‘J’ ACCUSE…!’

I accuse you, the governments of the international community, of failing to prevent and protect against the rising incidence of atrocities throughout the world. Humbly echoing and appropriating Zola’s great words and accusations against the failings of the French government in respect of the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair (1894-1906), to all governments I say, “Your star, so happy until now, is threatened by the most shameful and most ineffaceable of blemishes”.

Global peace and prosperity face an existential threat from your lack of effective action in curtailing the atrocities of genocide, war crimes, aggression and crimes against humanity. The world can no longer afford for you to allow such injustices to continue unabated.

How is this even happening?

If one has ever pondered how, in such a wealthy globalised and technological world, such atrocities continue under our very noses, rest assured you are not alone. The currently occurring atrocities are not the first time our governments have failed us, and more incidences of disappointing failure are to come. Unresolved factors such as poverty, climate change, ignorance and injustice breed conflict, polarisation and the consequential dehumanisation of individuals and sometimes whole communities that leads to atrocities. 

Conflicts and associated atrocities are on the increase. In the five years before 2024, over 100 countries were involved in external conflict, up from 59 in 2008. In the first two decades of the new millennium, a fifth of all countries in the world experienced atrocities. The increase is a real existential challenge to the planet, on a par with climate change or a meteor collision, yet more probable and immediate in terms of their extinction threat. I accuse global governments of not doing enough to protect us all and our planet from disaster. 

We are all as much to blame as our governments. The more we watch from the comfort of our sofas but do nothing or feel too remote to do anything, the more we inadvertently normalise atrocity and let our governments off the hook. Before we knew it, atrocities became as regular and normal as our favourite soap operas. We are sleepwalking into a reality where atrocities are the norm; humankind is becoming numb to them, our reactions anesthetised down to simply caring, or seeking to demonstrate we care for social status and acknowledgement, but not acting.

This Orwellian nightmare is becoming dangerously real. But it can be stopped. International law and its structures were developed post-1945 to seek to ensure atrocities would happen ‘never again’, as the signs of the survivors of the Buchenwald camp called for. International justice mechanisms were developed to ensure member states of the global international community prevent and protect against it happening ever again. As we watch the horror of the atrocities occurring now in Ukraine, Palestine, Israel and Sudan, those oft repeated promises, such as Kofi Annan’s in the 90s, of the UN being enabled to never again fail to protect us against atrocities, are beginning to sound hollow: “We are the hollow men/We are the stuffed men/Leaning together/Head piece filled with straw. Alas”. TS Elliot alluding to our past failure in preventing atrocities in the Congo, which coincidently, coincided with the Dreyfus Affair.

How on earth did we allow this to happen, especially in this self-proclaimed more caring, sharing and technological new world where, from the comfort of our homes, we can watch live feeds of the atrocity unravelling in real time? We no longer have the excuse of not being able to have been on a paddle boat up the Congo nor being able to see inside the gates of shrouded concentration camps.

It speaks for itself, with the soaring rise in global atrocities, that our post-1945 system of international justice is failing, perhaps unfit for purpose. This unsatisfactory state of affairs is not necessarily simply due to the inadequacy of international laws. Ask yourself though a looming question: will we look back in 40 years and roll our eyes that we only focused on human centric atrocities and ignored non-human ones, such as ecocide to the planet? 

The inadequacy rather is the envisaged continuous evolution of its platforms and processes being not only ignored, but actively curtailed through resource and political will starvation. The overwhelming cause of our failings towards delivering on ‘never again’, is the inescapable fact of the politicisation of the international justice system. Decisions and actions on atrocities may in part lie in legal definitions being made (but even such tardy processes are often at the whim or timeline of politics within the international justice system and ever too late to trigger action), but essentially any action is often a pawn to trade, security and diplomacy of member governments’ politics. 

Thus, on most occasions of any atrocity, any government will have a natural conflict of interest in taking action to deal with it when such activity might impact on its own economic or security priorities; the pawn of justice will always be sacrificed.  “…but man, proud man, Drest in brief authority, Most ignorant of what he’s most assured… Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven As make the angels weep”. The corrupting nature and arrogance of power and decision makers is far older than Shakespeare’s reflection on it. More than ever, we need the pawn of justice to cross the board and become a queen; becoming powerful, dynamic and independent, so as to have the ability to attack and defend against atrocities across the global chessboard.  Until such action is possible, we need to protect that pawn at all costs and do all we can to nurture it towards becoming a queen.

The Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes

For now, we have numerous initiatives like our executive committee of legal academics, practitioners and policymakers who formed the Standing Group on Atrocity Crimes that was just launched in parliament. The Standing Group, chaired by Baroness Helena Kennedy, is seeking to review international and UK domestic laws, platforms and processes to assess why they are not fit for purpose and recommend how they might become practicably so. We seek to become a traffic light resource to government to enable them to know when they should go and prevent, when they must seek accountability, and when they must stop an atrocity. Committee members have literally been into the Heart of Darkness, witnessed first-hand the ‘horror’ and seen that “Mistah Kurtz – he [not] dead”. We hope the first-hand experiences and technical expertise will magnify and add depth and colour to help improve our government’s vision (or lack thereof) towards atrocities and better focus its responses to them.

As Conrad, Morel and Casement made the UK government of the late 18th to early 19th century aware of that Congo ‘horror’, we along with other important initiatives, including every informed sofa activist of the day, must attempt the same with each future horror. The UK government has the unique opportunity to play a leading global role in this matter. In much the same way as the UK pioneered the creation and enforcement of the early 19th century anti-slavery movement, it can now do the same with an anti-atrocity movement. Far from such beneficial humanitarianism becoming a chain around Britannia’s neck, remember that its past anti-slavery vigilance did in fact develop and promote our security and economy, enabling us to intervene against malpractice-ing competitors and foster lucrative fair trade. Whilst international order lacks hegemony and remains swaddled in chaos, there is a real opportunity for the UK to rekindle its pivotal maternal role in global justice through leading international partners in an evolution – through reformation and renaissance – of international and domestic justice systems’ responses to atrocity prevention and protection.

I have no angle or politics in this game beyond law, reason and passion. As Zola better explained in ‘J’Accuse…!’, “I have only one passion, that of light, in the name of humanity which has suffered so and is entitled to happiness. My ignited protest is nothing more than the cry of my heart”.