List of massacres, compiled by refugees in Touloum refugee camp, Chad. The refugees are desperate to have their stories told - they want the world to know where, when, what and who. Photo by Jerry Fowler

1. Killing members of the group;



2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;



3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;



4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;



5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

1. Genocide;



2. Conspiracy to commit genocide;



3. Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;



4. Attempt to commit genocide;



5. Complicity in genocide.

Gregory H. Stanton wrote Eight Stages of Genocide in 1996.

Genocide is a process that develops in eight stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The later stages must be preceded by the earlier stages, though earlier stages continue to operate throughout the process.

• Classification: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into "us and them" by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality.



• Symbolization: We name people "Jews" or "Gypsies", or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply them to members of groups.



• Dehumanization: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder.



• Organization: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, though sometimes informally (Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants) or by terrorist groups.



• Polarization: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction.



• Preparation: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. Members of victim groups are forced to wear identifying symbols. They are often segregated into ghettoes, forced into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.



• Extermination: Extermination begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called "genocide." It is "extermination" to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing.



• Denial: Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them.
  
  The best response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the perpetrators punished. Tribunals like the Yugoslav, Rwanda, or Sierra Leone Tribunals, an international tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and ultimately the International Criminal Court must be created. They may not deter the worst genocidal killers. But with the political will to arrest and prosecute them, some mass murderers may be brought to justice.

As the death toll mounted, General Dallaire submitted a detailed plan for a Rapid Reaction Force. He needed 5,000 soldiers to dismantle the killing machine of the genocidaire and to stop the Hutu power movement. The UN Security Council rejected the plan. The United States even refused to acknowledge the genocide to avoid any legal obligations to help. Indepth: Romeo Dallaire

Attention to Darfur's staggering death toll---which has grown to approximately 400,000 over the course of more than two years of genocidal conflict---has increased dramatically in the past several months. Darfur Mortality Update: April 30, 2005

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the Security Council's decision as one that would "ensure that those responsible for atrocities in Darfur are held to account." The text, which refers to developments in Darfur since 1 July 2002, was adopted just before midnight Thursday (New York time) by a vote of 11 in favour, with Algeria, Brazil, China and the United States abstaining. In particular European powers had lobbied for the decision.

The Khartoum government, on the other hand, today made it clear it would not support the Security Council decision. Several high-ranking Sudanese government officials risk being accused of war crimes by the ICC. The government in a statement indicated it would not cooperate with the Court, rejecting "the prosecution of any Sudanese national outside of the country."

In January 2005, an international commission of inquiry appointed by the UN recommended that the UN Security Council refer the situation in Darfur to the ICC - the only means by which the Court could assume jurisdiction in this instance. The commission found that the Sudanese government and militias were responsible for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, amounting to crimes under international law.

Opposition by several major powers so far however had hindered the referral of war crime cases in Darfur to the ICC. In particular the Washington government opposed the move as the US does not recognise the ICC. Further, China, an ally of the Khartoum government, protested the solution. Both China and the US have veto powers in the Security Council and only their abstention in the vote secured this night's resolution.

The use of the ICC has also been strongly lobbied by human rights groups all over the world, in particular in the US. The groups hold that the ICC is the only institution that can bring justice to Darfur's many war crime victims. This night's decision was therefore celebrated as a major victory by these groups, several UN institutions and governments in Europe. Relief as Darfur war crimes are referred to ICC

"I feel terrible about the September 11 terrorist attacks – it was absolutely grotesque - but you mobilized the world. No one was mobilized when 800,000 were killed in Rwanda, and they are just as human." Lt. Gen. Roméo A. Dallaire

"A former Marine, I had arrived in Sudan's Darfur region in September 2004 as one of three U.S. military observers for the African Union, armed only with a pen, pad and camera. The mandate for the A.U. force allowed merely for the reporting of violations of a cease-fire that had been declared last April and the protection of observers. The observers sometimes joked morbidly that our mission was to search endlessly for the cease-fire we constantly failed to find. I soon realized that this was no joke." Brian Steidle

See the children with their backs torn open by bullets. See the villages torched and strafed by government gunships. See the refugees crammed into camps, parched and starving. A few minutes of this is enough to make one scream for someone, anyone, anyone at all to just do something.

The UN Security Council could, in theory, put in an expanded civilian protection force into Darfur, possibly deploying peacekeepers from other African and Muslim countries. But China—which imports six percent of its oil from Sudan, and has a controlling stake in various Sudanese oil companies—would likely veto any such intervention. Likewise, NATO could step in, but for the fact that France has opposed such a move, arguing that the organization should not be "the gendarme of the world." And other Arab countries have also declined to get involved; Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit, for instance, has denounced any possible "internationalization" of the conflict.

For its part, the Bush administration no longer seems willing to put pressure on its allies over Darfur; over the past few weeks the State Department has shied away from calling the situation a "genocide," a word that Colin Powell had been hurling around with authority last year. More recently, Mark Leon Goldberg of the American Prospect reported that the White House was trying to thwart the Darfur Accountability Act from passing Congress, an act which would accelerate AU deployment, authorize an expansion of the UN peacekeeping force, slap sanctions on Khartoum, and use international airpower to enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur and prevent Sudanese gunships from strafing villages. One possible explanation for the shift: The Los Angeles Times' Ken Silverstein reported last week that the U.S. appears to be gaining valuable counterterrorism support from, among other things, Sudan's intelligence chief Salan Abdallah Gosh, who happens to be overseeing the genocidal war against Darfur.