Building an Anti-Genocide Regime
Dr. Gregory H. Stanton
First published in 2011, updated in 2026
When the Genocide Convention was passed by the United Nations in 1948, the world said, "Never again."
But the history of the twentieth century instead proved that "never again" became "again and again."
The promise the United Nations made was broken, as again and again, genocides and other forms of mass
murder killed at least 170 million people, more than all the international wars of the twentieth century
combined (Rummel, 1994).[2] Genocide, the devil on horseback, still rides unchecked, armed not with a
scythe but with a Kalashnikov.
Why? Why are there still genocides? Why are there genocidal massacres being perpetrated in 2006
against the Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa in Darfur; and the the Banyamulenge, Hutus, Hema, and Lendu
in the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Why does ethnic and religious hatred still divide Côte d'Ivoire
and Iraq and threaten to erupt again in genocidal violence?
There are two primary reasons why genocide is still committed in the world:
1. The world has not developed the international institutions needed to predict and prevent it; and
2. The world's leaders do not have the political will to stop it.
In order to prevent genocide, we must first understand it. We must study and compare genocides and
develop working theories about the genocidal process. There are many centers for the study of genocide
that are doing that vital work in universities and research institutes in Europe, North America, Australia
and Israel.
But studying genocide is not enough. Our next task should be to create the international
institutions and political will to prevent it.
Three institutions, in particular, are needed:
(1) politically effective centers for genocide prevention;
(2) rapid response forces for non-violent prevention and armed military response; and
(3) effective international courts for punishment.
To create political will, an international movement to end genocide must be built, requiring a massive educational, media and political campaign.
Creation of a Genocide Prevention Office at the UN
The U.N. Security Council and key governments need strong, independent early warning systems to
predict where and when ethnic conflict and genocide are going to occur, and to present options for
prevention and intervention to policy makers.
When the International Campaign to End Genocide (ICEG) (now the Alliance Against Genocide), a coalition of human rights organizations, attempted to contact officials at the UN about the genocidal massacres in East Timor in 1999, we discovered that no one had responsibility for receiving information or coordinating action about genocide. Therefore, in 2002, the Genocide Watch and the ICEG recommended that the UN create a Special Adviser to the Secretary General for the Prevention of Genocide with a small permanent staff at the highest level that would receive information about risks of genocide and coordinate UN responses.
Despite negative reactions by some member states to previous proposals for a UN preventive capacity, the
idea was discussed and refined. It gathered support from high ranking UN officials like Danilo Turk and
Edward Mortimer, who recommended it to Secretary General Kofi Annan.
The result was a proposal made at the Stockholm Forum on the Prevention of Genocide in 2004 by
Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch (Stanton, 2004a), which recommended appointment of a Special
Adviser to the Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide and creation of an independent Genocide Prevention Center. The Secretary General announced his support for the proposal at the Stockholm Forum, and in July 2004, he created the new post and named Juan Mendez as his first Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide.
Establishment of a Genocide Prevention Center
Realizing that the United Nations has limited resources, the ICEG also recommended creation of an independent Genocide Prevention Center to support the work of the Special Adviser. The Center would be located in New York and staffed with full-time early warning, political and operational planning specialists who have direct access
to an international network of government officials, country experts, human rights nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), and the Special Adviser's office. It would be funded by governments, foundations, corporations, and private donors. It would work closely with the UN Special Adviser's Office, but would not be subject to funding by the UN itself. (Stanton, 2004a)
The Brahimi Report of the Panel on U.N. Peace Operations (U.N. Doc. A/55/305 S/2000/809: 2000)
suggested such an office (the Information and Strategic Analysis Secretariat) at the U.N., but its
recommendations were blocked by states (mostly from the G-77 developing nations plus India and China)
that considered such a function to be "intelligence-gathering."
That is precisely why a Genocide Prevention Center must be independent of the U.N., but on
the U.N.'s periphery, and considered by the Special Adviser to be a trusted source of reliable
information. If the Center is not independent, it will be unable to issue opinions that displease member
states, particularly states at risk or that are committing genocide. Yet it must have the confidence of the
Special Adviser and develop a close informal relationship with him.
Several human rights groups, notably Human Rights Watch and the International Crisis Group (an ICEG member), currently have such relationships with the Secretary General. The Genocide Prevention Center would become a clearing house and validator for reports from human rights groups and open sources around the world. It would
operationalize those reports into options and plans for preventive action, and the Special Adviser and the
Secretary General would use them to formulate recommendations to the U.N. Security Council.
