When the U.N. adopted the Genocide Convention in 1948, it outlawed genocide, the worst of all crimes against humanity. But it did not end genocide. 55 genocides have occurred since. It took the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda to awaken the world to the fact that genocide is a universal human problem, not just a problem for Armenians and Jews.
There are many purposes of genocide research:
The first purpose of research is to discover and understand the social and cultural processes that lead to genocide and how we can prevent it. That is the purpose of the Eight Stages (now Ten Stages) of Genocide I wrote in 1996 for diplomats in the State Department, a model now used in Rwanda and around the world. It will soon be a short (150 page) secondary school textbook, translated into many languages and published free on the internet.
A second purpose of research is to design institutions and policies to stop these genocidal processes before more millions are murdered. That is why I proposed the creation of the Office of the Special Adviser to the UN Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide in a paper in 2000. Genocide Watch, the Leo Kuper Foundation, the Minority Rights Group, and The International Campaign to End Genocide lobbied for it in the UN. Kofi Annan created the Office in 2004, at a commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda.
The third purpose of research is to gather the evidence and build the courts to prosecute planners and perpetrators of genocide. That is why I wrote UN Security Council Resolutions 955 and 978, which created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the Internal Rules of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. It’s also why I resigned from the State Department when the US voted against the Rome Treaty of the International Criminal Court. I became Co-Chair of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court, and working with the President Jimmy Carter, we persuaded President Clinton to sign the ICC Treaty just before he left office. President George W. Bush promptly unsigned it after he took office.
These three purposes have driven the Cambodian Genocide Project, Genocide Watch, and the International Alliance to End Genocide, to which I have devoted my entire professional life.
For me that research began by listening to the survivors of the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. Walking through the mass graves of Cambodia and Rwanda and shedding tears with the survivors, gave me a fierce determination to bring those who committed these genocides to justice…
South Africa Today – World News
