The singer said the £10m Aegis Institute, which will be built in Laxton near Ollerton, is needed to help prevent atrocities internationally.

Mr Geldof said: "If you say `never again' you have to show you mean it.

"Words without actions are no use to dead people."

Bob Geldof is a tireless campaigner

The Aegis Institute, due to open in 2005, will give a permanent home to the work of the Genocide Prevention Initiative.

It will be built next to the existing Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre and is scheduled to open in 2005.

"This centre wishes to challenge our assumptions and indifference," Mr Geldof said.

It will house an exhibition on the causes and consequences of genocide and provide education, conference and research facilities.

"We want to raise issues of politics, ideology, poverty, the environment, and most importantly, the international will to act," he said.

Aegis was launched in London two years ago.

One of the project's creators, James Smith said: "When genocidal ideology causes a tragedy, it can affect us all.

"That's why we all need to know about it."

Lives saved

Mr Smith launched Aegis in 2000 with co-creator Stephen Smith to research the causes of genocide and give governments early warning of possible future holocausts.

As the genocide centre is built in Britain, another centre will be built in Rwanda to commemorate the one million people who died in the genocide of the 1994 civil war.

Marcus Storch, vice-president of the Nobel Commission, joined Mr Geldof at Monday's event.

He dedicated a memorial to Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who risked his life to save tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis.