The Great Powers and Genocide: Lessons from Rwanda

This article is divided into three sections. The first summarises the prevailing, if circumscribed, moral and legal consensus against genocide and outlines three lines of argument to broaden the foundation of this consensus. The second section briefly dissects the Rwandan genocide and identifies the principal political and strategic constraints explaining the failure of the United Nations and the great powers to address either the Rwandan crisis or genocide more widely since the formation of the United Nations. On the basis of this diagnosis of why moral and legal prohibitions against genocide do not match the political and strategic incentives to end this practice, a final section proposes practical steps to bridge this gap to strengthen the capacity of the United Nations to create an effective anti-genocide regime.