Operationalizing the “Atrocity Prevention Lens”: Making Prevention a Living Reality

Abstract

In his closing remarks to the 2012 informal interactive dialogue of the United Nations General Assembly on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), UN Deputy Secretary-General, Jan Eliasson called for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities to be made a “living reality.” Three years earlier, in his first report on implementing R2P, the Secretary-General had described “the ultimate purpose of the responsibility to protect” as being “to save lives by preventing the most egregious mass violations of human rights.” Indeed, since the adoption of R2P at the 2005 World Summit, there have been many generic calls for a focus on the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity (hereafter genocide and mass atrocities). This is unsurprising, given that the world’s commitment to R2P included a specific call for the prevention of these crimes. Since 2009, UN Member States of all types and from every region have voiced their support in the General Assembly for the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities, recognizing that it not only saves lives but also reduces the need for enforcement further down the line. This sentiment echoes views expressed in the academy, which largely agrees that prevention is far better than cure. But although there is broad agreement about the normative and practical imperative of preventing genocide and mass atrocities, much less is understood about how this might be achieved in practice. Although work examining the incorporation of genocide and mass atrocity prevention into US foreign and defense policy has progressed apace, relatively little attention has been paid to the question of how to implement the preventive aspects of R2P more generally and less still to the specific role played by pivotal international organizations such as the UN. To date, academic work on the UN's role has tended to focus, understandably, on early warning and assessment, although an emerging body of work examines the role of the system's human rights mechanisms in helping to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. Thus far, the UN itself has focused on developing its mandate and capacity for early warning and assessment, as well as on the establishment of a convening authority designed to facilitate timely advice in crisis situations. The UN has also begun preliminary work, under the auspices of the Framework Team's Experts Reference Group on Prevention, on system-wide approaches to genocide and mass atrocity prevention.