Writ of summons - Van Diepen Van der Kroef

is taken at a time prior to the genocide. The ICJ has held on this in its Decision of 26February 2007 that (see, legal consideration 431):‘(…) a State can be held responsible for breaching the obligation to prevent genocideonly if genocide was actually committed. (…) This obviously does not mean that theobligation to prevent genocide only comes into being when perpetration of genocidecommences; that would be absurd, since the whole point of the obligation is to prevent,or attempt to prevent, the occurrence of the act. In fact, a State’s obligation to prevent,and the corresponding duty to act, arise at the instant that the State learns of, or shouldnormally have learned of, the existence of a serious risk that genocide will becommitted. From that moment onwards, if the State has available to it means likely tohave a deterrent effect on those suspected of preparing genocide, or reasonablysuspected of harboring specific intent (dolus specialis), it is under a duty to make suchuse of these means as the circumstances permit.’407. The above statement means that the UN and the State of the Netherlands should havedeployed all means available to them from the time that they suspected or reasonablyshould have suspected that genocide would be committed. As was addressed above andwill be addressed again below, the UN and the State of the Netherlands knew already asearly as 1993 of the impending threat of genocide. Moreover, the UN and the State ofthe Netherlands knew that the Bosnian Serbs were constantly attacking the Safe Areaand that the ethnic cleansing of this area was the aim of the Bosnian Serbs. The factsand circumstances described above that took place under the eyes of Dutchbat werealso an unequivocal announcement of what would take place. Most of the murders werecommitted in the days following the fall of the Safe Area.408. The knowledge that the threatened genocide was also specifically known to the UN andthe State of the Netherlands appears from the following. In the UN Report of 30 April1993 (UN, S/25700, Report of the Security Council established pursuant to resolution819 (1993)) is the following statement:© Van Diepen Van der Kroef Advocaten 2007www.vandiepen.com170