Genocide Prevention: Moral Imperative or Rational Self-Interest?

Our invited contributor this month : Maureen S. Hiebert, Assistant Professor in the Law and Society Program at the University of Calgary.
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Genocide Prevention: Moral Imperative or Rational Self-Interest?
By Maureen S. Hiebert

Like many genocide scholars I got into the field because I was outraged that genocides like the ones in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur, could still happen fifty and sixty years after the Holocaust. I wanted to know two things: why does genocide happen and how can we prevent it from happening again. My outrage that genocide even occurs in the first place was (and still is) fueled by a complete inability, not from an intellectual but from a humanitarian point of view, to comprehend why political elites would ever decide that the right way to solve their problems is to exterminate whole groups of people simply because these people exist and because of who they are. In short, my moral indignation drove my need, both as a scholar and as a human being, to help find a way to wipe out the “old scourge” with a “new name” once and for all.My own understanding of genocide prevention as a moral imperative mirrors that of other scholars, policy-makers, activists, survivors, and interested ordinary people over the last several decades. The idea is simple enough: genocide is morally wrong and ought not to happen anywhere, to anyone, for any reason.The main attempt at making the moral imperative to prevent genocide real came with the crafting and signing of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNGC). As its name plainly says part of the function of the UNGC is supposed to be prevention. Here there is a clear link between a moral imperative - creating what some scholars call an “anti-genocide norm” - and codifying that norm in international law. Thus the states that sign on to the Convention commit themselves to cooperate to “liberate mankind from such an odious scourge” by agreeing to “undertake” steps to prevent genocide, among other things. But the historical record clearly shows that while the UNGC has enjoyed some success in the punishment department sixty years on, states have taken their legal and moral obligation under the Convention to prevent genocide rather less seriously.This experience gave rise, particularly after Rwanda when the major players in the international system were tripping over themselves not to use the “g-word” to describe what was happening, to the idea that if only we could get states to recognize a genocide when one is about to or is already happening and if we can get states to call a genocide a genocide, they might then actually do their moral and legal duty to stop the killing. No such luck. As the Bush administration’s approach to Darfur a few years ago demonstrated in no uncertain terms, it is entirely possible for the most powerful country in the world (and by extension every other country) to call a genocide “genocide” - repeatedly - and still do nothing to stop it. All this despite the concerted effort of several NGOs, student and other activist groups’ appeals to our moral and legal obligations to end the bloodshed.Given the apparent failure of appeals to moral and legal considerations, a different approach to motivating useful genocide prevention by governments is being proposed. The brainchild of genocide scholar Frank Chalk and Lt. Gen. (Ret) Romeo Dallaire, this new approach is spelled out in their comprehensive report Mobilizing the Will to Intervene (W2i for short). W2i changes the foundations upon which the appeal to genocide prevention should be made: national, and rational, self-interest. After considering why the international community failed so miserably in Rwanda but managed to act decisively in Kosovo, coupled with information gleaned from interviews with numerous American and Canadian officials, the authors forcefully argue that if we want to get governments to get serious about genocide prevention, we need to stop appealing to the injustice of genocide and instead appeal to cold, hard Realpolitik. The report suggests that mass atrocities and post-atrocity/conflict situations in far off lands pose real threats to Canadians and the Canadian government (ditto for the US and other countries in the North) including the risk of pandemics, the creation of safe havens for piracy and terrorism, refugees flows, and loss of access to strategic resources. To protect ourselves from the fall-out of any or all of these scenarios, governments and civil society must work together to prevent or stop genocides that are already occurring in order to ensure our own health, security, and economic prosperity.While I’m sympathetic to the idea that we need to appeal to government in the cost-benefit language to which they are most accustom, and the authors hope, are most likely to listen, I’m not convinced that the empirical record will help make the case. Take the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo for example. W2i’s thesis would have predicted that the on-going conflict in the eastern part of the DRC (which at one time involved not just the remnants of the Rwandan army that perpetrated the genocide in 1994 but several neighbouring African states and now has evolved into warlordism across various local and regional armed groups) would have sparked local epidemics and then pandemics that reached North America and elsewhere, a serious security crisis that involved the strategic interests of Canada and the United states, a safe haven for transnational terrorists, and economic hardship here at home due to the loss of access to economic resources. But if we look at the impact of the misery that is the DRC on the vital interests of the Canadian and American governments and ordinary Canadians and Americans, the effect is almost negligible. While the immediate post-genocide period in eastern DRC did see a terrible cholera epidemic in the refugee camps, the epidemic did not spread outside the region even in the era of international air travel. And while the area is beset by insecurity and the perpetration of atrocities, Canadian and American national security and strategic interests have not been put at risk, largely because of the geographical remoteness of the conflict zone. Similarly, eastern DRC has not become, as in the case of Somalia or Yemen, an outpost for anti-western jihadi terrorist groups. As for our economic interests, while it is true that the DRC has vast quantities of valuable mineral resources, so do we, which is why our lack of access to them does not seem to be hurting our economic performance. Even the mineral coltan, which is used in the manufacturing of cellphones, is still somehow ending up in our abundant supply of such devices even though several armed groups are vying for control of this particular resource.The DRC example suggests that the W2i thesis is not as universal as the authors make it out to be. Governments may be persuaded to intervene to prevent genocide in far-off places, but only if those places are already of strategic and economic interest to those same governments. But if genocide is occurring, or is in the offing, in some corner of the world where Canadian or American interests are not engaged, or if the target population is poor and doesn’t travel much internationally thus keeping the risk of a global pandemic low, the cavalry is not likely to be coming.On top of all of these considerations is the concern that an emphasis on “intervention” is a revival of a term that conjures up fears of neocolonialist meddling by the North in the countries of the Global South. The idea of “humanitarian intervention” fell out of favour decades ago for a reason. Reintroducing the idea may not attract many new supporters.So where does this leave us? If governments are deaf to moral pleas for intervention and will only intervene in places where they already have a strategic interest, the other option is to concentrate on early prevention rather than intervention. Using diplomacy and development assistance wisely to support good governance could not only induce states not to commit genocide against their own people, it could produce a number of other positive dividends as well. Of course, this is a long term strategy that requires an equally long term commitment from Canada, the United States, and other nations. Let’s hope they’re sufficiently motivated and up to the challenge.

Maureen S. Hiebert is an Assistant Professor in the Law and Society Program at the University of Calgary. maureen.hiebert@ucalgary.ca