Genocide prevention

Prevention of genocide is any action that works toward averting future genocides. Genocides take a lot of planning, resources, and involved parties to carry out, they do not just happen instantaneously.[1] Scholars in the field of genocide studies have identified a set of widely agreed upon risk factors that make a country or social group more at risk of carrying out a genocide, which include a wide range of political and cultural factors that create a context in which genocide is more likely, such as political upheaval or regime change, as well as psychological phenomena that can be manipulated and taken advantage of in large groups of people, like conformity and cognitive dissonance. Genocide prevention depends heavily on the knowledge and surveillance of these risk factors, as well as the identification of early warning signs of genocide beginning to occur.

Multilingual "never again" memorial at Treblinka extermination camp

One of the main goals of the United Nations with the passage of the Genocide Convention after the Second World War and the atrocities of the Holocaust is to prevent future genocide from taking place.[1] The Genocide Convention and the Responsibility to protect provide the basis for the responsibility of every UN member state to actively prevent genocide and act to stop it in other states when it occurs. However, the United Nations has been heavily criticized for its failure to prevent genocide, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century.[2]

Intervention in genocide can occur at many different stages of the progression of a genocide, but the most ideal stage to intervene is before genocide occurs at all, in the form of prevention known as upstream prevention. Preventing genocide in this way requires a constant and thorough assessment of the risk of genocide around the world at any given time, given the known risk factors, early warning signs, and the knowledge of how a genocide progresses.

The psychological basis of genocide

Genocide is not something that only trained, sadistic killers take part in, but rather it is something that ordinary people can do with the proper “training” via cognitive restructuring and social conditioning.[3][4] The act of killing for genocidal purposes is not a distinct category of human behavior, but instead demonstrates the potential of ordinary psychological and social psychological processes to be manipulated and escalated into violence in certain environments and conditions.[4] One of the major puzzles in studying both the occurrence of and prevention of genocide, therefore, is understanding what makes those "normal" cognitive processes, both on the individual and collective levels, vulnerable to manipulation by outsiders, and which social and political conditions provide a breeding ground for that manipulation into violence.

On the individual level, the psychological concept of Cognitive dissonance plays a large role in a person's transformation from peaceful citizen to violent genocidal killer.[4] Even more specifically, Alexander Hinton, in his 1996 study on the psycho-social factors that contributed to the Cambodian genocide, coined the term "psychosocial dissonance" to add to this well-known psychological concept other anthropological concepts like cultural models and notions of the self.[3] These forms of dissonance, both cognitive and psychosocial, arise when a person is confronted with behavioral expectations that conflict with their own identity or concept of self, and subsequently work subconsciously to resolve those inconsistencies.[3] Hinton claims that there are a number of cognitive "moves" that must occur in order for a person to reduce psychosocial dissonance felt at the onset of genocide, and these moves slowly transform people into their "genocidal selves."[3] These cognitive moves include the dehumanization of victims, the employment of euphemisms to mask violent deeds, the undergoing of moral restructuring, becoming acclimated to the act of killing, and/or denying responsibility for violent actions.[3] The first move, dehumanization, is one of the biggest "steps," as it has been central to every genocide. In The Holocaust, the Cambodian genocide, and the Rwandan genocide, as particularly notable examples, victims were labeled as vermin, cockroaches, rats, or snakes, to separate them entirely from the category of human in this process of dehumanization.[4] When the label of "person" is taken away from entire groups of individuals, acting violently towards them, including murdering them, becomes much easier for the average person.

Social psychological factors

In addition to individual-level cognitive "moves," there are also many social psychological factors that influence an "ordinary" group's transformation into killers. First, the concept of social cognition explains the ways in which people think about themselves and those around them. People's social cognition is divided into thinking about others as belonging to in-groups and out-groups, which are defined by collective identity and social bonds.[3][5] Everyone has a bias for their own group called an In-group bias, but this bias only has negative consequences when people simultaneously hold both extremely positive views of themselves and their in-group and extremely negative views of out-groups.[5] People are also generally socialized to avoid conflict and aggression with other members of their own in-group, so one way of overcoming that barrier to violence is to redefine who belongs to each group so that victims of genocide become excluded from the in-group and are no longer protected by this in-group bias.[3]

