A justiciable responsibility to prevent mass atrocities?

by Eze Eluchie

Can a responsibility to prevent mass atrocities be inferred from the coming into force of the Rome Statutes?

Can this responsibility be justiciable, such as to make it a crime punishable under International Law for a State not to act to prevent the commission mass atrocities?

For weeks, the world had known that the Syrian-Kurdish city of Kobani was within the sights of the Islamic State  (IS)militants and that when IS finally overruns Kobani, that mass killings and other atrocities tantamount to international crimes would be committed.

Yet, the authorities in Turkey, stood idly by, with its soldiers watching across unmarked borders, as the IS militants inched closer by the day to overrun Kobani. An overrun that is now leading to a massacre of monumental proportions.

What relevance is the much touted Responsibility to Protect (R2P) if there is no accountability for deliberate failure to stop the commission of mass atrocities, crimes against humanity and or genocides?



Picture: Mass exodus of Kurds from Kobani, Syria into Turkey to escape the advancing Islamic State