UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday asked the international community to prevent rather than react to genocide as the crime does not happen overnight.
“Genocide is deliberate and premeditated and requires serious preparations that take time. Those preparations should give the world time to act,” Guterres told an event to mark the 70th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the international day to commemorate genocide victims.
“Tragically, the international community has sometimes failed to heed the warning signs and take early and decisive action. Rather than preventing genocide, we are still reacting to it, often too late,” said Guterres.
Since the end of World War II, the international community has failed to prevent genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, and Srebrenica in the former Yugoslavia, he noted.
In the past two decades, the world has at least started to hold perpetrators to account, he said. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia have all convicted perpetrators for the crime of genocide.
The work of these courts reflects a welcome resolve to punish genocide, he said.
The UN General Assembly in September 2015 designated Dec. 9 as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. Dec 9 is the anniversary of the adoption of the 1948 Genocide Convention.