The prevention of genocide : an unreachable goal? : the case study of Darfur

Abstract

Of all the horrors of the last century - perhaps the bloodiest of the past millennium - genocide ranks amongst the worst and is distinguishable from all other crimes by the motivation behind it. Genocide is a crime on a different scale to all other crimes against humanity and implies an intention to completely exterminate the chosen group. Genocide is therefore both the gravest and the greatest crime against humanity. Genocide is a conspiracy aimed at the total destruction of a group and thus requires a concerted plan of action. The instigators and initiators of genocide are cool-minded theorists first and barbarians only second. The specificity of genocide does not arise from the extent of killings, nor their savagery or resulting infamy, but solely from the intention: the destruction of a group. In mid-2004 the Darfur crisis in Western Sudan forced itself on to the stage of world affairs. A formerly obscure "tribal conflict" in the heart of Africa has escalated into what could be the first genocide of the twenty-first century. The characteristics - Arabism, Islamism, African consciousness, famine as a weapon of war, mass rape, international obfuscation and the refusal to look evil squarely in the face - reflect many of the problems of the global South in general and Africa in particular. Fourteen years after the Rwandese genocide, could the same nightmare be occurring again in another part of the African continent?