This chapter serves as a companion to the previous one, focusing on the second main plank of eco-determinist climate and water security reasoning: drought. The chapter argues that the evidence on drought and conflict is weak and misleading; that today droughts have far more limited economic and political consequences than is usually imagined; and that we should not expect accelerating global climate change to fundamentally alter this. These arguments are developed via analysis of the first supposed ‘climate wars’ – the Darfur war of 2003–5, the ongoing Syrian civil war and the ongoing Lake Chad basin crisis – as well as consideration of the history of drought impacts and climate change projections. On each of these counts the chapter shows that the evidence, and thus the grounds for concluding that climate change–induced droughts will trigger ever-more conflict in future, is remarkably thin. Picking up on the previous chapter, the chapter also explores the politics of drought–conflict discourse, showing that ‘drought’ is often an exercise in deflecting state responsibility and obscuring political agency which does little for the security of the rural poor.

The North American and Israeli scholars who founded Genocide Studies in the 1980s and 1990s also insisted on genocide’s Holocaust archetype. These scholars successfully resisted the “conceptual stretching” of genocide to include political criteria in its definition. Domestically, they advocated an apolitical “toleration” pedagogy as genocide’s antidote. The US victory in the Cold War in the early 1990s sidelined the lively critique of the US national security state and gave rise to a new age of interventions. Vietnam-induced doubts were left behind as “the indispensable nation” became the world’s hyper-power. Although the founders of Comparative Genocide Studies were liberals who opposed the Vietnam War, they eagerly adopted the role of academic handmaiden to US global aspirations: the field anointed the US as the benign force to police the non-West in the form of humanitarian interventions to prevent genocide, other “atrocity crimes,” and to wage “war on terror.”

After their failure at Gallipoli in 1915, attempts by the Allies to undermine the Ottoman Empire ranged from the eastern Sahara to the Arabian desert, with the resources of India becoming indispensable to the effort against the Turks, especially in Mesopotamia. Returning to India from South Africa in 1914, Mahatma Gandhi supported the war on the grounds that a strong showing would strengthen India’s hand in its relationship with Britain. Most Indians rallied behind the Allied cause and, thanks largely to T. E. Lawrence, Arabs sustained a successful revolt against the Turks. The British had no intention of giving India the degree of self-government that it wanted, and they and the French had no intention of rewarding the Arab contribution with postwar independence (and especially not with Palestine, which the Balfour Declaration of 1917 promised to the Zionists), but within the context of World War I the ends appeared to justify the means. Just as the wartime movements in India and the Arab world foreshadowed future developments, Turkey’s Armenian genocide presaged subsequent state-sponsored attempts to exterminate specific civilian populations. On the fringes of the war in the Middle East, local conflicts from Darfur to Ethiopia and Somalia likewise pointed the way to a grim future.

Chapter 5 focuses on the ICC’s relationship with the UN Security Council. Under the Rome Statute, the Council has several important roles: Article 13(b) provides that the Security Council may trigger the jurisdiction of the Court (the ‘referral power’), and under Article 16 the Council may halt any ICC investigation for twelve months at a time (the ‘deferral power’). In the 2010 Kampala Amendments, the Security Council was given a third role with respect to the Court’s jurisdiction over the crime of aggression. The first part of Chapter 5 critically examines the ways in which the Council has used Article 16 in an attempt to limit the jurisdiction of the Court. It then discusses the Article 13(b) referral power by using the Darfur and Libya situations as case studies. It argues that the legal basis for the ICC’s authority in those situations is grounded in the implied consent of Sudan and Libya to the jurisdiction of the Court by virtue of their membership of the UN. The final part of Chapter 5 considers the role of the Security Council with respect to the crime of aggression and the consequences of this for States not party to the Rome Statute.

This chapter traces the origins of the veto power of the permanent members of the UN Security Council from the negotiations leading into the San Francisco Conference to the finalization of the UN Charter. It then examines early response to Security Council paralysis – resolutions in the late 1940s by the General Assembly calling for veto restraint as well as the “Uniting for Peace” Resolution in 1950. Even though expectations for the Security Council have probably gone beyond the intention of the drafters of the UN Charter, especially since the end of the Cold War it is clear that when there is sufficient political will, this body has the legal ability to prevent or stop many situations of catastrophic consequences to communities, countries, and regions around the world. Concomitantly, when the Council does not take on such a role, there is widespread disenchantment with its performance. The lack of responsiveness to the commission of mass atrocity crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, and/or war crimes), which have occurred virtually unimpeded in places such as Rwanda, Darfur, Syria, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Yemen has come at a staggering toll in terms of lives lost. Much of the time, inaction by the Council can be specifically traced to use of the veto, or the threat of the veto, by one or more of the permanent members. This chapter makes the case that it is time to reconsider existing hard law legal obligations and recognize that these in fact impose limitations on the use of the veto in the face of atrocity crimes.

