Introducing his presentation in a panel on gaps and challenges in international law and policy with regard to genocide and the most serious international crimes, Prove noted that there have been many occasions over the years on which the WCC has called for recognition of the Armenian genocide by the United Nations and by member states, dating back at least to 1979.
“We believe that there is a duty on the international community to acknowledge and remember the victims of genocide, in order to heal historical wounds and to guard against similar atrocities in the future,” he said. “Denial, impunity and the failure to remember such events encourage their repetition.”
Yet genocide is back in the daily news, Prove noted. But he observed that while political will to prevent such crimes seems to be failing, “the international legal tribunals of adjudication of such crimes (the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court) seem to be taking on greater salience, stepping into the political vacuum and staging a kind of stately judicial fightback.”
However, establishing genocide is extremely difficult under existing international law, since it requires proof of a specific intent to destroy a particular group in whole or in part. And the International Court of Justice has ruled that in order to infer the existence of such intent from a pattern of conduct, it is necessary that this is the only inference that could reasonably be drawn – a very high threshold.
Despite this challenge, victims of atrocity crimes often feel the need to compare their experiences to legally established genocides, Prove further noted.
“And it is obvious that in political and general public discourse, and in the media, the term genocide carries great weight and impact,” he said.
“In any event,” he observed – whether in relation to genocide or other categories of the most serious international crimes (such as crimes against humanity and war crimes)—“it is clear that consistent and non-discriminatory accountability for the most egregious crimes is an absolute necessity for prevention of future such crimes.” He concluded with an appeal “not to throw up our hands in despair at the weakness of international law” but to construct a “web of effective enforcement” by weaving the threads of international law together with political, social, cultural, moral, and religious threads in support of accountability for and prevention of these crimes that so afflict our world today.