Cold war rivalry shielded genocides from international enforcement

Evidence

The term “genocide” was invented as a response to the Holocaust and has been inscribed within the articles of international law. During the cold war period, the genocides that existed (in Guatemala and Uganda, for example) were partially protected by a cold war rivalry that prevented coordinated international efforts to enforce the Geneva Convention. With the end of the cold war, the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda have led to the creation of an International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague and have become the focal point for the effort to reestablish the Convention of 1948 criminalizing genocide and to provide judicial, diplomatic, and economic disincentives to those who would practice it. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 466

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to theories of international law enforcement and the ICTY’s emergence as institutional design. — connects to: Cold War superpower rivalry froze UN membership and pushed new states to Bandung. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 1293; Preoccupying world war created the opportunity window for genocide — Gregory H. Stanton, Ten Stages of Genocide, 18