warnings, both indirect and explicit, there was widespread failure on the part of individual nations like the United States and international organizations like the United Nations to take the necessary preventative steps before the genocide was already well underway. According to Stanton, the facts about the massacres were heavily resisted; the US and UK refused to invoke the term "genocide" in order to avoid their duty to act, instead naming it a civil war; "group-think" concluded that stopping the genocide would endanger the lives of UNAMIR peacekeeping troops and exceed their mandate [The UNAMIR commander requested reinforcements, but was rebuffed.] ; although thousands of US marines were on ships off the coast of East Africa, US policy makers feared intervention into a "quagmire" like Somalia; and black Rwandan lives did not matter compared to the risk of the lives of Americans, Europeans, and troops from other UN member states. The US Secretary of State did not call the mass killings a genocide until June 10, 1994, after most of the killing was already over, and the press and human rights groups also failed to name the crime for what it was until two weeks into the genocide. The role of the United Nations The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (also known as the "Genocide Convention") is the principal guiding international legal document for genocide prevention efforts, along with Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. In the aftermath of World War II and the atrocities of the Holocaust, the ratification of the Genocide Convention signaled the international community's commitment to the principle of "never again" in terms of its prioritization of genocide prevention. International criminal tribunals In 1993 and 1994, the United Nations Security Council established two ad-hoc international courts, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in order to try those indicted for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the Bosnian and Rwandan genocides. Then, in 1998, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was adopted, giving the International Criminal Court (ICC) jurisdiction for the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The Responsibility to Protect Advocates of the Responsibility to Protect have asserted that nation states that fail to fulfill their essential purpose to protect their