Why Atrocity Crime Prevention?
From the beginning, the founders of the Global Action project understood both the horrors of mass atrocities and the relative impotence of the international community to prevent such violence or at the very least to address its outbreaks at the earliest possible stages. Thanks to our own investigations and those of others, we have come to know the warning signs as well as the triggers of mass violence. We have also recognized and mourned the immense suffering and trauma which results when human beings seek to enforce some perverted notion of racial or religious superiority on other populations.
Through mechanisms such as the Responsibility to Protect and initiatives to control the use of the veto in the Security Council when mass atrocities threaten, there has at least been some formal recognition of the need to end the mass casualty events associated with genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and other grave and multiply traumatic abuses.
As we and others have consistently maintained prevention is always best, but in its absence, early response followed by accountability for abuses is paramount. Indeed, and as the files below suggest, the absence of both is an open invitation to perpetuate abuse, an invitation which some of our fellow humans are all-to ready to exploit.