Will this indictment make it less likely that al-Bashir will stop using mass murder as an instrument of politics? But if he is not indicted, what is the point of the international human rights system?

Individual leaders are usually the key to articulating the ideologies of mass murder that justify mass killing. Individuals carry out the killing, but it is only when ideas and individuals are organised and directed by state structures that genocides take place. With very few exceptions, it is states – Iraq, Cambodia, Rwanda – that are recognised by the international community as the entities that direct mass killings. Occasionally, there are groups which operate as states within states, such ...

Will this indictment make it less likely that al-Bashir will stop using mass murder as an instrument of politics? But if he is not indicted, what is the point of the international human rights system?

Individual leaders are usually the key to articulating the ideologies of mass murder that justify mass killing. Individuals carry out the killing, but it is only when ideas and individuals are organised and directed by state structures that genocides take place. With very few exceptions, it is states – Iraq, Cambodia, Rwanda – that are recognised by the international community as the entities that direct mass killings. Occasionally, there are groups which operate as states within states, such as the Lord's Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, that embark on mass killing. I cannot think of a single occasion when a non-state entity carried out a genocidal project of the kind conducted by the Nazi, Soviet, Iraqi, Cambodian, Rwandan or Sudanese states.

In the case of formal states there are structures that conform to the accepted definitions of the state – that entity which enjoys a monopoly of power within a defined locality. They will always have control of the mass media as well. In cases of massacre or violence perpetrated by states within states, often dominating a particular area or areas within a country, they are de facto states that control certain amounts of territory. The point is that it is the control of the political organisations and structures that make the mass killing possible. Though leaders matter hugely in the creation of genocidal situations, genocide is a collective endeavour.