El coste del genocidio.

Abstract

The examination of the responses given by Western countries to genocide in the 20th Century proves that the behavioural pattern es-tablished vis á vis the rise and domination of Hitler is replicated in American and European responses to the carnage in Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the 90s, half a century after the Convention on Genocide. In this case the lack of action is not a result of ignorance, or of the impossibility to intervene; it is caused by a political decisión about the costs of intervention, and henee the result of a lack of willing-ness. Nevertheless, the cost of inaction face to genocide is high, not just from the moral point of view but because of its social and political consequences. It can undermine regional and international stability, as the llth September has shown. Creating short-term political costs for those who do nothing may be a good way of co-rrecting this kind of behaviour.