Preventing genocide and mass killing from a culture of reaction to prevention.

• Author: Schabas, William A.

"EACH INDIVIDUAL STATE has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity", declared the Outcome Document adopted by the United Nations at the 2005 World Summit in September. This responsibility is met through appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means, and also by taking collective action through the UN Security Council "in a timely and decisive manner" if peaceful means are inadequate. This signals a move from a culture of reaction to a culture of prevention. Yet, the reference to "responsibility to protect" leaves diplomats thinking hard. Nobody is really sure how the concept translates into concrete action at the level of the Security Council, the General Assembly and the newly-created Human Rights Council.

The United Nations remains haunted by its failure to respond to the early warnings of genocide in Rwanda. I well recall the great confusion at the time. In January 1993, I had participated in a non-governmental organization-organized inquiry, which spent several weeks investigating charges of human rights abuse, including ethnic cleansing, killings and torture in Rwanda. In a March 1993 report, it had warned of genocide and war crimes; and shortly afterwards, the Special Rapporteur on extra judicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Bacre Waly Ndaye, went to Rwanda and confirmed the findings of the commission. Months later, when the Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, warned of death squads being trained for a murderous project, the urgency was not appreciated.

The report of the Secretary-General's High-level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change in December 2004 recalled that the preoccupation of the UN founders was with State security not human security. (1) One needs only to review the Charter of the United Nations to appreciate the secondary position of human rights at the time it was adopted. It was listed as one of the purposes of the Organization, but the reference appeared towards the end of a lengthy provision. Primary responsibility for human rights was assigned to a specialized commission rather than to a principal organ. And in one of international law's classic ambiguities, alongside the protection of human rights was the assurance that "[n]othing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any State".

The place of human rights within the UN priorities began to evolve almost immediately. Punctuated by the uncertainties of the cold war, human rights-sometimes...