Stanton was a law professor at Washington and Lee University from 1985 to 1991,was a Fulbright Professor at the University of Swaziland,and was a professor of Justice,Law,and Society at the American University. From 2003 to 2009,he was the James Farmer Professor in Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg,Virginia.
Stanton was the Chair of the American Bar Association Young Lawyer's Division Committee on Human Rights and a member of the A.B.A.'s Standing Committee on World Order Under Law. Stanton was a legal advisor to Rukh,the Ukrainian independence movement (1988–1992),work for which he was named the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America's 1992 Man of the Year.
Stanton wrote the State Department options paper on ways to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia. Stanton was deeply involved in the U.N.-Cambodian government negotiations that brought about the creation of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,for which he drafted internal rules of procedure.
Stanton is best known for his authorship of The Ten Stages of Genocide,a model of the genocidal process that the US State Department and UN have used in predicting and taking steps to prevent genocide. His Ten Stage model is used in courses on genocide in schools and colleges around the world.
In 1999 Stanton founded Genocide Watch.[11] From 1999 to 2000,he also served as co-chair of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court.
In 2004,Stanton published a proposal to establish an Office for Genocide Prevention at the UN.[12] With other members of the International Campaign to End Genocide,he met with UN officials to lobby for the proposal. In 2004 in Stockholm,Secretary General Kofi Annan announced the creation of the Office of the UN Special Advisor for the Prevention of Genocide.[13]
In 2007,Stanton was elected President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars,to serve until 2009.[14] He served as First Vice President of the Association from 2005 to 2007. In 2013,the organization gave Stanton its Distinguished Service Award and made him a Life Member.[15]
Rwanda
In 1989,after leading a genocide prevention training program for officials from Rwanda and surrounding countries,Stanton met with President Juvénal Habyarimana to ask him to remove ethnic identities from the Rwandan national identification cards because the ID cards could be used to identify people to be killed in a genocide. He advised President Habyarimana that if action were not taken to prevent it,Rwanda would have a genocide within five years.[16]
After the Genocide against the Tutsi broke out in Rwanda in 1994,the Director General of the US State Department Foreign Service,Genta Hawkins Holmes,ordered Stanton to Washington,DC and appointed him to the International Organizations UN Political bureau to guide US response in its aftermath. Stanton went to Rwanda with the UN Commission of Inquiry and co-authored its report,which recommended establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Stanton drafted UN Security Council Resolutions 955 and 978,which established the ICTR and its jurisdiction and called on UN members to extradite persons in their territories suspected of participation in the genocide. When the ICTR had administrative problems in its first year,Stanton went to Arusha,Tanzania and Kigali,Rwanda and recommended reforms to the UN,including appointment of a new Registrar and new Deputy Prosecutor.[citation needed]
The ICTR convicted 62 defendants for genocide,finally fulfilling Raphael Lemkin's dream that the Genocide Convention would become enforceable law.[citation needed]
Zimbabwe
In 2010,Stanton demanded that Robert Mugabe be prosecuted for the crime of genocide. He proposed a "Mixed UN-Zimbabwean Criminal Tribunal" inspired by the Khmer Rouge Tribunal,adding,"Mugabe's reign of terror must end."[17]
In 2012,Stanton called for the United States to release "all diplomatic and intelligence cables relating to the Gukurahundi massacres" of Zimbabwe and to explain the U.S. decision "to remain silent",in order to "clear its conscience".[18]
Gaza
In December 2024,Stanton and the rest of the "Gaza taskforce" at Genocide Watch determined that Israel is committing a genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. They argue that Israel's intentional bombardment of civilian infrastructure and starvation of civilians fulfills the Genocide Convention's definition of genocide,which includes "Killing members of the group" and "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part".[19]
While they condemned Hamas as a "genocidal terrorist organization that must be defeated",they also said that this does not excuse "committing genocide" against Palestinians or "dehumanizing" them.[19]
Stanton has accused Iran –particularly Mahmoud Ahmadinejad –of incitement to genocide,explaining that the constant calls by the Iranian regime to destroy Israel directly advocate genocide.[20][21] Stanton referenced speeches by Ahmadinejad calling for the destruction of Israel and advocating that Israeli Jews should be transferred to Germany and Austria. He described Iran's proposals as incitement to genocide and advocacy of forced population transfer.[22] Stanton wrote:
Iran is the only country since Nazi Germany that has openly expressed its genocidal intent to wipe another nation off the map while pursuing a program to develop nuclear weapons. Few believed that Hitler was serious about his genocidal intentions until Nazis carried out the Holocaust. The Iranian President denies that the Holocaust even happened.
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Stanton has criticized the term "ethnic cleansing", calling it a term invented by Slobodan Milošević as a term used for the denial and cover-up of genocide, stating it whitewashes the crimes and impedes forceful action to stop genocide.[33] He also rejects the "only intent" doctrine that the International Court of Justice used in Bosnia v Serbia and Croatia v Serbia to find that because Serbia's intent was "ethnic cleansing," Serbia's "sole" and "only" intent was not genocide, Serbia had not violated the Genocide Convention, writing:[34]
The ICJ's doctrine of "only intent" for genocide is so wrong that if you liken it to, for instance, intent in ordinary criminal law, it's like saying that if somebody picks up a gun, shoots and kills someone, they can't be charged with murder because they also had the intent to rob the person.
It's a fact that the intent of a state has to be even more complicated and more complex than the intention of an individual. No individual can possibly commit an act, almost any act, that only has one intention. So, this doctrine by the ICJ, I think, is fatally flawed. It would make it impossible to find that any state has violated the Genocide Convention.
↑Totten, Samuel (2017). "4. The role of Nongovernmental Organizations in Addressing the Prevention, Intervention, and Punishment of Genocide in the 1980s, 1990s, and Early 2000s". Genocide at the millennium. Totten, Samuel,, Sherman, Marc I. Abingdon, Oxon: Rutledge. ISBN978-1-351-51784-3. OCLC1013927872.
↑"Samantha Power". U.S. Agency for International Development. January 12, 2023. Archived from the original on December 14, 2022. Retrieved January 21, 2023.
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