ABSTRACT
One hundred forty-one United Nations member states are currently the parties to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948. 2 It was the first human rights treaty adopted by the UN. Yet for the next 60 years their actions following the ratification of the Convention have been dismal and can be described as “willful neglect,” the attitude of indifference to the commitment to and consequences of a truly faithful interpretation of the text. Now, after Rwanda, the Balkans, and most recently Sudan, coupled with some significant institutional experimentation, the new measures of state engagements are emerging to create a truly effective alliance of non-genocidal and anti-genocidal states as a mechanism for the prevention of civilian devastation. To address willful neglect of states—the most powerful actors in either committing or preventing genocide and mass atrocities—and thereby protect civilians from genocide or mass killing whose identities are defined by the perpetrators, we must re-engage with states’ own capacity to exercise “sovereignty as responsibility.” 3
