This year marks the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Unanimously adopted by the UN General Assembly on Dec. 9, 1948, the Convention reflects the tireless work of Raphael Lemkin, a Polish linguist and Jew who had survived the Holocaust. But in the long and too often darkened years that followed, the Convention has never prevented a single genocide, even as “prevention” receives pride of place in the convention title.

But if the primary purpose of the Genocide Convention is prevention, the UN and international community must act before there is juridical or historical certainty. We are obliged to act when there is compelling evidence of large-scale destruction of a “national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such.” We might wish for a more detailed account of the mechanism for prevention than is offered in Article 8 of the Convention, but the obligation to act is clear. The National Islamic Front regime in Khartoum continues to commit all the genocidal acts enumerated in Article 2 of the Convention, even if one such act now has particular prominence: “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” While violence may have declined from the ferocious levels of 2003-04, it continues, if in more chaotic fashion.

And even this chaos in Darfur is “by design,” as a recent report from Human Rights Watch authoritatively demonstrates. Nor were the consequences of Khartoum’s genocidal counterinsurgency campaign difficult to discern early on in the conflict. Today the death toll — from violence, disease, and malnutrition — is measured in the hundreds of thousands, and the future looks just as grim.

More than any genocide following the Holocaust, Darfur’s killing fields are the measure of whether, 60 years after its ratification, the UN Convention has any remaining force or meaning. The debacle of deployment in Darfur argues that the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations desperately requires a substantial, robust standing force, prepared to deploy urgently to protect civilian populations facing genocide, war crimes, or crimes against humanity. Actual deployment would be at the request of the Secretary-General, and while a two-thirds majority of the Security Council should be formally required, deployment must not be held hostage to the veto of the five permanent members. This requires substantial revision of the UN Charter, but fundamental changes at the UN are widely recognised as critical for the organisation to remain relevant in the 21st century.

Darfur reveals the consequences of having no international force. If a ruthless regime of genocidaires can insulate itself from international action by claiming “national sovereignty,” Lemkin’s labours will have been in vain. And a Genocide Convention that remains impotent in the face of ongoing genocidal destruction will mark in us the deepest hypocrisy. — The Christian Science Monitor