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Prevention Cascade: The United States and the Diffusion of R2P

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Human Rights Protection in Global Politics

Part of the book series: Global Issues Series ((GLOISS))

Abstract

In 2004, Sudan won a third term on the Human Rights Commission at the very moment its government was carrying out a genocide in Darfur. The juxtaposition exposed the abysmal job the global governance system has done of living up to its responsibilities under the Genocide Convention (1948), which requires states both to prevent genocide and punish perpetrators (Convention on Genocide, 1948). Despite continuing failures, however, over the past two decades, the duty to punish has begun to be fulfilled. The establishment of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, the International Criminal Court, and other post-conflict and transitional justice processes have given institutional power to a new norm of international criminal accountability, which has spread across the globe, rapidly albeit unevenly, in what Kathryn Sikkink has called a ‘justice cascade’ (Sikkink 2011).

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Authors
  1. Michael Galchinsky
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Glasgow, UK

    Kurt Mills (Senior Lecturer in International Human Rights) (Senior Lecturer in International Human Rights)

  2. University of Sussex, UK

    David Jason Karp (Lecturer in International Relations) (Lecturer in International Relations)

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© 2015 Michael Galchinsky

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Galchinsky, M. (2015). Prevention Cascade: The United States and the Diffusion of R2P. In: Mills, K., Karp, D.J. (eds) Human Rights Protection in Global Politics. Global Issues Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137463173_13

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