Course: Genocide and Group Hostility
Module 2: Prevention
Can mass atrocities be prevented, and if so, how and by whom?
The international community has established regulations and frameworks to guide mass atrocity prevention efforts. However, experiences from past mass atrocities show how difficult it is to respond to warning signals in time, as well as who holds the mandate and power to intervene.
In the aftermath of various mass atrocities, the role of UN peacekeeping forces underwent scrutiny and criticism. Failure to stop the escalation of violence in Rwanda (1994) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995) directly inspired the development of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. Early warning indicators have similarly been developed based on past experiences of mass atrocities.
“The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.”
– Article I of the 1948 Genocide Convention
Early-warning indicators
Risk assessments and warning indicators aim to predict atrocity crimes and thus potentially prevent them. This can be done through different forms of prevention and intervention (read more here).
Risk assessment and early warning mechanisms are often used interchangeably, but there are certain differences between them:
Risk assessments:
- predictive, based on previous experiences
- focus on state-level indicators, often using quantitative data
- examine structures that rarely change abruptly (political (in)stability, prior atrocities, and widespread discrimination)
- overall picture of the risk of atrocities
- highlight situations where atrocities likely could happen
Early warnings:
- causal, grounded in current events
- focus in-depth on high-risk cases
- monitor situations of insecurity or elevated risk
- more dynamic, context-specific, and sensitive to rapid developments
- focus on escalating activity, tipping points, and triggering acts or rhetoric
- indicate with a higher likelihood whether and when atrocities will happen
Early warning of upcoming atrocities is often carried out by monitoring a wide range of acts and trends, which serve as indicators of the potential onset or escalation of violence. Here are a few:
Leadership and regime
- Polarisation of elites
- Upcoming and contested elections
- Public commemoration of past crimes
- Rapid change in government leadership (assassination, coup)
- Removing moderates from leadership
- Attacks (arrests, torture, killings) on political leaders or other prominent figures
Discrimination and rhetoric
- Increased hate speech, apocalyptic public rhetoric
- Popular mobilisation against groups; labelling groups as enemies
- Discriminatory or emergency legislation
- Increase in repressive practices, removal of political rights
- Segregation and separation of groups
Conflict dynamics
- Increase in irregular armed forces and security forces
- Increase in stockpiling and transfer of weapons
- Commencement and resumption of armed conflict, spillover from neighbouring countries
- Lack of opportunities to flee
- Impunity for past crimes
(To learn more about RA and EW mechanisms, read this article from Ellen E. Stensrud)
Gender Perspective & Early Warning Signs
Gender is a factor in the preparation and perpetration of mass atrocities. Paying attention to gender inequalities and hateful rhetoric can help identify the risk of atrocities.
Mass atrocities often involve gender-specific patterns of violence and victimization. Early-warning indicators that ignore these dimensions may fail to detect key risks.
To ensure more comprehensive prevention measures, the following gender-specific indicators may be included in otherwise established early warning frameworks, as suggested by Louise Allen in her report “Overview of Gender Responsive Early Warning Systems – Progress and Gaps”:
- Increases in sexist, homophobic or misogynistic hate speech and propaganda
- The targeting of women by state and non-state actors, both online and physically
- Changes and growing restrictions on civil society, in particular women’s organisations, dress codes, and mobility
- Resistance to women’s participation in peacebuilding/conflict prevention or resolution efforts
- Sudden drop in girls attending school due to security threats/attacks on girls’ schools
- Changes in sex work/survival sex (forced or voluntary)
- Changes to access in emergency health services
The full report on gender-sensitive indicators by Louise Allen is available here.
The Duty to Prevent
Mass atrocities can potentially be predicted and prevented, but guidelines and political will are necessary to achieve this goal. Multiple conventions, documents, and institutions have been developed to prevent and punish atrocity crimes, such as the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine. The mere declaration of political will is not enough; relevant knowledge, continuous collaboration, and effective frameworks are also necessary.
Prevention failures: Key cases
The international community failed to prevent mass atrocities in Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina, despite warning signals. This provided the background for developing an international atrocity prevention framework.
1994: Peacekeepers Fail to Intervene in Rwandan Genocide
- In January 1994, UN peacekeepers were monitoring local elections in Rwanda. But when simmering ethnic tensions erupted into genocide later that year, the same peacekeepers were repeatedly ordered not to intervene. Following conflict in Somalia, the UN was wary of intervening a domestic conflict and overstepping the narrow scope of their mission. However, as UN peacekeepers stood on the sidelines, more than eight hundred thousand Rwandans were killed in just three months. This staggering death toll prompted an extensive UN investigation, which concluded that member countries had ordered their peacekeepers to stand down. The UN decided to prioritize its own safety after incurring mass casualties in previous missions.