Social influence and social relations also constitute factors vulnerable to manipulation. Many cultures actively encourage conformity, compliance, and obedience in social relations and can have severe social "penalties" for those that do not adhere to the norms, so that group members can feel an intense pressure to engage in violence if other members are also engaging in it.[5] This tendency for people to conform can be manipulated to induce "thoughtless behavior" in large groups of people at once.[6] Research also shows that this pressure to conform, also known as the "conformity effect," increases when there is an authority figure present in the group,[5] and when certain social and institutional contexts increase people's tendency to conform, like the loss of stability, as people tend to adapt to what is expected of them when stability disappears.[6] Other tendencies of human social relationships can similarly push people towards violence, such as prejudice, altruism, and aggression. It is particularly relevant to understand the link between prejudice and violence, as prejudice is often one of the first starting points in the formation of genocidal behavior. The scapegoat theory (or practice of Scapegoating) helps to explain the relationship, as it posits that people have a tendency to lash out on out-groups when they are frustrated, for example in times of political or economic crisis.[5]

Risk factors for genocide
Main article: Risk factors for genocide

There are a variety of political and cultural factors that make states more at risk for movement down a path of mass violence, and an understanding and recognition of the existence of those factors can be crucial in genocide prevention efforts. While studies in this area find varying degrees of risk for each particular factor, there is widespread consensus on which kinds of environments present the greatest risk for the occurrence of genocide. First, certain situational factors like destabilizing crises and political upheaval make countries more vulnerable to genocide.[5][7] Forms of political upheaval include civil wars, assassinations, revolutions, coups, defeat in international war, anticolonial rebellions, or any sort of upheaval that results in unconventional regime change or in elites with extremist ideologies coming to power.[7][8] Almost all genocides of the past half-century have occurred either during or in the immediate aftermath of one of these types of political upheaval.[5][8] Additionally, the potential for genocidal violence increases when multiple forms of crisis, upheaval, or destabilization occur simultaneously, or when the effects of past crises remain unresolved.[5]

Political upheaval is particularly dangerous when a repressive leader is able to come to power. Authoritarian leaders can propel entire societies into "monolithic cultures" at risk for genocide by incentivizing a strong obedience to the state, a lack of tolerance for diversity, and creating an environment that facilitates Groupthink and conformity.[5] The most dangerous authoritarian leaders often have extremist views about a new society "purified" of unwanted or threatening groups of people,[8] and they promote these ideologies as moral and for the "greater good" of the nation, as they classify certain threatening groups as barriers to national success.[5][7] Many such leaders in past genocides, like Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Slobodan Milošević, have also shared similar personal characteristics, as charismatic, self-confident, intelligent individuals with a fierce desire for power.[5]

Adolf Hitler is saluted by German troops in an enthusiastic demonstration.

In addition to situational political factors like upheaval, authoritarian leaders, and unstable government structures, certain cultural factors also contribute to the likelihood that a state will commit genocide. Cultures that promote the use of aggression as a normative problem-solving skill, and cultures that glorify violence through things like military parades, for example, have a greater risk of perpetrating mass violence.[5] Similarly, societies with a strong history of supremacy ideologies, including the long-term normalization of biases towards outsiders, a lack of acceptance of cultural diversity, and the exclusion of certain groups from society, are also at greater risk.[5][7] Specifically, Barbara Harff's 2003 model on the antecedents to genocide found that countries with an elite ideology, in which the ruling elite hold an exclusionary vision for the society, are two and half times more likely to commit genocide in the aftermath of a state failure, and genocide is also more than two times as likely in states where the political elite constitutes an ethnic minority.[8] Many versions of these types of extreme ideologies are present in historical examples of genocide, including the "purification" efforts of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and Nazi Germany's pursuit of an exclusively Aryan race in their nation.[7]

Early warning signs of genocide
See also: Eight stages of genocide

Gregory Stanton, the founding president of Genocide Watch, formulated a well-known list of ten (originally eight) stages of genocide in 1996. These stages do not necessarily occur linearly or exclusively one at a time, but they provide a guiding model to analyze the processes leading to genocide that can be recognized as warning signs and acted upon, as each stage presents an opportunity for certain prevention measures.[9] Stanton's ten stages include: classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, organization, polarization, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial.[10] The first few of these stages happen early in the process of inciting genocide, and thus offer the most opportunity for preventative measures before genocide is already in full force. During the classification stage, where people begin distinguishing within a culture between "us and them" designated by race, ethnicity, or nationality, the most important prevention measure is to promote tolerance and understanding, and to promote the widespread use of classifications and common ground that transcend these harmful divisions.[10] In the symbolization stage, in which "other" groups are given names or physical symbols to demonstrate their classification, hate symbols, hate speech, and group marking should be outlawed as a critical prevention measure.[10] Once a society progresses to the discrimination stage, where the dominant group, acting on an exclusionary ideology, uses law and political power to deny the rights of the targeted group, the most crucial preventative measure is to ensure full rights and political empowerment for all groups in a society.[10] And the final "early" step, before a society actually begins to organize to carry out the genocide, is dehumanization, in which one group denies the humanity of the other group. Stanton argues that prevention at this stage should be aimed at ensuring that the incitement to genocide is not confused with protected speech, that hate propaganda is banned, and that any sort of hate crimes or atrocities are promptly punished.[10]

