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Chapter 14 by Andrea Bartoli and Tetsushi Ogata, “Preventing genocide: Towards systematic engagement by states,” centers on the formation of an effective alliance of states committed to non-genocidal and anti-genocidal policies. The authors examine the preconditions for genuine genocide prevention, invoking the doctrine that legitimate states should commit themselves to preventing the recurrence of genocide. The role of the state in genocide prevention should be clear—no genocide can be executed without the state being either directly involved or passively acquiescent to the genocidal forces. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948 states clearly that the adoption of measures to effect the prevention of this terrible crime is a fundamental obligation of the Convention’s state signatories. However, while the document was approved the day before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, its practical application has been almost non-existent. To date 135 countries have signed the Convention, but none has developed a comprehensive, effective, or measurable strategy to prevent genocide. A systematic approach is required for an accurate and effective genocide prevention strategy at the level of the current system of nation-states.
This book explores the issue of civilian devastation in modern warfare, focusing on the complex processes that effectively establish civilians’ identity in times of war.
Underpinning the physicality of war’s tumult are structural forces that create landscapes of civilian vulnerability. Such forces operate in four sectors of modern warfare: nationalistic ideology, state-sponsored militaries, global media, and international institutions. Each sector promotes its own constructions of civilian identity in relation to militant combatants: constructions that prove lethal to the civilian noncombatant who lacks political power and decision-making capacity with regards to their own survival.
Civilians and Modern War provides a critical overview of the plight of civilians in war, examining the political and normative underpinnings of the decisions, actions, policies, and practices of major sectors of war. The contributors seek to undermine the ‘tunnelling effect’ of the militaristic framework regarding the experiences of noncombatants.
This book will be of much interest to students of war and conflict studies, ethics, conflict resolution, and IR/Security Studies.