1995: Massacre in Srebrenica Unfolds Before UN Peacekeepers
- In 1995, just one year after eight hundred thousand people died in Rwanda, peacekeepers faced another violent civil conflict. Following the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, a civil war in the Balkans pitted Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian Serbs. UN peacekeepers were protecting the Muslim town of Srebrenica, but when the Bosnian Serb army began advancing in their direction, UN peacekeepers were ordered not to fire. The peacekeepers were inadequately armed, and UN leaders feared that conflict could endanger ongoing peace negotiations with the Serbian authorities. After the UN peacekeepers stood down, the Bosnian Serb army methodically executed some eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys. An international tribunal later designated the massacre a genocide.
For more information about the development of international frameworks of atrocity prevention, see this timeline developed by the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
As a response to the international community’s failure to halt the atrocities committed in the Balkans and Rwanda during the 1990s, the UN Secretary-General established a committee tasked with developing new principles for the protection of civilians. At the same time, NATO’s military campaign in Kosovo, without a UN mandate, had created fears that protection of civilians would be a smokescreen for Western interventionism. The protection of civilians, therefore, had to be balanced with the respect for non-interference in state sovereignty.
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine resulted from this work, and is a global political commitment to prevent the worst forms of violence and human rights abuses, guiding reasons and procedures for atrocity prevention. At the same time, R2P confirmed that protection by force could occur only under a UN Security Council mandate, thereby building on the existing system of state sovereignty.
Affirmed unanimously at the UN 2005 World Summit, R2P builds on states’ pre-existing international humanitarian and human rights obligations to prevent and punish genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.
Although not legally binding, this doctrine guides the scope of states’ political commitments to protect civilian populations. At the same time, the effectiveness of R2P depends on the political will of states and the international community to implement its principles in practice. Experience shows this is a difficult endeavour. The primary responsibility rests upon each state to protect their own populations, and the international community is to interfere only as a last resort.
Atrocity prevention in practice
Atrocity prevention encompasses a range of actions, stakeholders, and the frameworks that guide them. Although prevention and intervention are sometimes used interchangeably, military intervention is only one of many resources to prevent atrocities and is usually only seen as a measure of last resort, if at all relevant.
Other preventative measures include diplomatic efforts, boycotts, targeted sanctions, arms embargos, UN decisions and regulations, and targeted political pressure by states with international or regional influence. Documentation, justice or reconciliation efforts during or in the aftermath of atrocities are increasingly recognized as atrocity prevention tools, as previous atrocities or genocide are clear risk factors of renewed atrocities.
Atrocity prevention can take multiple forms, especially depending on where and when prevention is aimed. According to genocide scholars Kerry Whigham and Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira, it is typically carried out through three different approaches:
- proactive approaches, or efforts to reduce the risk of atrocities and curtail escalation of violence and/or human rights violations
- responsive approaches, encompassing efforts to respond directly to an instance or ongoing instances of violence to bring about their end and/or reduce their negative effects
- redressive approaches, efforts which aim to transform the political, social, economic, and legal realities that led to past violence and transform relationships between governments, victim groups, and the broader public to prevent the recurrence of violence
Framing these interventions as approaches rather than stages of prevention helps to focus on the preventive intent, rather than the stage in the atrocity process in which it is employed.
The paradox of atrocity prevention is that if prevention efforts are successful, there is no way to definitively confirm that atrocities would have happened otherwise. This may help explain why it is more common to refer to cases where prevention was unsuccessful in retrospect. In addition, the international community hesitates to intervene for various geopolitical reasons, even in cases when early warning signals call for preventive measures.
- The 2011 NATO intervention in Libya is often used to explain why the R2P doctrine is distrusted to this day. Following Muammar Qaddafi’s crackdown on popular uprisings in early 2011, R2P was invoked and the UN Security Council sanctioned military intervention. Although considered successful at the beginning, the validity and degree of this military intervention has been debated since then. Peacekeeping forces have been accused of overstepping their mandate and bringing on a regime change, while others believed that these actions were necessary. (Read more here)
- After R2P’s test in Libya, attempts to invoke the norm to respond to early warnings of mass atrocities have been limited and often vetoed at the UNSC. Despite early warnings of mass atrocities against the Yazidi in Iraq and Syria (2014), the Rohingya in Myanmar (2017), and Palestinians in the Gaza Strip (2023), R2P was not invoked by the UNSC to address them.
