Legal Responses to Genocide and Other Massive Violations of Human Rights

Abstract

What can the enlightened sectors of the international community do to prevent and halt the proliferation of genocides and massive human rights violations around the planet? We evade the obvious, albeit costliest answer-to arrest them before, or at least while they are happening, by any means necessary: to stop them by stopping them. Instead, we focus on actions after the fact. One method, which is particularly favored is to create courts to try the perpetrators of atrocities. Indeed, in the course and the wake of the atrocities committed in Cambodia, southern Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire-the list grows relentlessly-many in the international community call for the creation of ad hoc or standing international criminal courts to deal with the gravest of international legal delicts.