One problem such a Center would face immediately is the closed nature of both government and U.N.
information systems. Reports from UN field officials and government intelligence agencies are classified
"confidential" or secret. Access to the country desk officers and top officials of the U.N. system would
thus probably be indirect, through the Special Adviser. Access to government intelligence reports
remains unlikely.
However, the open secret of the new information age is that policy-makers would get better information if they ran a daily algorithm of world news media for early warning signs, and regularly read leading newspapers, magazines, and human rights groups' reports, than if they counted on their embassies' classified cables. Several such open source, unclassified reporting services (IRIN, Reliefweb) provide daily collections of articles to the U.N. and others interested in reading them. However, none currently focus on potential genocide.
Even before a Genocide Prevention Center is established, coalitions of NGOs and genocide studies
programs should establish independent early warning networks that can provide daily reports and regular
policy options papers to the U.N.'s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, to the Security
Council and to individual governments.
Even after a Genocide Prevention Center is established, NGOs should continue to provide reports independently to the Special Adviser, UN agencies, and member governments. The Center is not intended to be a unique source.
Regular briefings should be given to the Security Council by the Special Adviser. The first attempt by the Special
Adviser to give such a briefing on Darfur was blocked by objections from the U.S., China, Russia and Algeria (Reuters, 10 Oct. 2005.) But the Secretary General, himself, could exercise his prerogative under
Article 99 of the UN Charter to mandate direct reports by the Special Adviser to the Security Council and the General Assembly.
Early Warning Models
Early warning models matter. They must be comprehensible to policy makers, and provide specific
guidance. The U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the U.S. Central Intelligence
Agency have each had contracts with social scientists who use multi-variate, statistical models to predict
the likelihood of genocide and other forms of violence. The models assign country scores to a large
number of abstract risk factors ("level of democracy, trade openness, history of armed conflict, ethnic
diversity") and then assess the risk of genocide from their sum (Harff, 2003; Krain, 1997).
These statistical models are useful to the extent that they demonstrate the benefit of promotion of democracy and other general policies. But statistical models do not describe the intentional process by which political leaders push a
society toward genocide. They therefore are not sufficient to formulate specific counter-measures at each
stage of the genocidal process.
To provide immediate early warning signs, Harff (1998) has identified accelerators and triggers that may
lead to genocide. They include refugee and internally displaced persons flows, compulsory visible
identification of targeted groups, arming of ethnic militias, hate speech, killing of opposition leaders, and other political factors. But they are not continuous, event driven models that can predict when a genocide will happen.
They fail to predict how close a genocide may be and do not suggest specific tactics to prevent it.
Genocide Watch uses a process model of genocide, that breaks down the genocidal process into predictable
stages that all genocides follow. It is not a linear model because the stages often occur simultaneously or out of order. It exposes the logic of the genocidal process so that policy-makers can recognize early warning signs and plan specific counter-measures at each stage to stop the process.
The Ten Stages of Genocide
1. Classification: Underlying most social scientists' theories of genocide is an image of "ethno-centric
man." Because all people grow up and live in particular cultures, speaking particular languages, they
identify some people as "us" and others as "them." This fundamental first stage in the process does not
necessarily lead to genocide. Genocide only becomes possible with another common human tendency --
considering only "our group" as human, and "de-humanizing" certain others. Thus, we not only develop
cultural centers, we also create cultural boundaries that shut other groups out -- and the latter may
become the boundaries where solidarity ends and hatred begins. "Us versus them" can be converted by
political elites desiring to gain or retain power into ideologies of purity, exclusion, and destruction.
Regimes bent on genocide take great pains to classify their populations.
The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend ethnic or racial divisions, that actively promote tolerance and understanding, and that promote classifications that transcend the divisions.
2. Symbolization: Names or other symbols are assigned to the classifications. People are named
"Jews" or "Gypsies", or distinguished by colors or dress. When combined with hatred, symbols may be
forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups: e.g. yellow stars for Jews.
To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden (swastikas) as can hate speech. If widely supported, denial of symbolization can be powerful, as it was in Bulgaria, when many Jews refused to wear the yellow star and were not turned in by their Christian neighbors, depriving the yellow star of its significance as a Nazi
symbol for Jews.
