John Prendergast     Vision

 
"A world without genocide would remove, frankly speaking, much of the death and destruction of innocent civilian life from war.

We don’t want war that doesn’t affect us perhaps in the US, or Canada, or Great Britain. But for a very large percentage of the world that goes through cycles of conflict, not having the kind of war tactics that target human beings on the basis of their identity would be quite transformative.

Wars will go on for the rest of time--until we blow this planet up or burn it to a crisp.

But, I think that the way, the nature that wars are prosecuted, in which commanders and politicians and generals are willing to use horrifying tactics – like mass rape as a war weapon, the recruitment of child soldiers as the main means of filling up the ranks of your soldiery, and even targeting people on the basis of their identity--which is genocide.

These kinds of tactics, if deterred, if removed from the equations, would make war a much different concept.

People would be fighting over issues and ideas, and against authoritarianism and against evil. There would not be the kind of ratio that we have seen emerge in the 20th Century and the 21st Century accelerating civilian deaths to military deaths.

There has to be accountability. In my worldview if you commit certain crimes and you get away with them, and there is simply no justice for the crimes you commit, why would you change if it is benefiting you? There has to be a cost, a consequence for the commission of mass atrocity.

Until we have a world in which there is automaticity in the imposition of consequences, in the removal of the global state of impunity for genocide and war crimes, it is going to continue. So that is why the work of the ICC and the other tribunals becomes so crucial. Because until there is that game changing, calculation changing, imposition of justice, people will continue to target individuals and groups on the basis of their identity."