Online Edition: Spring, 1997
Genocide Forum: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Online Edition: Spring, 1997
Page 1 of 2
n thinking about where and how to respond to genocide, there are two places
where intervention of one sort or another might be needed. One is before
genocide happens, and the other is after. I'd like to talk a little bit about
both of those.
efore genocide happens, obviously, the question is what can be done to prevent
it, to diffuse tensions, to make it less likely to happen. And the
international community's record to date on this score has not been
particularly promising, I'm afraid. There have been a number of cases where
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have brought forward compelling evidence
of genocide in the making which has then been ignored by the international
community. And one has to ask why this is.
Cases that come to mind are Rwanda,
Burundi today, some of the former Soviet republics, some of the republics that
are now caught up in ethnic tensions in Eastern Europe. All through here there
have been NGO missions, as well as missions of the UN's own human rights
apparatus, the Commission on Human Rights, who have found disturbing evidence
that there is planning going on for genocide. That information has been lost on
its way from the NGOs into the UN system. Even when it comes from within the
UN's own system, on the way from the human rights branches of the UN into the
more peacekeeping, Security Council, international security organs of the UN,
something has gotten lost. So one of the things that needs to be done that is
not being done is a much greater integration of what have traditionally been
seen as the human rights activities, both of the UN and of the sort of eyes and
ears of the international community that tend to be NGOs rather than
governmental groups, into the peacekeeping, international security apparatus of
the UN. And this is not happening.
ne thing that we've seen over the last couple of years is that the
peacekeeping and peace-enforcement missions that Ernie talked about have gone
out there without a very clear idea of what human rights has to do with any of
this. It's not been a central focus of their work. Dealing either with past
human rights violations or with preventing future ones has been something
that's come up after the fact to sort of make everything look good, but it has
not been in any way central to the missions that have been carried out.
Resources that have been put at the service of human rights activities have
been meager compared to those for other things. Part of the reason apparently
has to do with some sense that the UN should remain neutral in human rights
conflicts and that it would require them to take a stand, for example, in favor
of prosecution of people who are reliably accused of human rights violations.
That, as Ernie mentioned, would be politically sticky.
he upshot is that the UN human rights norms are not brought into the
mainstream of the other activities of the UN, and therefore the ability of
international institutions to do the kind of early warning that Ernie is
talking about is far reduced. And I'll come back to this in a second. I wanted
to talk a little bit about the post-genocide, what happens afterwards. When we
talk about how you prevent genocide, one traditional answer has been that you
try and do something about genocide by taking action against those who are
responsible. The idea is that, first of all, it will serve a deterrent
function, that people will be less willing to engage in massive violations of
human rights if they are sure (rather than just having an inkling) that
there'll be some response. Second, from the point of view of establishing norms
of community behavior, it's important that the international community respond
clearly, promptly, and on no uncertain terms to instances of genocide. And
third, this kind of action provides some sense of satisfaction to victims of
genocide.
ow what we've seen recently has been several attempts to use international
structures through Chapter 7 -- the tribunal in Rwanda, the tribunal in the
former Yugoslavia -- to try to make some of these points. But at the same time
that that's been going on, and I'm not going to talk very much about the
tribunals now, the UN and international community in general has taken a very
ambivalent position towards encouraging national actions to bring to justice
perpetrators of genocide. And it seems to me that this is another place that
makes it much more difficult for us to walk in and say we're setting up an
international tribunal, when the UN's record on encouraging national actions
against those who have engaged in genocide or in crimes against humanity is so
ambivalent. Let me give you a couple of examples.
he government of Rwanda has been trying since 1994 to establish a domestic
system of prosecutions for the people who were involved in genocide in 1994.
The international tribunal has said that it will focus on people who are
outside Rwanda, leaving to the Rwandan government the prosecutions of people
inside the country. Immediately after the genocide had happened there was a
flurry of international pledging to help the government do something about
this. Very, very little of that support has actually materialized. Most of the
international aid that goes to Rwanda has gone first to refugees outside of the
country, many of whom were involved in one way or another in perpetrating the
genocide, and second through the international committee of the Red Cross to
improving the admittedly dismal conditions under which people who are accused
of genocide are being held in Rwandan jails. The problem with this is you go
and you talk to the Rwandans and their response is -- wait a minute, we're the
ones who suffered this, and all the international attention and all the money
is going to people who, number one, were involved in doing this, and number
two, are in jail, and we can't get any help to try and set up a system of
trials to prosecute them in our national courts. We like the tribunal, we think
it's a very good idea, but it doesn't solve our problem.
o wonder governments start thinking that the international community is not
particularly serious about responses to genocide. Just to give you a couple of
other examples. There have been cases where international efforts have actually
served to bury the genocide issue; case in point: Cambodia. The international
peace process brokered by the UN was so interested in bringing the Khmer Rouge
into a political process on the idea that if you could bring them in and
somehow invest them in democratic ideals they would then participate freely and
happily in elections and everything would be fine. The other idea being you
didn't want to upset the Chinese, who are necessary for any political
settlement. What ended up happening is that the UN-brokered process ignored the
issue of accountability. And there's a very interesting series of statements
and documents that you can trace through. With the beginning of the process you
have the Southeast Asian countries on their own, without any big-power
intervention, coming up with a statement that preventing the return of the
pro-genocidal policies and practices of the Pol Pot regime is central to any
peace process. You then get the UN involved and, in June of 1991 you get a
statement from Indonesia and France that the new constitution must be
"consistent with the provisions of the genocide convention," which is of course
a much weaker formulation. (That in itself has been scuttled by the Security
Council: the "big five" say they're not going to allow that language.) And you
get a final agreement that basically says nothing about either prosecutions or
even preventing the former heads of the Khmer Rouge from running for office.
All you have now is something in Article 15 that says the government should
make effective policies to "ensure that the policies and practices of the past
should not be allowed to return." So under international supervision you go
from a fairly strong statement saying there must be action against genocide to
a very watered down, fuzzy statement saying, yes, let's be nice from now on.
Now how is that viewed inside the country? It's viewed as a statement that the
international community really is not interested in accountability. So from
point of view both of the Khmer Rouge and of the current government, the upshot
is that you get an increase in human rights violations on both sides because
there's a sense that the international community doesn't really care about
this; all they're interested in is getting to elections as quickly as
possible.
Presentation by Ernst Haas | Presentation by Sir Brian Urquhart
© Copyright 1996, Regents of the University of California