While dehumanization is widely recognized by Stanton and other scholars as a key stage in the process, Rhiannon Neilsen, in a 2015 article in the Genocide Studies and Prevention journal, argues that "toxification" serves as a more precise early warning sign of genocide than dehumanization.[11] According to Neilsen, dehumanization is understood as "the denial of an individual's essential humanness and identity," which situates those individuals "outside the boundary in which moral values, rules, and considerations of fairness apply."[11] In the consensus of genocide literature, this step is considered to be an alarming early warning sign because it overcomes the universal human intolerance of murder for the perpetrating group, and according to Stanton, is the "phase where the death spiral of genocide begins."[11] However, Nielsen's view is that while dehumanization signals that killing members of a particular group is persmissible, a better early warning sign is one that alerts when extermination of a group is considered necessary. She defines toxification as "the cognitive perception of victims as malignant and carcinogenic pests that must be purged for the survival of the perpetrator, and/or the perpetrators' ideal society," so that victims are not only perceived as inhuman targets whose murder is acceptable, but also as a toxic presence that must be destroyed for the good of the nation or society.[11]

These early warning signs are common across genocidal societies, but their identification is only useful in prevention efforts when actual actions are taken to combat them. One salient example of a failure to act on early warning signs is the Rwandan genocide. Despite numerous warnings, both indirect and explicit, there was widespread failure on the part of individual nations like the United States and international organizations like the United Nations to take the necessary preventative steps before the genocide was already well underway.[12] According to Stanton, the facts of the situation were heavily resisted, and governments refused to invoke the term "genocide" in order to avoid their duty to act, instead naming it a civil war.[12] The US Secretary of State did not call the mass killings a genocide until June 10, 1994, after most of the killing was already over, and the press and human rights groups also failed to name the crime for what it was until two weeks into the genocide.[12]

The role of the United Nations

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Main article: Genocide Convention

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (also known as the "Genocide Convention") is the principal guiding international legal document for genocide prevention efforts, along with Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.[13] In the aftermath of World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust, the ratification of the Genocide Convention signaled the international community's commitment to the principle of "never again" in terms of its prioritization of genocide prevention.[14]

International criminal tribunals

In 1993 and 1994, the United Nations Security Council established two ad-hoc international courts, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in order to try those indicted for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides.[2] Then, in 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted, giving the International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction for the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.[2]

The Responsibility to Protect

With the introduction of Responsibility to protect in 2001 nations have been given more leeway in the prevention of genocide or other mass atrocities. This international norm was signed by all member states of the UN. It gives any other nations the right to step in any way necessary if the state in question fails to protect its citizens from genocide or other crimes.[15] This means that state sovereignty can be violated for the protection of a population if the state is unable or willing to. This norm has enabled the international community to more easily step in for the prevention of genocide. However, there has been some question of the abuses of this norm as an excuse to intervene or create regime changes.[16]

Criticisms of the United Nations on genocide prevention and intervention

The United Nations has been widely criticized for acting inadequately, too slowly, or not at all in cases of genocide.[2][17] Since its establishment in 1948, the UN's success rate at preventing genocide has been very low, as evidenced by the large number of mass atrocities that have occurred in the past half-century that might fall under the UN definition of genocide, but the fact that only three cases have been legally established as incidents of genocide and prosecuted as such.[14] The UN faces a number of challenges in acting to prevent and intervene in cases of genocide. First, the fact that individual member states compose both the general body and the Security Council means that humanitarian goals become effectively secondary to political goals and pressures, as member states pursue their own interests first and foremost.[2] For example, the United States and the Soviet Union virtually prevented the United Nations from taking humanitarian action in any areas which they deemed to be of strategic significance during the Cold War.[2] Additionally, many states still argue in favor of the protection of state sovereignty over intervention, even in the face of potential mass killing.[2] Another significant barrier to action on genocidal violence is the reticence to officially invoke the term "genocide," as it appears to be applied selectively and much too slowly to cases of mass violence.[17][14]

Types of prevention

Upstream prevention

Upstream prevention, is taking preemptive measures before a genocide occurs to prevent one from occurring. The focus in upstream prevention is determining which countries are at most risk. This is mainly done using risk assessments which are quite accurate predictors. These assessments are used by both NGO's and Governments around the world. Scholars in the field have developed numerous models, each looking at different factors. Arguably one of the most accurate model comes from Barbara Harff. Her model uses factors such as political upheaval, prior genocides, type of government, and infant mortality, among others.[18] These assessments of risk are then used to aid nations and take action to stop a mass atrocity from happening. Scholars generally agree that prevention before the genocide is the cheapest and most effective.

