Description
In recent years, cosmopolitan theorists and genocide scholars have challenged the Responsibility to Protect on two fronts. First, they argue that mass atrocity prevention embodied in agreements such as the RtoP is, at best, destined to fail, or at worst, harmful, because it upholds and reproduces underlying structures and on-going practices which enable mass atrocities to occur in the first place. A key part of this argument is that socioeconomic factors are often viewed as a key cause or facilitator of mass atrocities. Second, because they view socioeconomics as a key facilitator of mass atrocity crimes, they put forward a normative argument that global socioeconomic structures need to be substantively changed in order to prevent mass atrocities from occurring. But should academics and policymakers buy into these normative recommendations? To answer this, the article analyses the relationship between mass atrocities and socioeconomics by analysing Human Development Index data (1990-2020) in order to shed light on the relationship between mass atrocities and socioeconomics in the 21st century.