This final chapter presents two case studies, one where the veto was utilized while atrocity crimes were being committed, and one where the veto was threatened (expressly or implicitly) while atrocity crimes were being committed. The first case study traces climbing death tolls and growing recognition that mass atrocity crimes were occurring in Syria, while Russia, sometimes joined by China, invoked the veto on thirteen separate occasions. The vetoes blocked recognition of crimes, investigation of crimes, prosecution of crimes, as well as other measures. That a significant number of resolutions that would have condemned regime and/or opposition crimes failed to pass or were significantly delayed could not have failed to send a metaphorical “green light” to the perpetrators; thus, the vetoes are partly responsible for the still unfolding human tragedy. The second case study traces climbing death tolls in the early 2000s while the Sudanese military and Janjaweed militia committed mass atrocity crimes against the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa, and other ethnic groups in the Darfur region of Sudan. These crimes likely constituted genocide, and, at minimum, war crimes and crimes against humanity. During the key years when the crimes were occurring, China blocked by threat of the veto: initially, any imposition of sanctions on the Government of Sudan, and, permanently, any oil embargo, as well as peacekeeping that was not consensually negotiated with the Government of Sudan. Eventually, a hybrid peacekeeping mission was agreed to and deployed, but only after the height of the killing had occurred and with a weakened mandate. The Security Council’s delays and tepid approach to sanctions and peacekeeping, which significantly increased the death toll, are at least partly attributable to Chinese threats (both express and implied) to use the veto.

This chapter examines the formation of a new anti-impunity Transnational Legal Order (TLO), its institutionalization, and its consequences. Socio-legal scholarship and recent research on responses to the mass violence unfolding in the Darfur region of Sudan, beginning in 2003, provide insights into strengths and limits of the new anti-impunity TLO. Based on a comparative eight-country study, involving in depth interviews in four social fields (human rights, diplomacy, humanitarian aid, media) and an analysis of 3,387 media reports, I review judicial steps taken on Darfur, conditions supporting them, and their consequences, interpreting them in terms of the transnational legal ordering approach. The case of Darfur shows the anti-impunity TLO at work, displaying it as a force that delegitimizes mass violence. Yet, it also shows impediments to institutionalization in the form of hostile state actors, fields with potentially competing agendas, including diplomacy and humanitarian aid, internal contradictions, and lack of enforcement power. Nation-level forces filter cultural effects of intervention, resulting in diminished concordance between the international and the global realms and across nation states.

Chapter 4 describes the inherently political character of international justice and shows the working paradox between the UNSC and the ICC. The UNSC is the institution that allows the ICC to gain jurisdiction over states that have not ratified the Rome Statute, and this chapter asks whether international treaties such as the Rome Statute apply to states who are not signatories. The example of Libya is studied in detail to highlight the ways in which a non-ICC member chose to engage the Court by introducing an admissibility challenge and how the Court’s response to the challenge showed the inconsistency of its ruling, which also brings back the political dimension of international justice.

The chapter examines warnings relating to violent conflict and massive humanitarian crisis in Darfur, a region of Sudan. As a case of successful ‘crisis warning’ the 2004 Darfur crisis offers important lessons about persuasiveness, especially with regard to the role of senior officials as the chapter focuses on Andrew Natsios, then the administrator of the US Agency for International Development, and Mukesh Kapila, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Sudan. Drawing on extensive original research the chapter shows why these two officials had a variable persuasive impact over time and with different target organisations. The findings suggest that warner capacity and credibility are necessary if not always sufficient for achieving notice and acceptance. Receptivity factors played a facilitating role as they created an environment which was conducive for the warnings being accepted and which reinforced well-tailored warning messages. At the same time, the case shows that warning impact may depend on repeated attempts to get the message across, creativity in exploring alternative channels and routes, and a readiness among sources to take some career risks in order to achieve their intended goal eventually.