Genocide prevention not enough, activist says

When human rights activist Dr. Gregory Stanton was crossing the South African border during apartheid, he refused to mark off any boxes labeled ‘race’ on his immigration slips.

Despite protests from South African police, who told him he was Caucasian, he would instead cross out all possible answers and write, ‘human.’

‘We all belong to one race: the human race,’ he said, ‘We must not forget that.’

Stanton, who helped draft the United Nations Security Council resolutions that mandated the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, repeatedly said the U.N. Convention for the Prevention and Punishment for Crimes of Genocide was ‘born toothless,’ in a lecture Monday afternoon at the Boston University School of Law, which about 20 LAW students attended.

‘Serious flaws exist in the legal terminology and definitions for genocide that the United Nations have drafted,’ Stanton said. ‘Starting with the vagueness of Article I of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment for the Crime of Genocide.

‘The U.N.’s definition omits the destruction of cultural, social, economic, religious and political aspects of ethnic groups during genocide and focuses only on the physical destruction of that group,’ he said.

No article mentions the prevention of genocide, and only addresses what can be recognized as genocide after it has taken place, Stanton said.

Many genocides today, such as the current one in Darfur, took years to be recognized as genocide by the U.N. ‘because of a lack of evidence of intended and organized mass destruction,’ he said.

The conflict in Darfur has led to 300,000 casualties and displaced 2.7 million people after an ongoing war started in 2003, when rebels took arms against the government accusing them of neglect and discrimination, according to the Associated Press.

Stanton said there was evidence, but not enough ‘political will’ from commission leaders to validate the evidence.

Today, the U.N. recognizes Darfur’s genocide, but only as being led by individuals, not as by a nation, he said. However, the U.N. has also singled out Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir as one of the leaders of the genocide.

‘How many victims does it take for it to be called genocide?’ Stanton asked the audience.

Stanton said the U.N.’s role in the prevention of genocide has taken a very backwards view on the issue resulting on its shameful failure to prevent genocides such as the one in Darfur. Nevertheless, he said he thinks there is hope.

Since the creation of human rights organizations, such as the Genocide Watch, which Stanton founded in 1999, many international and regional organizations and courts have been set up as well in order to deal with genocide prevention and punishment.

However, Stanton reminded the audience that governments, institutions and organizations are not all evil and are made up of people.

‘We are all people, and no matter how evil a government may seem, you will always find a good human person willing to work for justice,’ he said.

BU LAW graduate student Benjamin Franklin said he appreciated Stanton’s approach to human rights while still being a lawyer.

‘What I like about Dr. Stanton is that he encourages a more human approach in legal actions involved in human rights,’ he said.’

Yao Wu, a BU LAW student involved in human rights organization PAIR, said her young age and brief involvement in human rights made her think human rights associations had existed much longer.

‘What shocked me the most is to have learned that the first NGO against genocide was only founded 10 years ago,’ she said. ‘There is still so much that needs to be done.’