ICJ rulings on the duty to prevent
The ICJ is the principal international legal authority and is one of the few international courts that can hear genocide cases. The ICJ can enforce State accountability by imposing sanctions and issuing rulings binding on all states. However, the impact of the rulings depends on states respecting them, which is often not the case.
Disputes between states concerning the interpretation, application, or fulfilment of the Genocide Convention, including obligations to prevent and punish genocide, may be referred to the ICJ. This provision gives the ICJ the primary responsibility for resolving interstate disputes under the convention. However, the ICJ does not have jurisdiction to conduct individual criminal trials for genocide. This is a function generally carried out by the ICC, ad-hoc international criminal tribunals, and by national courts where those jurisdictions have codified the crime of genocide in their domestic laws (see Module 3 – Restorative Justice).
Recent genocide cases:
The International Court of Justice issued provisional measures regarding the application of the Genocide Convention in both Myanmar and Gaza. Myanmar and Israel have been instructed to ensure the protection of civilian populations against genocide (Rohingyas and Palestinians, respectively).
Here are the ICJ reports:
The International Court of Justice (ICJ), established in 1945, is the principal judicial body of the United Nations. It handles contentious cases between states that voluntarily submit disputes for resolution, as well as provides advisory opinions on legal questions referred by UN organs and specialized agencies. The ICJ plays a crucial role in codifying and interpreting international law, setting legal precedents that shape states’ practices. It does not have automatic jurisdiction; it only hears cases where the parties have agreed to its jurisdiction, either through treaties or special agreements.
Role of different stakeholders
Individual states, humanitarian and legal entities, and the international community at large have different roles in preventing atrocity crimes. It is often difficult to reach a consensus on when to intervene and what constitutes legitimate intervention.
Gender-competent Approach to Prevention
Incorporating gender-competent perspectives into prevention efforts may help identify concerns that might otherwise remain overlooked.
Education as prevention strategy
Learning from the past can be a basis for the prevention of future atrocities. Education alone cannot prevent genocide but may help reinforce the belief that individual and group identity is a unifying rather than a dividing factor.
Education strategies that engage women, civil society, and religious institutions may play an essential role in fostering attitudes that help build resistance and awareness. Through education, it may be possible to raise awareness of indicators of escalation leading to genocide, so that civil society can actively engage in early-warning and risk assessment. (See Module 4 – Group Hostility)
Questions for reflection and discussion
- How can different stakeholders at the international and national levels work together to implement genocide prevention measures?
- Looking at recent cases of mass atrocities, what potential barriers and dilemmas may arise in early intervention?
- How does media coverage influence international response? What role does geopolitical interest play in determining which atrocities receive attention and intervention?
- In what ways can the inclusion of a gender perspective strengthen early warning systems for mass atrocity prevention?
- Case study discussion:
- What lessons can be learned from the Srebrenica (1995) and Rwanda (1994) cases about intervention and the responsibility to protect from mass atrocities?
- Examine the response to warning indicators of ongoing atrocities involving the Rohingyas in Myanmar and the Palestinians in Gaza (see Module 1 – Genocide for more information, if necessary).
For Educators
- Learning from the past does not guarantee the ability to prevent specific events in the future. Still, students are urged to look for similarities in warning signs of mass atrocities. They may also be encouraged to apply these indicators to current conflicts.
- Education alone cannot prevent atrocity crimes that are politically motivated and executed. However, it can provide tools to build resistance towards group hostility.
- For more information and resources about inclusive citizenship education, see the For Educators page.
Additional Resources
Early warning and Risk assessment
- ICHR topic page: Mass atrocity prevention
- Website: Mass Atrocity Responses
- Stensrud, Ellen E. 2024. Risk assessment and early-warning systems (link)
- Allen, Louise. 2021. “Overview of Gender Responsive Early Warning Systems – Progress and Gaps.” Asia Pacific Partnership for Atrocity Prevention. (link)
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Early Warning Project (link)
R2P and prevention frameworks
- ICHR resource guide: Atrocity prevention frameworks
- UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes (link)
- Global Centre for R2P – Framework for Action for the Responsibility to Protect: A Resource for States (link)
- Report: APR2P – Centralising Gender in Mass Atrocity Prevention: A Tool for Action in the Asia Pacific Region (link)
