Experts in Montreal say genocide is preventable

by Judi Rever
Fri Oct 12, 6:30 PM ET

Diplomats and human rights experts said Friday that genocide is preventable
if the international community responded to early warning signs and warring
parties redefined their political interests.
But panelists meeting at a three-day global conference in Montreal said by
the time genocide is underway, there is little the United Nations can do to
stem the bloodshed.
"Once a genocide has begun, it’s too late for the UN to intervene. I think
it’s too late," said Gregory Stanton, former US State Department official, now
president of Genocide Watch.
Stanton instead called on civil society to watch for warning signs of
genocide – such as demonizing one’s opponent — and put pressure on states to
act.
"If we’re going to develop the political will to really do something, we’re
going to need to build an international anti-genocide movement very much like
the anti-slavery movement of the 19th century, otherwise our leaders are not
going to take action. That is the problem, it’s because our leaders don’t
take action even if they know what the early warning signs are."
Stanton was among legislators, academics and genocide survivors attending the
event, which aimed to explore ways of preventing genocide. Romeo Dallaire,
who led UN peacekeeping operations in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide and
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka also spoke at the conference, which was sponsored
by McGill University’s law faculty.
Gay McDougall, a UN advisor on minority issues, said more attention needed to
be paid to countries in "pre-conflict" situations.
"By the time the killing begins, the viable options left open to the
international community are extremely limited. Prevention has got to happenway
before the country situation gets on the agenda of the security organs of the
UN."
"We’ve got to have more attention and political backing to the
recommendations from the human rights bodies with regards to states that are
still in pre-conflict situations," McDougall added.
She also accused UN nations of ignoring the agency’s own human rights body.
"I just don’t think we can talk about preventing genocide if we’re going to
ignore the human rights organs of the UN."
Howard Wolpe, director of the Africa Program at the Woodrow Wilson
International Centre for Scholars in Washington, said states needed to be
persuaded to act in their "enlightened self-interest."
"At the end of the day, if you’re serious about preventing violent conflict
of any sort, the fundamental challenge is to create a process and mechanism
where you get people who are inside that situation to begin to redefine their
self interests so that they understand their connections with others."
Alison Des Forges, a leading scholar on Rwanda, said civil war, a climate of
fear and hatred, and state organisation were all precursors of the Rwandan
genocide.
"The sense of the enemy posing a direct and immediate threat allows political
leaders to manipulate and focus people to act in a way that otherwise is
unthinkable," she said.
Des Forges said a document quoting Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda
minister, was found in Rwandan government offices in the aftermath of the
genocide.
The Goebbels’ passage read: "Ordinary people who can be persuaded that their
own survival is at risk will betray every moral and legal law that they have
ever known."
The conference, sponsored by McGill University’s law faculty, comes amid
continuing atrocities against civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region where at least
200,000 people have died and two million others displaced since the Sudanese
government enlisted a militia to put down an ethnic minority revolt that broke
out in 2003.