Hundreds of millions of people risk becoming victims of genocide and related acts of violence. These people live under the governments of political regimes that had and still have inherent propensities to commit mass murder. In some countries, for example in Sudan, the killing is ongoing. Elsewhere, such as in Rwanda, the killing has been very recent. And in other countries, including Kenya, the threat of mass murder seems very real—it almost hangs in the air. And in yet other places, despite visible signs, warning of imminent danger, mass slaughter might occur at any moment.

Our era, since the start of the 20th century, has been plagued by successive mass murders. They have occurred so frequently and collectively have such immense destructive power that the problem of genocide is worse than war. So far nations and governments have done little to prevent or stop the mass slaughter of people. Today the world clearly has no intention to end the greatest scourge of humankind. Evidence of this inadequacy is overwhelming. It can be found in Tibet, North Korea, former Yugoslavia, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Rwanda, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur. Individual people, institutions and governments in every region of the world—we all have the choice.

We can continue this gross negligence, which is based on three elements: avoiding a sober appraisal of the true nature of genocide; failing to admit that we could much more effectively protect hundreds of millions of lives and radically reduce the frequency of mass slaughter; and avoiding decisions to undertake actions based on this knowledge.

Or we can address this plague; understand its causes, nature and complexity, its range and systemic character; and next, based on this understanding, precisely shape institutions and policies that may save countless human lives and remove the mortal threat under which so many people live.

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Genocide begins in human minds. For a certain type of political leader, and even for ordinary people it is easy to dream of eradicating an enemy from their own neighbourhood or nearest neighbourhood, or of living in a cleansed community free of human, social, cultural and political contamination, in a community radically remodelled according to some auspicious plan. However, in order to accept this sort of goal as a real opportunity, as something legitimate and feasible, the political arsenal has to include the possibility of eliminationism, and in the real world this requires an appropriate political context. This context must make possible such actions and thoughts, it must make one and the other feasible. …

The successive political and human catastrophes of our time have shown that genocidal and eliminationist policies are born in the minds of not only political leaders but also their supporters, it flows from their lips and drives their actions. The last hundred years have been the most marked by mass slaughter and eliminationism in human history, they have witnessed genocide, mass expulsions, extensive camp systems and mass rapes that for the first time have been brought to the awareness of the whole world and especially to the awareness of political leaders.

Genocides and other crimes against humanity, such as ethnic cleansing, have certain common features. The most important of these is that the chances of their occurrence is far more probable during war than during peace time. War is associated with uncertainty because its result is usually uncertain. Since uncertainty causes reference to prior knowledge or memory, as Bayes’ findings teach us, the history of very recent very recent loses becomes the key factor affecting the decision-making process. The sense of loss mounts and merges together in extremist tendencies, quests for unity and the continuation of mass murder. Emphasis on loss is a behavioural consequence of political chaos—a factor critical in instigating genocide as has been recognised by scholars such as Robert Melson (1992) and Barbara Harff (2003). Political chaos, be it internal or international, produces victors and the vanquished. As we have seen, the vanquished of previous or still ongoing conflicts become the most probable perpetrators of genocide. Loss is a clear and precisely measurable quality of human nature. …

At the same time, however, a perquisite for the occurrence of genocide is susceptibility to the attack of a group that has real or merely supposed ties with an enemy state (e.g. ethnic ties). That is why not every loss experienced by a state necessarily leads to genocide. The continuation of killing from earlier massacres, which constitutes vulnerability to attacks, as well as validation—assuming that the murders will be unpunished—increase the probability of genocide. …

Since genocides begin during war, military forces exclusively dedicated to intervene in potential cases of genocide (Bauer 2002) may be of assistance. However, if the potential perpetrator is a powerful state, as was the situation in two of the three cases analysed here [the Holocaust, Armenian genocide and Rwandan genocide], such international forces might turn out not to be useful. Judicial authorities without any executive power, such as the International Court of Justice, founded in 1946, had little impact on the Rwanda genocide or genocidal ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. The more recently founded International Criminal Court, which has the jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute persons guilty of crimes defined by the Rome Statute, is able to achieve more, but it is still unable to oppose the impunity of the largest countries. …

From the analytical point of view, the most serious is the situation of a country in the sphere of losses. Identifying the state or population which has recently experienced losses on the international (or interethnic) level, especially territorial losses, may be an important first step in the early detection of potential genocide. The condition of the short space of time is important insofar that the emotional reactions are still fresh and (so far) there has been no compensation. If memory of such losses is taught in schools, say for refugees, then this can be equivalent to the proximity of time.