In 1999, United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan began to explore ways to move the United Nations from a “culture of reaction to a culture of prevention”. His millennium report to the General Assembly in 2000 challenged member states to reach a consensus and work to strengthen and make more effective the organization’s capacity and willingness to respond to various political, human rights and humanitarian crisis.

In April 2004, on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced an action plan to prevent genocide which would involve the entire United Nations system. The five point action plan includes preventing armed conflict; protection of civilians in armed conflict; ending impunity through judicial action; information gathering and early warning; and swift and decisive action.

In early 2005, Secretary-General Kofi Annan submitted to member states a series of recommendations for UN reform, entitled In Larger Freedom, which he hoped would guide the outcome of the upcoming World Summit. These recommendations laid the foundation to gain commitment from member states to transform the United Nations into an effective “preventive” mechanism, as originally intended by the founding members to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.

In September 2005, the largest gathering of world leaders convened at the United Nations in New York to tackle various challenges in areas of development, security, human rights, and UN reform. Most notably, Heads of State and Government endorsed the Genocide Prevention mandate of 2004 (SAPG) alongside the commitment to the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P). Working through the United Nations, governments acknowledged responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. The unanimous adoption of the R2P principle has created a legal and moral framework by which to ensure that governments act appropriately in situations of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

In line with member states' commitments to transform the United Nations into a more effective prevention mechanism, the human rights, humanitarian, peace & security, development and justice instruments discussed in this section constitute a growing body of actors contributing to the short- and long-term UN prevention of genocide.