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Preventing Mass Atrocity
Crime—Or Not: Libya,
Syria and Central Africa
Spencer Zifcak
“In his recent, autobiography, the former Secretary-General of the UN, Kofi Annan addressed, as he had many times before, the challenge of preventing mass atrocity crimes. There is, he said:
a hard side to prevention in the global system: i.e. the deterrent effect created by … the threat of an international military response to gross violations of human rights.
The credibility of the UN in the minds of citizens of poor and rich states will depend on where we stand on this issue of humanitarian intervention: the question of whether we are dedicated not to the power of states but to saving lives and defending the human rights of individuals.
If states bent on criminal behavior knew that frontiers were not the absolute defence — if they knew that the Security Council would take action to halt crimes against humanity, they would not embark upon such a course of action in expectation of sovereign immunity. …”
