift from humanitarian intervention to a focus on the responsibility of the state to protect its population (Evans and Sahnoun 2002: 101), in international politics and the academic debate the question remains whether states use the doctrine to justify intervening abroad in pursuit of their own interests (ibid.; Popovski 2019: 503). This debate gained momentum after the mission in Libya in 2011, which saved civilian lives but also led to a change of regime, which in turn led to criticism in the international community (Mabera and Spies 2016: 208). The states of the Global South in particular emphasise the need for the responsibility to protect, but express concerns and doubts about the intentions of Western states regarding their motives for peace missions. Advocates of the doctrine as a global norm point out its origins in Africa, with the two African Secretaries General, Boutros-Ghali and Annan, highlighting the need for a shift towards the human security paradigm (ibid.: 211), among other precursors. The unanimous adoption of the principle at the World Summit of 2005, as well as the concept having sprung from many corners of the world and been developed in global discussions (Popovski 2019: 502), is also used to point out its global character. And while non-Western states generally support the idea of a duty to prevent atrocities, the translation of the abstract international norm into feasible action is another matter, with states being reminded of colonial and imperial times. Security Council resolution 1973 on Libya, authorising all necessary measures to protect civilians, arguably fed into the fears of non-Western states as they worried about the overthrow of the Libyan government by Western powers (Mabera and Spies 2016: 208ff).
Brazil became a key actor in the global discussions about the doctrine (Stuenkel 2016: 620), introducing the concept of responsibility while protecting, which calls for clear and strong limitations on the use of force by peacekeeping forces during their missions, to prevent the mixing of protection with the pursuit of national interests. Other postcolonial views argue that the focus of the doctrine lies on the Global South. The liberal theory of 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 the responsibility to protect as a foreign policy issue and instrument only (Richmond and Visoka 2022: 1242). As Straus (2016: 133ff) noted, the prevention of mass atrocities starts at the domestic level. In most, if not all, European democracies and in the United States, alarming signs of risk factors are visible should conflicts escalate. Straus (2016: 78) identifies hate speech as an instrument to provoke violence. And while femicide has led to protest across Latin America for years (Dannemann 2019), European law enforcement authorities still struggle with the prosecution of gender-based violence (Hellmann 2023). The European Union meanwhile supports an initiative in Latin America to stop gender-based violence (Dannemann 2019). It would be an exaggeration to speak of imperial designs on the basis of examples like these, yet, understandably, states of the Global South perceive a double standard behind the intentions of the Global North.
SUMMARY *
The article’s structure sets a claim against its own qualification. The claim is that a duty to prevent has emerged, established through the Charter, the Genocide Convention, the Rome Statute and the outcome document of 2005, and unanimously accepted. The qualification is that the duty is discharged through machinery in which the states most likely to need restraining hold a veto, in which no consequence attaches to inaction, and in which the doctrine has been applied almost exclusively to weaker states by stronger ones. The author’s most striking move is to turn the last point inward: if prevention properly begins domestically, then the risk indicators the doctrine identifies are present in the states that most readily invoke it, and the perception of a double standard among states of the Global South is not merely a perception.
CONCLUSION
While there is no doubt in the international community that there is a duty to prevent mass atrocities and to protect civilians from resulting harm, the implementation of the responsibility to protect comes with problems that need addressing if the international community wants to stand united in its task. The United Nations has set an ambitious goal and has established, through the responsibility to protect and the definition of atrocity crimes in the Rome Statute and other legal frameworks, the basis for feasible action. With the responsibility to protect 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 is to be translated into action in the case of an occurring atrocity crime, the typical problems of international politics and global governance arise: the anarchic setting, the focus on the nation-state and sovereignty, and especially a perceived divide between North and South and power politics in the Security Council, all of which complicate the task of aiding civilians in times of need. Possible solutions in the international setting would be a reform of the Security Council, a stronger involvement of non-state actors, and a refocusing by states of the Global North on the prevention of mass atrocities at home, to address the concerns of states of the Global South about imposed views. Additionally, a general focus on the domestic prevention of atrocities before conflicts between groups arise will help prevent atrocity crimes and protect civilians without international intervention.
POTENTIAL SOLUTION *
The article’s assessment is sound and its most useful contribution is easy to miss, because it appears as a complaint about the doctrine’s limits rather than as a finding about where it works. The three pillars are not three routes to the same destination. The first and second, the state’s own responsibility and international assistance to help it meet that responsibility, have been used continuously and quietly for two decades: preventive diplomacy, national mechanisms for atrocity prevention, support for human rights institutions, mediation of the local disputes that escalate into worse. The third, coercive action, has been invoked in full once. Judging the doctrine solely by the third pillar therefore measures it by the part that was always going to be blocked, and obscures the part that has been doing the work.
That said, the veto problem is real and it is worth reporting what has actually been attempted, since the article calls for reform without naming the proposals. The initiative for restraint in mass atrocity situations, supported by well over a hundred states, and the code of conduct promoted by the Accountability, Coherence and Transparency group both ask permanent members to undertake voluntarily not to veto where atrocity crimes are at issue. Neither binds anyone. What was achieved, in 2022, is that any veto now triggers an automatic debate in the General Assembly at which the vetoing state must explain itself. This is a modest measure and it is the first structural change in decades, and it works by the only means available to the wider membership, which is the imposition of a reputational cost.
The Libya case deserves more weight than the article gives it, because it explains the subsequent paralysis rather than merely accompanying it. The states that abstained on resolution 1973 concluded that a mandate to protect civilians had been used to effect regime change, and their consequent unwillingness to authorise anything similar is the proximate cause of the deadlock over Syria. The Brazilian proposal on responsibility while protecting was a direct response and contained the elements that would address it: criteria assessed before authorisation, sequencing that exhausts other measures first, and, crucially, monitoring and reporting during a mandate so that the Council retains oversight of what is done in its name. Those proposals were not taken up, and the pattern the article describes followed.
Two additions belong here for a journal of this field. Prevention as the article describes it operates at the level of states and international bodies, and the record suggests the decisive work is often local: atrocity is usually preceded by the breakdown of relations between specific communities in specific places, and the mechanisms that hold those relations, inter-communal dialogue, early warning networks rooted in communities rather than in capitals, and local mediation, have repeatedly interrupted the sequence where national politics could not. And the article’s treatment of hate speech identifies the right indicator and can be sharpened: what has been shown to precede violence is not the expression of prejudice in general but the specific combination of dehumanising language, the identification of targets, and signals from authority that killing is sanctioned. That combination is observable, which makes it actionable in a way that a general concern about rhetoric is not.
Finally, the article’s closing argument is the one to press hardest. A doctrine applied outward and never inward will be received as an instrument of power, whatever its origins, and the credibility of prevention depends on states of the Global North submitting themselves to the same assessment. National mechanisms for atrocity prevention exist in a number of states and their value is precisely that they treat the question as domestic. Establishing them where they are absent would cost little, would strengthen the argument the article makes, and would answer the objection it identifies more effectively than any reform of the Security Council is likely to.
* Added by the WMO Editorial Team
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UN (w.D.d). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights
USHMM (w.D.). Holocaust and Genocide Studies Scholarly Journal. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. https://www.ushmm.org/research/publications/journal
Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team
United Nations General Assembly Resolution 76/262 (2022) establishing the standing mandate for a debate following the use of the veto in the Security Council.
Accountability, Coherence and Transparency Group, Code of Conduct regarding Security Council action against genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes, 2015; and the France and Mexico Political Declaration on Suspension of Veto Powers in Cases of Mass Atrocity, 2015.
Letter dated 9 November 2011 from the Permanent Representative of Brazil to the United Nations, A/66/551 to S/2011/701, on responsibility while protecting.
United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect (2014). Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention, New York.
Report of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2001). The Responsibility to Protect, Ottawa.
Bellamy, A. J. (2015). Responsibility to Protect: A Defense. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes, documentation on national mechanisms for atrocity prevention.
Yanagizawa-Drott, D. (2014). Propaganda and Conflict: Evidence from the Rwandan Genocide. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1947 to 1994.
