Do deterrence and norm institutionalisation prevent atrocity crimes?
This argument is viable only if they do. But that proposition is understandably difficult to establish to any substantial degree.11 For a start, the number of cases of mass atrocity is thankfully sufficiently small, knowledge of the actors’ motivations sufficiently limited and the historical threat of prosecution sufficiently murky that it is very difficult to draw any hard and fast conclusions from past cases. That said, there are plenty of examples where whatever threat of criminal prosecution there was failed to deter perpetrators of atrocity crimes, and it is difficult to point to cases of successful deterrence. But this doesn’t prove there are none, as the problem may be the same as that which confronts conflict prevention efforts more generally, namely that it is difficult to establish something that never eventuates: in this case atrocities would have been committed, and no doubt a conflict ensued, but for the deterrence. Also, history is of limited benefit when considering thes
