Prediction, Prevention, and Punishment of Genocide: Observation on Rw@nda and Future Policies

Abstract

Many people are now asking whether we must passively await the predictable escalation of disaster from the politics of hate and fear to crisis, genocide, and gigantic flows of refugees which, in turn, lead to hunger, thirst, epidemics, the erosion of regions, and destabilization of governments. I think not. These are not inevitable phenomena, like earthquakes, but are man-made calamities. We are witnessing the casualties of the old order of bystander states refusing to take steps to thwart genocide (or stop it in its early stages), justifying their abstentionby the lackof national interest, and paying enormous costs to put bandaids on the living casualties. The casualties include the millions of dead, wounded, raped, maimed, and the homeless-refugees and internal exiles. Studies show that the overwhelming majority of refugees-over 16 million by the end of 1993 (not including the refugees from Rwanda)-are created by states committing genocide and gross violations of human rights. My thesis is that genocide is prethat it is not deterred by other counventable (as are political mass murtries-indeed, the patrons of the perders), because it is usually a rational petrators often aid them. Although act. That is, the perpetrators calculate there is much the international comthe likelihood of success, given their munity could do were there the will, values and objectives. One of the reawe should, for practical purposes, fosons genocide is likely to succeed is cus first on joint and individual actors