Abstract
How to cope with the searing legacy of mass killings — emotional, psychological, social — has become a central concern of our times. It accounts for a large part of the activities of humanitarian non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in places as diverse as Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia and Sudan. It has given rise to a number of organisations engaged in healing strategies, and defined the agenda of countless workshops, conferences and seminars. All of which speaks well for the responsiveness of the international community to the traumatic aftereffects of mass crimes. Nonetheless, this impressive display of humanitarian involvement is a commentary on how much remains to be done, 63 years after the adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to bring to an end what Raphael Lemkin described as that ‘odious scourge’. This disconnect between aspiration and achievement is nowhere more cruelly apparent than in the widening gap between the volume of effort and financial resources devoted to genocide prevention and the modesty of the results. Despite reams of printed materials1 on the theme of ‘Never Again’, the killings go on unabated in North and South Sudan, the Congo, Syria, Yemen and Bahrein, with Libya as the odd man out in a roster of cases where the international community proved unable or unwilling to halt the carnage.
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© 2013 René Lemarchand
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Lemarchand, R. (2013). Coping Strategies and Genocide Prevention. In: Ingelaere, B., Parmentier, S., Jacques Haers, S.J., Segaert, B. (eds) Genocide, Risk and Resilience. Rethinking Political Violence Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137332431_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137332431_3
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