Lemkin's Forewarning: The Perverse Consequences of Expanding the Use of Force

Abstract

Despite the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention, which established a legal obligation for the world “to prevent and to punish” genocide, the international community has repeatedly failed to intervene to prevent this crime. In 2005, the United Nations addressed this failure by endorsing the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a norm that expands the number of human rights abuses justifying intervention beyond genocide. R2P appears as if it could only have a positive effect, but drawing on original documents contained in the United Nations archives in Geneva, current debates in criminal law, and evidence from recent cases of mass atrocity, this paper argues that broad normative frameworks expanding intervention to protect human rights beyond the right to life may result in perverse consequences that are detrimental to genocide prevention. The broader implication of this finding is that while the international community should attempt to protect all human rights through peaceful means, military intervention should be reserved for the most egregious human rights abuse, for the crime of crimes, for genocide alone.