Title: Genocide prevention - Wikipedia
Headings: Genocide prevention
Genocide prevention
Contents
The psychological basis of genocide
Social psychological factors
Risk factors for genocide
Early warning signs of genocide
The role of the United Nations
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
International criminal tribunals
The Responsibility to Protect
Criticisms of the United Nations on genocide prevention and intervention
Types of prevention
Upstream prevention
Mid-Stream prevention
Downstream prevention
Genocide prevention and public health
Ongoing prevention efforts
Genocide Watch
The Alliance Against Genocide
United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect
Early warning project
Genocide task force
References
External links

Content: The Genocide Convention and the Responsibility to protect provide the basis for the responsibility of every UN member state to actively prevent genocide and act to stop it in other states when it occurs. However, the United Nations has been heavily criticized for its failure to prevent genocide, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century. Intervention in genocide can occur at many different stages of the progression of a genocide, but the most ideal stage to intervene is before genocide occurs at all, in the form of prevention known as upstream prevention. Preventing genocide in this way requires a constant and thorough assessment of the risk of genocide around the world at any given time, given the known risk factors, early warning signs, and the knowledge of how a genocide progresses. Contents
1 The psychological basis of genocide
1.1 Social psychological factors
2 Risk factors for genocide
3 Early warning signs of genocide
4 The role of the United Nations
4.1 The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
4.2 International criminal tribunals
4.3 The Responsibility to Protect
4.4 Criticisms of the United Nations on genocide prevention and intervention
5 Types of prevention
5.1 Upstream prevention
5.2 Mid-Stream prevention
5.3 Downstream prevention
6 Genocide prevention and public health
7 Ongoing prevention efforts
7.1 Genocide task force
8 References
9 External links
The psychological basis of genocide
Genocide is not something that only trained, sadistic killers take part in, but rather it is something that ordinary people can do with the proper “training” via cognitive restructuring and social conditioning. The act of killing for genocidal purposes is not a distinct category of human behavior, but instead demonstrates the potential of ordinary psychological and social psychological processes to be manipulated and escalated into violence in certain environments and conditions. One of the major puzzles in studying both the occurrence of and prevention of genocide, therefore, is understanding what makes those "normal" cognitive processes, both on the individual and collective levels, vulnerable to manipulation by outsiders, and which social and political conditions provide a breeding ground for that manipulation into violence. On the individual level, the psychological concept of Cognitive dissonance plays a large role in a person's transformation from peaceful citizen to violent genocidal killer. Even more specifically, Alexander Hinton, in his 1996 study on the psycho-social factors that contributed to the Cambodian genocide, coined the term "psychosocial dissonance" to add to this well-known psychological concept other anthropological concepts like cultural models and notions of the self. These forms of dissonance, both cognitive and psychosocial, arise when a person is confronted with behavioral expectations that conflict with their own identity or concept of self, and subsequently work subconsciously to resolve those inconsistencies.