3. Discrimination: Laws are passed or cultural practices exclude targeted groups from their civil rights. Group members may be excluded or fired from jobs. They may be prohibited from marrying members of the dominant group. They may be forced to live in ghettos or prohibited from entering areas controlled by the dominant group, except with passes to perform domestic labor. They may be prohibited from voting or holding public office. They may be excluded from leadership positions in government, the civil service or companies. They may be stripped of their national citizenship. They may be denied access to courts and rights of citizens. They may be denied the right to speak their own language in public, to meet in groups, and to bear arms for self-defense.
The best defense against discrimination is passage and enforcement of laws prohibiting it. Religious and minority leaders may organize demonstrations against laws and practices that discriminate against targeted groups. Public media may be used to make racism and discrimination culturally unacceptable.
4. Dehumanization: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated
with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion
against murder.At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim group. In combating dehumanization, incitement to commit genocide should not be confused with protected speech. Genocidal societies lack constitutional protection for countervailing speech, and should be treated differently than
democracies.
Hate radio stations should be shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Incitement to commit genocide should be outlawed and prosecuted. Hate groups should be infiltrated, arrested, and broken up.
5. Organization: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, though sometimes informally
(Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants) or by terrorist groups. Special army units or militias are often
trained and armed. Plans are made for genocidal killings.
To combat this stage, membership in such militias should be outlawed. Their leaders should be arrested and denied visas for foreign travel. The U.N. should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and international commissions should investigate crimes against humanity.
6. Polarization: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda.
Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating
and silencing the center.
Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups.
Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d'état by
extremists should be opposed by international sanctions.
7. Preparation: Leaders of the perpetrator group plan the genocide. Military forces are armed and incited to kill the targeted group. Ethnic militias are recruited, armed, and organized. Officials often claim killings are being committed by these militias, not by the army, in an effort to deny official culpability. The population is propagandized to believe that the targeted group is a threat that must be eliminated. In what genocide scholars call "mirroring," the targeted group is accused of planning a genocide against perpetrator group. Genocide is then justified as self-defense.
When national and international leaders learn of plans to commit genocide, they should warn potential genocidists that they will be arrested and put on trial for their crimes. Nations should impose global Magnitsky sanctions on leaders who violate international laws for human rights. Their visas to travel should be revoked. Their finances held abroad should be seized. Opposition leaders and parties should be financed and protected.
8. Persecution: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity.
Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. They are
often segregated into ghettos, forced into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and
starved.
At this stage, a Genocide Emergency should be declared. If the political will of the the U.N.
Security Council or NATO can be mobilized, armed international intervention should be prepared, or
heavy assistance given to the victim group to prepare for its self-defense. Otherwise, at least humanitarian
assistance should be organized by the U.N. and private relief groups for the inevitable tide of refugees.
9. Extermination: Extermination quickly becomes the mass killing legally called "genocide." It is
"extermination" to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is
sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. Sometimes the
genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool-like
cycle of bilateral genocide, as in Burundi.
At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or
A multilateral force authorized by the U.N., led by NATO or a regional military power, should intervene. Militarily powerful nations should provide the airlift, equipment, and financial means necessary for the intervention.
10. Denial: is the stage that always starts when a genocide begins and continues long after a genocide ends. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity unless they
are captured and a tribunal is established to try them.
The best responses to denial are public hearings by national truth commissions, and punishment by international tribunals or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the perpetrators punished.
(Stanton, 2005.)
Rapid Response Forces
Early warning is not enough. What if the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution to implement a peace
agreement, and sent in peace-keepers, but then genocide began? That is what happened in Rwanda.
There were plenty of early warnings. The U.N. Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR) commander,
General Roméo Dallaire learned of the plans for the genocide three months before it began, had
conclusive evidence of massive shipments of half a million machetes to arm the killers, and knew of the
training camps for the Interahamwe killers. Yet, when he cabled the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations requesting authorization to confiscate the machete caches, Undersecretary for UNAMIR's mandate.
When the genocide actually began in April 1994, Dallaire desperately asked for a mandate and reinforcements to protect the thousands of Tutsis who had taken refuge in churches and stadiums. Led by the U.S. and U.K., the Security Council instead voted to pull out all 2500 UNAMIR troops. General Dallaire has since said that even those troops could have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, had they remained (Stanton, 2004c).
Among the problems with U.N. peacekeeping forces is that they are composed of national troop
contingents voluntarily contributed by risk-averse national governments, and may even take their orders
from those governments rather than their U.N. commanders. Such forces take months to organize and are
seldom composed of the world's best-trained and equipped soldiers.[3]
One regional military alliance lacks these drawbacks -- NATO. It has a coordinated command
structure, extremely well-trained troops, and major resources. It proved to be quite effective once it was
mobilized in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. But it has only begun to contribute to peace-keeping
operations outside of Europe.