Mid-Stream prevention

Mid-stream prevention takes place when a genocide is already taking place. The main focus of Mid-stream prevention, is to end the genocide before it progress's further, taking more lives. This type of prevention often involves military intervention of some sort. Intervention, often is very expensive, and has unintended consequences. Scholars tend to disagree on the effectiveness of military intervention. Some claim that military intervention promotes rebel groups or that it is too expensive for the lives it saves.[19][20] Scholars tend to prefer upstream prevention because it saves lives and doesn't require costly intervention.

Downstream prevention

Downstream prevention takes place after a genocide has ended. Its focus is on preventing another genocide in the future, thus re-building and restoring the community is the goal. Justice for the victims also plays a major role in repairing communities to prevent a future genocide from occurring. This justice can take various forms with trials being a common form, like Nuremberg trials. Justice and healing of the community is imperfect and some scholars criticize the imperfections, especially those of trials. Some common criticisms of trials are the retro-activity, selectivity, highly politicized nature trials often have.[21] Due to the imperfections of trials, healing, and the lifting of taboos when a genocide has been committed in a community, there is an increased risk of atrocity reoccurring.[18]

Genocide prevention and public health

While the prevention of genocide is typically approached from a political or national defense angle, the field of public health can also make significant contributions to this effort. Genocide, along with other forms of mass atrocity, is inherently an issue of public health, as it has a significant and detrimental impact on population health, both immediately after the violence occurs and also in the long term health of a post-genocidal population.[22][23] With regards to the mortality numbers alone, genocide has killed more people than war-related deaths in every historical period.[22] And it also far surpasses the mortality rates of some of the most pressing epidemiological threats. In 1994, the year that the Rwandan genocide occurred, the mortality rate from the genocide itself was 20 times higher than the rate of HIV/AIDS deaths and more than 70 times higher than the rate of malaria-related deaths, despite the fact that Rwanda was geographically sandwiched by these two pandemics.[22] And in the long run, the public health impact of genocide goes beyond the number of people killed. During genocide, healthcare facilities are often destroyed, doctors and nurses are killed in the violence, and the usual disease prevention efforts of the nation are disrupted, for example, immunization programs, which normally save thousands of lives.[23] The destruction of these facilities and healthcare programs has longterm effects.[23] Additionally, post-genocidal societies have an increased rate of chronic and acute disease, low birth rates, increased perinatal mortality, and increased malnutrition.[22] The individual-level health of genocide survivors also suffers in the long-term, given that significant trauma has both long-lasting psychological and physical effects.[22]

The American Medical Association (AMA) recognizes this critical link between health and human rights in the area of genocide and its prevention, and urges physicians to approach genocide using public health strategies.[23] Such strategies include documentation of genocide and pre-genocidal conditions through case reports and surveillance, epidemiological studies to assess the impact of genocide on public health, education and spreading awareness about the understanding of genocide and its psychological precursors to the public, to other health professionals, and to policymakers, and advocacy for policies and programs aimed at the prevention of genocide.[23]

Ongoing prevention efforts

Early warning project

The Early Warning Project is an early warning tool developed by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Dartmouth College. This early warning system was a "first of its kind" designed to aid policy makers in determining the risk that a state faces for genocide.[24] The Early Warning Project aids policy makers by determining which states are the most likely to experience a genocide. From this, preventive steps can be taken against states that pose a risk to falling into genocidal actions.

