Evaluating the Efficacy of the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia: IMPLICATIONS FOR CRIMINOLOGY AND INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LAW

At the time of the Armenian massacres, neither the crime nor the definition of genocide had been developed. As [George S. Yacoubian, Jr.] stated, "there were certain rules of war to protect civilian populations, but these regulations failed to cover a government's persecution of its own people." 4 The term "genocide" was developed in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin to denote "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves." 5 Lemkin's efforts culminated in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 6 which officially came into effect as a binding piece of international law on 12 January 1951. Today, 130 states have ratified or acceded to the convention, including all member states of the European Union (EU) and all permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (SC). Article II of the Genocide Convention declares genocide to mean, The crisis in Rwanda was seen exclusively as a humanitarian catastrophe affecting hundred of thousands of refugees, eliciting international compassion, but distracting attention from the genocide that had already run its course. As Destexhe affirmed, "humanitarian action provided a way of responding to the crisis while continuing to conveniently overlook the fact that a genocide had taken place until the situation had evolved to the point where it could be forgotten altogether." 16 In a belated response to the atrocities, the SC established a Commission of Experts in July 1994 to investigate violations of international humanitarian law in Rwanda. 17 In its first interim report, the commission concluded that, "there exists overwhelming evidence to prove that acts of genocide against the Tutsi groups were perpetrated by Hutu elements in a concerted, planned, systematic, and methodical way," and that, "abundant evidence shows that these mass exterminations perpetrated by Hutu elements against the Tutsi group as such ... constitute `genocide' within the meaning of the Genocide Convention." 18 Furthermore, the commission strongly recommended that the SC take action to "ensure that the individuals responsible [be] ... brought to justice before an independent and impartial international criminal tribunal." 19 Having confirmed that genocide and other flagrant violations of international humanitarian law had been committed, the SC established the ICTR 20 at Arusha, Tanzania, in 1994