Denial of Ongoing Atrocities as a Rationale for Not Attempting to Prevent or Intervene

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the ways in which denial is an obstacle to intervention against and prevention of genocide. Denial is a verbal strategy consisting of assertions that events that constitute genocide are not happening or did not happen or that the events in question are or was something other than genocide. “Intervention” is action taken to stop or mitigate genocide once it has started, while “prevention” efforts attempt to alter conditions so that events, which may be leading to genocide, are halted prior to actually becoming genocide. Richard Hovannisian provides one of the few treatments of denial through the various stages of genocide, in particular the execution phase, the short-term aftermath, and different points in the long-term aftermath of the Armenian Genocide. The nature of Sudanese denial is telling and suggests an important critical point helpful to overcoming the legalistic embrace of denial by the United Nations and others in this case and others.