Incentivizing and Protecting Informants Prior to Mass Atrocities Such as Genocide: An Alternative to Post Hoc Courts and Tribunals

41 Pages Posted: 14 Jul 2007

See all articles by Eric Talbot Jensen

Eric Talbot Jensen

Brigham Young University School of Law

Abstract

International institutions are almost exclusively reactive to violations of international law. There are very few systemic methods of proactively trying to prevent egregious violations such as genocide; rather, international law seems to take punishing violators as its sole approach. In modern times, most of the punishment and post-event enforcement has come through international courts and tribunals. These courts and tribunals are astoundingly expensive and notoriously inefficient. More importantly, the threat of prosecution does not appear to act as an effective deterrent in preventing criminal acts.

This is unacceptable. With hundreds of thousands of lives at stake, the international community must take proactive steps to not only stop and deter, but also prevent mass atrocities and genocides in the future. This paper proposes one possibility that could be both efficient and effective in accomplishing this vital task.

International institutions should provide a proactive method of enticing individuals involved in the early planning stages to come forward and report proposed genocidal activities or other mass atrocities. Then these institutions must be willing to respond aggressively to prevent the activities from occurring. Such a program would not only have to provide incentives for those with information to come forward but would also have to protect them from the unscrupulous actors who will seek retribution for being discovered in their illegal acts. An effective pre-atrocity incentive and protection program would not only prevent long and expensive post-criminal act trials, but more importantly, it would prevent the repetition of the hundreds of thousands of deaths experienced in the genocides of the last two decades.

Keywords: international law, law of war, international courts, international tribunals, ICTR, ICTY, ICC, law of war, genocide, mass atrocity

JEL Classification: K10, K14, K30, K33, K42

Suggested Citation

Jensen, Eric Talbot, Incentivizing and Protecting Informants Prior to Mass Atrocities Such as Genocide: An Alternative to Post Hoc Courts and Tribunals. Houston Journal of International Law, Vol. 29, No. 1, 2006, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=999576

Eric Talbot Jensen (Contact Author)

Brigham Young University School of Law ( email )

504 JRCB
Provo, UT 84602
United States

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