Racial Discrimination, Early Warning and the Prevention of Genocide

most comprehensive normative basis of the prohibition of racial discrimination in international human rights law. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which is the first treatybased body of the UN s human rights protection system is the monitoring organ of the implementation of the Convention. In addition to the examination of State reports, inter-state complaints and individual complaints, CERD elaborated an early-warning and urgent action procedure in 1993 to prevent serious violations of the Convention that may lead to ethnic conflict and violence. Also in 2005, following its declaration on the prevention of genocide, it adopted a decision on the indicators of patterns of systematic and massive racial discrimination. The work of the Committee deserves more support than UN s high politics which transforms the legitime aim of the prevention of genocide into a so-called responsibility to protect.