ABSTRACT
Ironically, the United Nations, the one institution in the world whose primary mission is to maintain peace across the globe, contributes in significant ways to impeding the prevention and intervention of genocide. The United Nations also created the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in order to try alleged perpetrators of crimes against humanity and genocide during the crisis in the former Yugoslavia and the 1994 Rwandan genocide, respectively. Some genocide scholars mock the value of the development and implementation of such a system, arguing that it is not the vital mechanism that some make it out to be. Adding grease to the fire, in dealing with cases of crimes against humanity and genocide, the votes of the Permanent Five (P5) were driven by realpolitik. The P5 of the UN Security Council constitutes an elite "club" of the United States, Great Britain, France, China, and the Federation of Russia.