Genocide task force

The Genocide Task Force was created in 2007, with the purpose of developing a strategy to prevent and stop future genocides. The Task Force was co chaired by former US Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, and former US Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen.[25] In 2008 the Genocide Task Force came out with a report for policy makers on the prevention of genocide. This report claimed that a well rounded "comprehensive strategy" would be required to prevent genocide. This strategy would need to include early warning systems, preventive action before a crisis, military intervention, strengthening of international institutions and norms, and a willingness for world leaders to take decisive action. While the report states that military intervention should remain an available option, upstream preventive measures should be the focus of the United States and the International Community.[26]

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References
  1. "Background Information on Preventing Genocide". Outreach Programme on the Rwanda Genocide and the United Nations. UN. Retrieved 5 April 2016.
  2. Totten, Samuel; Bartrop, Paul R. (2004-07-01). "The United Nations and genocide: Prevention, intervention, and prosecution". Human Rights Review. 5 (4): 8–31. doi:10.1007/s12142-004-1025-1. ISSN 1874-6306.
  3. Hinton, Alexander Laban (1996). "Agents of Death: Explaining the Cambodian Genocide in Terms of Psychosocial Dissonance". American Anthropologist. 98 (4): 818–831. doi:10.1525/aa.1996.98.4.02a00110. ISSN 0002-7294. JSTOR 681888.
  4. Vollhardt, Johanna (March 15, 2018). "The Psychology of Genocide: Beware the Beginnings". Psychology Today.
  5. Woolf, Linda M.; Hulsizer, Michael R. (2005-03-01). "Psychosocial roots of genocide: risk, prevention, and intervention". Journal of Genocide Research. 7 (1): 101–128. doi:10.1080/14623520500045088. ISSN 1462-3528.
  6. Roth, Paul A. (2012-09-18). Bloxham, Donald; Moses, A. Dirk (eds.). Social Psychology and Genocide. 1. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232116.013.0011.
  7. Brehm, Hollie Nyseth (2017-01-02). "Re-examining risk factors of genocide". Journal of Genocide Research. 19 (1): 61–87. doi:10.1080/14623528.2016.1213485. ISSN 1462-3528.
  8. Harff, Barbara (February 2003). "No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955". American Political Science Review. 97 (1): 57–73. doi:10.1017/S0003055403000522. ISSN 1537-5943.
  9. "Warning Signs of Mass Violence—in the US?". Observer. 2017-08-22. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  10. Stanton, Gregory (December 2018). "What is Genocide?". Genocide Watch.
  11. Neilsen, Rhiannon (2015-05-01). "'Toxification' as a more precise early warning sign for genocide than dehumanization? An emerging research agenda". Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. 9 (1): 83–95. doi:10.5038/1911-9933.9.1.1277. ISSN 1911-0359.
  12. Stanton, Gregory (2012-11-28). "The Rwandan Genocide: Why Early Warning Failed". Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies. 1 (2): 6–25. doi:10.5038/2325-484X.1.2.1. ISSN 2325-484X.
  13. "United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect". www.un.org. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
  14. "Why the UN convention on genocide is still failing, 70 years on". The Independent. 2018-12-21. Retrieved 2020-03-08.
  15. "Office of The Special Adviser on The Prevention of Genocide". www.un.org. Retrieved 2016-04-05.
  16. Cliffe, Sarah; Megally, Hanny (2016-02-19). "Rwanda should have been a wake-up call. Why do the crises continue?". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-04-05.
  17. Hannibal, Travis. "The United Nations and Genocide Prevention: the Problem of Racial and Religious Bias". Genocide Studies International. 8.
  18. Harff, Barbara (2003). "No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust? Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder Since 1955". American Political Science Review. 97: 57–73. doi:10.1017/S0003055403000522.
  19. Kuperman, Alan (2008). "The Moral Hazard of Humanitarian Intervention: Lessons from the Balkans". International Studies Quarterly. 52: 49–80. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.322.1966. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2478.2007.00491.x.
  20. Valentino, Benjamin (2011). "The True Costs of Humanitarian Intervention". Foreign Affairs.
  21. Minow, Martha (1998). Between Vengeance and Forgiveness. Beacon Press Books. pp. 25–50. ISBN 978-0-8070-4507-7.
  22. Adler, Reva N.; Smith, James; Fishman, Paul; Larson, Eric B. (December 2004). "To Prevent, React, and Rebuild: Health Research and the Prevention of Genocide". Health Services Research. 39 (6p2): 2027–2051. doi:10.1111/j.1475-6773.2004.00331.x. ISSN 0017-9124. PMC 1361111. PMID 15544643.
  23. Willis, Brian M. (2000-08-02). "Recognizing the Public Health Impact of Genocide". JAMA. 284 (5): 612. doi:10.1001/jama.284.5.612. ISSN 0098-7484.
  24. "Early Warning Project". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved April 5, 2016.
  25. "Genocide Prevention Task Force". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 2016-04-05.
  26. Albright, Madeleine K.; Cohen, William S. (2008). Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers (PDF). Genocide Prevention Task Force. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
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