ABSTRACT
Genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing are universally condemned as illegitimate and morally repellent. One of the most immediately obvious features of the debates around the efficacy of Responsibility to Protect (R2P) is the enthusiasm of many of R2P's more vocal proponents. In recent years many human rights organizations, think tanks and international commissions have published reports which note both an alarming increase in state-sponsored oppression, and a parallel decrease in the international community's willingness to act to prevent or halt intra-state atrocity crimes. Preventative action is premised on a capacity to identify signs of looming violence/atrocities and determine that action must be taken now to forestall a future calamity. The allure of prevention is that it can help avoid tricky questions about R2P's impotence in the face of the myriad intra-state crises that have erupted since 2005.
