INTRODUCTION: TIMES HAVE CHANGED

Dictators are shrouded in mystery and therefore inherently difficult to study, but this difficulty is matched by its importance as dictators continue to subject their population to horrible crimes. While they differ tremendously in the degree to which they plunge their country into a life of poverty and death, the worst forms of violence, genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing, occur more often in non-democratic regimes. Frequently, in those situations the dictator is not only unable to prevent them, but actually creates the circumstances in which lower level cadre feel compelled to perpetrate the crimes. The dictator can incite and legitimize the atrocities by propagating an exclusionary ideology. In addition, he is able to create the institutions in which perpetrators will feel duty-bound to perpetrate the horrible acts. Because there are often very few institutional provisions that constrain the power of the dictator and he can exert enormous influence over his regime's policies, studying him, his motivation and rationality are essential in order to bring these crimes to a halt.

After World War II, countries pledged ‘to save succeeding generations from the scourage of war’ and reaffirmed their ‘faith in fundamental human rights’ (Preamble of the UN Charter). In the years that followed, however, the focus on preventing war between countries, by respecting the sovereignty of each nation, restricted efforts to prevent or stop the perpetration of mass atrocities within states. For years, sovereignty was conceptualized in such a way that it prevented other countries or the international community from intervening in the domestic policies of a dictator who perpetrated atrocities in his own country. After the horrendous events in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, this idea was increasingly seen as problematic. Failing to intervene effectively to stop those horrendous crimes, as well as intervening without the authorization of the UN Security Council, as happened in 1999 in Kosovo, were both deemed unacceptable. It led Kofi Annan to ask his famous question what should be done in those instances (Annan, 2000, p. 48).

The Canadian government then brought a group of experts together to answer this important question. In 2001 they published their groundbreaking report in which they introduced ‘the responsibility to protect’. The report changed the way that sovereignty had been interpreted since WWII.