What happens when States fail to discharge their primary duties to prevent genocide and cooperate to end it? In answering this question, this project develops a novel legal theory of genocide obligations mobilised “from below” through the work of Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). While international law formally assigns these responsibilities to States, the project argues that CSOs increasingly play a decisive role in triggering, shaping, and operationalising them in practice, especially where state-led enforcement mechanisms falter.

The situations in Myanmar and Gaza show how most States have failed to adopt concrete preventive measures or meaningfully cooperate to halt genocide. Drawing on these two contexts, the project examines how CSOs’ engagement before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission in Myanmar and the UN Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory (UN Commissions) makes genocide obligations enforceable in practice. It looks at how CSOs generate evidentiary records and interpretive frames that translate abstract norms into actionable instruments; and at the way they influence international judicial (ICJ) and quasi-judicial decisions (UN Commissions). Hence, it advances a framework of constitutive legality from below to theorise this significant, yet under-examined, shift in how duties to prevent and cooperate to halt genocide are made effective.

Methodologically, the project combines doctrinal analysis of genocide law and jus cogens norms with a socio-legal study of CSOs’ strategies, legal submissions, and institutional responses. This is enriched by semi-structured interviews with senior officials (who have confirmed their participation) from key CSOs involved in proceedings before the ICJ and UN Commissions. Specifically, the empirical investigation analyses, first, the strategic interventions by CSOs in the ICJ cases on Myanmar and Gaza. Second, it examines CSOs’ evidential and legal engagements with the UN Commissions, both concluding that acts of genocide have been committed in Myanmar and Gaza.