The Standing High Readiness Brigade organized by Denmark, Austria, Canada, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Sweden in 1996 (since expanded to include Finland, Italy, Ireland, Lithuania, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, and Spain) was organized to provide a rapid response force of 5,000 heavy infantry and support personnel to the U.N. Security Council on thirty days' notice. It assisted Chapter VI (peacekeeping with the consent of the host country) monitoring missions in Ethiopia/Eritrea, Liberia, and Sudan. The European Union (EU) is organizing thirteen 1,500 person battle groups ready to respond within ten days to decisions by the EU. However, the EU is likely to be
hamstrung by the requirement for unanimity in its foreign policy decision making.
The United Nations needs a standing, volunteer, professional rapid response force that does not
depend on member governments' contributions of brigades from their own armies. A standing U.N. force
would need the support of some of the major military powers. It must be large enough to effectively
intervene in situations like Rwanda. It should be composed of volunteers from around the world, the
best of the best, who train together specifically for U.N. peace-keeping. Its capabilities and training
would need to include many non-military functions, including policing, administration of justice, and
conflict transformation.
Although the U.S. and other Permanent 5 members of the Security Council do not currently support creation of such a standing U.N. force, it is an idea whose time will come.
Non-violent Intervention
We must build institutions to intervene non-violently before genocide begins. Every church, synagogue,
mosque, and temple should teach peace-making, and inter-religious leaders' councils should be formed
wherever there is religious division. In ethnically divided societies, radio and television and educational
systems should be used to advocate tolerance and to humanize the other groups in the society, to show
that they are like "us."
The 2005 report of the U.N. High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (U.N. Doc. A/59/565
(2005)) recommended creation of a U.N. Peacebuilding Commission to be tasked with prevention of conflict and state failure. The problem with the recommendation is that most genocide does not arise out
of state failure or conflict. It is the result of unchecked state power.
The Carnegie Commission Report on Preventing Deadly Conflict (1997) is the best known example of
the common assumption that conflict prevention will also prevent genocide. Conflict prevention is often
a laudable goal, and sometimes it will contribute to genocide prevention. But it often will not. Jews had
no conflict with Germans, nor did Armenians with Turks. In Rwanda, Kuperman (2001) argues that the
Arusha Accords actually increased the likelihood of genocide when the Hutu Power elite realized they
would lose their grip on power if the Accords were implemented. Faced with the negotiated reduction in
their power, they instead decided to kill every Tutsi in Rwanda.
Diplomats believe in conflict prevention, so it is the default position of most foreign ministries. But in
cases of genocide, forceful intervention to overthrow a dictator or stop mass killing may be much more
effective than a peace agreement. Negotiations with genocidists may result in appeasement that
encourages their will to power, as it did with Hitler, Stalin, and Habyarimana -- and, currently, with al-Bashir in Sudan.
The International Criminal Court
The world needs and finally has an International Criminal Court (ICC). Impunity for genocide, war
crimes, and crimes against humanity must end. The ICC must be backed by the will of nations to arrest
those it indicts. The ICC may not deter every genocidist, but it will warn every future tyrant
who believes he or she can get away with mass murder.
Despite the opposition of the U.S. government, which is still advocating impunity for U.S. officials (a position that would have immunized every tyrant of the last century), the ICC is now a reality and will be able to try perpetrators of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Through referral by the U.N. Security Council, the ICC Prosecutor has undertaken investigations and prosecutions of crimes against humanity and genocide in Darfur, Sudan.
Building a Mass Movement Against Genocide
These institutional changes will not be enough to end genocide in the twenty-first century. Eventually we
must return to the problem of political will. It was not for want of U.N. peace-keepers in Rwanda that
800,000 people were murdered. They perished because of the complete lack of political will by the
world's leaders to save them.
Indeed, it was their political will to actually withdraw the U.N. peace-keepers and leave them to their murderers. Neither the U.S. nor any other member of the U.N. Security Council had the political will to risk one of their citizens to rescue 800,000 Tutsis from genocide.
There is something profoundly wrong about that. The wrong stems from the problem of ethno-centrism.
The US, UK, France, Russia, China and the UN drew a circle, that shut Rwandans out of our common humanity.
In October 2000, the second debate of the candidates for President of the United States demonstrated that neither
candidate had learned the lessons of Rwanda. Then Governor George W. Bush said the U.S. was right
not to send in U.S. troops because Rwanda is not in the sphere of America's national interests. Then U.S.
Vice President Al Gore tried to excuse the Clinton administration's policy failure by saying the U.S. had
no allies to go in with, as it did in Bosnia; ignoring the fact that 2500 U.N. peace-keepers were already on
the ground in Rwanda. Evidently, he dismissed the use of the U.N. as a multi-lateral peace-keeper.
We must create a world-wide movement to end genocide, like the movement to abolish slavery in the nineteenth
century. National leaders must learn that if they do not stop genocides, they will be voted out of office.The Alliance Against Genocide was organized at the Hague Appeal for Peace in May 1999 to mobilize the international political will to halt genocide once and for all.The Alliance envisions a world-wide network of organizations working together and separately toward that common goal.
The first job in preventing and stopping genocide is getting the facts in clear, indisputable form to policy
makers. Some of that job is done by the news media. But conveying the information is not enough. It
must be interpreted so that policy makers understand that genocidal massacres are systematic; that the
portents of genocide are as compelling as warnings of a hurricane. Then options for action must be
suggested to those who make policy, and they must be lobbied to take action.
Policy makers act when they feel public pressure to act. If the international campaign is to be effective, it
must build an international mass movement that will exert the political and cultural pressure on world
leaders necessary to create political will.
Only fifty years ago, segregation was still the law in the southern United States and less than twenty
years ago apartheid still ruled South Africa. But in both the U.S. and South Africa, mass movements
created the political will to change the laws and gradually the cultures of racism are changing as well.
Non-violent resistance finally broke up the Soviet communist empire, once thought to be frozen forever in
tyranny.
Mass movements must mobilize the religious leaders, the celebrities and stars, the churches, synagogues,
mosques, and temples. We must make indifference to genocide culturally unacceptable and politically
impossible. We must educate and advocate, demonstrate and legislate.
Just as the nineteenth century was the century of the movement to abolish slavery, let us make the twenty-
first the century when we abolish genocide. Genocide, like slavery, is caused by human will. Human
will -- including our will -- can end it.
References
Carnegie Commission Report on Preventing Deadly Conflict (2001), Washington, DC: Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.
Harff, Barbara (2003). Assessing Risks of Genocide and American Political Science Review (February) 97(1): 57-73.
Harff, Barbara (1998).In Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems, ed.
L. Davies and T.R. Gurr. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Krain, Matthew (1997). -Sponsored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocides and Crimes Against Humanity. Journal of Conflict Resolution 41: 331-360.
Alan J. Kuperman (2001). The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention. Genocide in Rwanda, The Brookings
Institution Press, Washington, D.C.
Rummel, Rudy (1994). Death by Government. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.Stanton, Gregory (1998)
Stanton, Gregory (1998) The Ten Stages of Genocide. Yale Genocide Studies Series, GS01, February, 1998. updated at https://www.genocidewatch.com/tenstages
Stanton, Gregory (2004a) The UN Needs a Genocide Prevention Center,
Stockholm International Forum on Genocide Prevention, Proceedings, January 2004.
Stanton, Gregory (2004c) Could The Rwandan Genocide Have Been Prevented? Journal of Genocide
Research, Vol. 6, No. 2, June 2004, 211- 228. updated at https://www.genocidewatch.com/_files/ugd/df1038_f7be8c52217e42a98836121318b7d146.pdf
Stanton, Gregory (2005). in Apsel, ed., Darfur: Genocide Before Our Eyes, Institute for the Study of Genocide, 43 - 47.
U.N. Doc. A/55/305 S/2000/809 (2000). The Brahimi Report of the Panel onU.N. Peace Opereations.
New York: United Nations.
U.N. Doc. A/59/565 (2005). A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility: Report of the High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change. New York: United Nations.
Endnotes
[1] Forthcoming in Totten, ed. Genocide: An Annotated Bibliographic Review. Routledge, 2006.
[2] Rummel has recently revised his estimate of the death toll from twentieth century genocide, politicide
and other mass murder to 262 million. (personal communication)
[3] It is worth noting that The Military Staff Committee envisioned by Article 47 of the U.N. Charter has
never been formed. It was meant to be a permanent military command that would assist the Security
Council in planning application of armed force under Chapter VII (peacemaking without host country
consent.)