Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2019
Last year marked the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide when more than 800,000 people were slaughtered within 100 days under the watch of the international community. As the United Nations has since acknowledged, “[t]he international community did not prevent the genocide, nor did it stop the killing once the genocide had begun.” The whole world failed the victims – a failure the UN Report called a fundamental “failure of the international community [and] failure of the United Nations system as a whole.” Those who could did little or nothing to help. Indeed, some actively concealed or denied the unfolding genocide. Interestingly, the genocide took place more than half a century after the victorious allies of World War II vowed “Never Again!” to genocide in response to the Nazi holocaust. Also, by 1994 the 1948 Convention on the Punishment and the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide under which states assumed a legal duty to prevent and punish the crime of genocide was nearly half a century old.
1 United Nations, Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Actions of the United Nations During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, S/1999/1257 (15 December 1999) at 3 [hereinafter, UN Report].Google Scholar
2 Ibid.Google Scholar
3 Melvern, See L., A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000) at 137-148; L. Melvern & P. Williams, “Britannia Waived the Rules: The Major Government and the 1994 Rwandan Genocide” (2004) 103 African Affairs 1-22; R. Dallaire, Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2003).Google Scholar
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Killing members of the groupGoogle Scholar
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the groupGoogle Scholar
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in partGoogle Scholar
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the groupGoogle Scholar
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another groupGoogle Scholar
6 Lemkin, See R., “Genocide as a Crime in International Law” (1947) 41 AJIL 145 at 150. See generally, W. A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes (Cambridge: University Press, 2000).Google Scholar
7 Such rituals include setting up the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. As Makau Mutua has argued, the tribunal was established to “achieve neither the abolitionist impulses nor the just ends trumpeted by the United Nations” but “to assuage the consciences of states which were unwilling to stop the genocide.” See M. Mutua, “From Nuremberg to the Rwanda Tribunal: Justice or Retribution?” (2000) 6 Buffalo Human Rights Law Review 77 at 78; M. Mutua, “Never Again: Questioning the Yugoslav and Rwanda Tribunals” (1997) 11 Temple Intl. & Comp. L. J. 167 at 167-170.Google Scholar
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9 For a good account of past genocides and failures to prevent them, see generally, L. Kuper, supra, note 4.Google Scholar
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19 See Amnesty International, Sudan, Darfur: Rape as a Weapon of War: Sexual Violence and its Consequences, July 2004 (AI Index: AFR 54/076/2004)Google Scholar
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35 See e.g. Deng, F., supra, note 12; W. L. Saunders Jr. & Y. G. Mantilla, “Human Dignity Denied: Slavery, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity in Sudan” (2002) 51 Catholic University Law Review 715; M. M. Gassis, “Sudan: Country of Terrorism, Religious Persecution, Slavery, Rape, Genocide, and Man-Made Starvation” (2001) 50 Catholic University Law Review 905.Google Scholar
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39 Powell, See C., supra, note 33. For the records: “Mr. Chairman, some seem to have been waiting for this determination of genocide to take action. In fact, however, no new action is dictated by this determination. We have been doing everything we can to get the Sudanese government to act responsibly. So let us not be preoccupied with this designation of genocide.” See A. McLaughlin, “US Raising stakes over Darfur Crisis,” Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 2004, online at http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0726/p01s04-woaf.htm (last visited September 8, 2004), quoting Jerry Fowler, staff director of the Committee on Conscience at the US Holocaust Museum as saying, that the Genocide Convention only requires state parties to prevent and punish perpetrators of genocide but does not require that “when you declare genocide you have to send in troops.” Of course, the obligation to prevent and punish genocide exists irrespective of whether or not genocide is formally declared. There is, in fact, no obligation to declare genocide. It may be correct, technically, to assert that there is no duty to send in troops to prevent or punish genocide. But any such interpretation leads to absurdity, for how else could states prevent genocidal killings. I am not aware that states prevent or punish genocides by merely addressing press conferences or counting on the goodwill of a genocidal government. Besides, the duty under the Genocide Convention to prevent or punish genocide should be taken to include an obligation to take appropriate all appropriate measures, including military action. See F. Weissman, “Humanitarian Action and Military Intervention: Temptations and Possibilities” (2004) 28 Disasters 205 at 212.Google Scholar
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48 See The Independent International Commission on Kosovo, The Kosovo Report: Conflict International Response, Lessons Learned (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) at 15 (“Kosovo Report”) [Emphasis added].Google Scholar
49 M. Herzfeld, , The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy (New York: Berg, 1992) at 1. [Emphasis added].Google Scholar
50 Ibid. at 33.Google Scholar
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