ABSTRACT
The prevention of genocide and other mass atrocity crimes has never fit comfortably within the institutional and political culture of the United Nations. Though the General Assembly adopted the Genocide Convention in 1948, it took more than half a century for the world body to appoint an official or announce a tentative plan for preventing genocide. Likewise, the UN’s 2005 World Summit endorsed the responsibility to protect (R2P), but the Assembly has still not approved the funding to carry it out. The UN Charter makes no mention of genocide or mass atrocity crimes, but that has not been the core obstacle to implementation. A major barrier has been the reluctance of Member States to accept individual and collective responsibility to prevent mass atrocities and to protect populations. A less understood set of obstacles, however, has stemmed from the difficulty of integrating this mandate with those of conflict resolution, peacekeeping, humanitarian affairs, and human rights. Genocide prevention and R2P strategies require further consolidation. As with so many other areas of public policy, the UN’s contributions to normative advances have far outstripped its capacity to ensure either prevention or protection. The first step to correcting its cultural, institutional, and operational deficits in this area is to recognize them forthrightly and to focus political attention on them. There are signs, in that regard, that the UN system is beginning to learn some hard lessons from its past failures to prevent or protect populations.
