A UN report has accused the Myanmar military of genocide. The report is being taken, by some at least, as a call to action, with the UK’s foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, immediately promising to visit the country “to seek answers at the earliest opportunity”.

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The UN passed the genocide convention, which defines genocide in legal terms, in December 1948. It sets out genocide as a series of actions – ranging from killing to imposing measures to prevent births – committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.

The question of whether what has been happening to the Rohingya in Myanmar can be defined as genocide is not a new one. It started well before the forced expulsions of a year ago. In fact, the accusation of genocide being perpetrated in Myanmar – against various groups – has been raised repeatedly over the last two decades. It is essential that today the attempt to define whether genocide has been perpetrated does not continue to serve as a distraction to addressing the situation itself.

In 2005, a report by Guy Horton labelled the violent military actions against Karen people in Myanmar as genocide. His approach was to take the definition of the crime of genocide and break it down into component parts. He then identified specific acts on the ground that could be compared with each part, and argued that, when put together, the case of genocide was made.

It was a form of inverse logic. Horton believed that individual incidents – however disparate geographically and over time – when considered as a piece provided a sufficient basis to argue the overall intent of the elimination of a people, which underpins the definition of the crime of genocide.

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This approach generated much discussion. There were some who thought the methodology too mechanistic, and that it did not work in establishing the intent that is so important to the definition of genocide. Others thought the approach very credible. Which side various groups took was not unrelated to their own positioning: the categorisation of genocide was in part used to further demonise the regime committing the act – and to justify the application of crippling economic sanctions.

Almost 10 years later, a case was once again made that genocide was being committed in Myanmar. In early 2016, Al-Jazeera produced a hard-hitting documentary in which the International Human Rights Clinic at Yale University used a similar deconstruction/reconstruction methodology to argue acts of genocide against the Rohingya. And while international bodies debated whether to call it such, crimes against humanity and war crimes continued to be perpetrated. No tangible action was taken, and more than two-thirds of the population were forced to flee to Bangladesh.

In the wake of the second world war, genocide has become the pinnacle of absolute crimes, and has surpassed, in terms of gravity, war crimes and crimes against humanity. But is this right? This debate is ongoing – but such discussions must not detract from the fact that all three must be condemned and addressed with equal determination and force. Debating which category atrocities fall into without taking any action just anaesthetises the international community to the need to address any of them.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rohingya refugees arrive in Bangladesh. Photograph: Danish Siddiqui/Reuters

True, in the case of genocide, the commitment was made by the UN general assembly for immediate action 70 years ago. But how relevant was such a bold resolution, when in practice it was disavowed in the course of the Rwanda genocide in 1994? More than 800,000 people were slaughtered in three months, while the international community – fearing the obligation to intervene – stood by and postponed the acknowledgement of the nature of the horrors until it no longer mattered.

The terrible crimes against the Rohingya are clearly crimes against humanity, and possibly war crimes. I fear that pursuing the debate about whether or not they constitute genocide for too long could become a distraction that results in delaying further the building of collective international will to take necessary action. Defining an act as genocide involves legal substantiations that are often difficult to make or satisfy. All the more so in this case, where the United Nations Commission of Experts were never permitted to enter Myanmar. This fact alone may end up polarising members of the international community (none more so than those on the security council) and ultimately justifying inaction. One needs to look no further than the myriad international interests that have come into play in an attempt to resolve the Syrian conflict to appreciate the risk.

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We could possibly reach an answer to the question of whether genocide is being committed. But at what cost? Will naming it so then risk fracturing international commitment to act and undermine a more robust response? War crimes and crimes against humanity are sufficiently grave offences to justify international action. However we refer to them, immense crimes have been and are being committed in Myanmar. It is time for the world to stop debating how to categorise them and focus on finding the necessary resolve to act.

• Charles Petrie is a former assistant secretary general of the UN, and was the UN deputy humanitarian coordinator in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide