Business plan

CAROLINA TENORIO

The United Nations and the Prevention of Genocide

I. Introduction

"`Never again' we said after the Holocaust. And after the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s. And, then again, after the Rwanda genocide in 1994. And after the Srbrenica massacre in Bosnia. And now we're asking ourselves, in the face of more mass killing in Darfur, whether we really are capable, as aninternational community, of stopping nation states murdering their own people. How many more times will we look back wondering, with varying degrees of incomprehension, horror, anger and shame, how we could have let it all happen?"[1]

Time and again, the United Nations has been blamed for either not acting, acting too slowly, or acting inadequately when a situation is either possibly headingtowards genocide or has already descended into such. In one sense, this is understandable—especially in light of the fact that the United Nations is the body that is mandated to act to prevent and/or intervene in the case of genocide, threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. On the other hand, it is ironic that certain member states disparage the inaction of the UnitedNations when, in many cases, it is those states, themselves, that are responsible for deterring/preventing, in one way or another, the United Nations from acting in a timely and/or adequate fashion.

What should be the response of the international community when faced with situations of catastrophic human rights violations within states, where the state in question claims immunity fromintervention based on longstanding principles of national sovereignty? When, if ever, it is right for states to take coercive action, in particular military action, against another state for the purpose of protecting people at risk within it?

After World War II, the international community united to denounce the atrocities that ravaged entire cultures during the war. Because of these atrocities, theUnited Nations was formed as an international organization designed to protect future generations from the ravage of war by preventing these horrific acts from ever again dominating the international arena. The post-World War II period also witnessed the creation of several international human rights laws and treaties to further the goal of international peace. These international human rights lawsnever fully realized their potential during the Cold War, when international conflicts were the main cause of global concern and ethnic uprisings were subdued by the hegemonic superpowers. With the end of the Cold War, a  geopolitical shift took place, with the threat of nuclear disaster no longer pervading the consciousness of the global community. The dawning of this new era, however, broughtanother threat to the peace of the international community: the proliferation of intrastate ethnic conflicts. The rise of intrastate ethnic conflict has tested the effectiveness of both the United Nations Charter and various international human rights laws and treaties, as well as the resolve of the international community to protect human rights and preserve international peace.

This paperexamines the difficulties inherent in reconciling international human rights laws and treaties with the current state of world conflicts, and it will attempt to explain the reasons behind the failure of those laws to protect persons for whom they were intended. Part II outlines the most important human rights laws and treaties, including their historical origins, purpose, and significance. Part IIIanalyzes the provisions of international law, namely those of sovereignty and non intervention which prevent effective enforcement of human rights laws as they were designed. Part IV goes on to discuss the failure of these laws to prevent the recent occurrences of violent intrastate ethnic conflicts and the challenges the UN faces today if it wants to remain the world’s premier forum for the...