Genocide

Part of a series of articles on Discrimination
General forms
Ageism · Caste · Classism Colorism · Genism · Heightism Linguicism · Lookism · Mentalism Racism · Rankism · Religionism Sexism · Sexualism · Sizeism Speciesism · Weightism · Xenophobia
Specific forms
Social Ableism · Adultism · Androphobia Anti-albinism · Anti-homelessness Anti-intellectualism · Antisemitism Audism · Biphobia Cronyism · Elitism (academic) Ephebiphobia · Anti-fat bias Gerontophobia · Gynophobia Heteronormativity · Heterophobia Homophobia · Heterosexism Homonegativity · Leprosy stigma Misandry · Misanthropy · Misogyny Nepotism · Pediaphobia Reverse discrimination · Transphobia Ethnic National Albanian · American · Arab Armenian · Bihari · Brahmin · British Canadian · Catalan · Chilean · Chinese English · Estonia · European · French German · Haitian · Hispanic · Hungarian Igbo · Indian · Iranian · Irish · Israel Italian · Japanese · Jewish · Korean Malay · Manchu · Mexican Polish · Portuguese · Quebec · Roma Romanian · Russian · Scottish Serbian · Slavs · Soviets Turkish · Ukrainian Religious Ahmadiyya · Atheism Bahá'í · Catholicism Christianity 2 · Hinduism 2 · Islam 2 Judaism 2 · Jehovah's Witness Mormonism · Neopaganism Rastafaris · Protestantism Shi'a Islam · Zoroastrianism
Manifestations
Blood libel · Compulsory sterilization Disability hate crime Eliminationism · Ethnic cleansing Employment Freak show · Mortgage Gay bashing · Gay bullying Gendercide · Genocide Hate crime · Hate speech Homeless dumping · LGBT Hate Crime Lynching · Pregnant Murder Occupational segregation · Pogrom Religious persecution · Slavery Trans-bashing · Violence against prostitutes · wage
Policies
Discriminatory Age/Racial/Religious/Sex segregation Age of Consent · Age of Majority Age of Candidacy · Apartheid Ethnocracy · Gender Apartheid Ghetto benches · Jewish quota · Cleanliness of blood Jim Crow laws · Internment Numerus clausus · Nuremberg Laws MSM blood donor controversy Racial quota Redlining · Sodomy law · Voting age Ugly Law Anti-discriminatory Civil rights · Desegregation Emancipation · Equal opportunity Social integration · Universal access Related Affirmative action All-women shortlists Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) Employment equity (Canada) Forced busing (U.S.) Individual and group rights Reparation · Reservation (India)
International law
CDE · CEDAW · CERD · CRPD · ILO C100 · ILO C111 · ILO C169 · Protocol No. 12 ECHR
Other forms
Adultcentrism · Afrocentrism Americentrism · Androcentrism Anthropocentrism · Black supremacy Chronocentrism · Economic Ethnocentrism · Eurocentrism Genetic · Gynocentrism Housing · Indigenism Jingoism · Linguistic Political · Sinocentrism White supremacy · Xenocentrism
Related topics
Abuse · Bigotry · Diversity · Eugenics Hatred · Oppression Political correctness · Prejudice Religious intolerance · Tolerance
Discrimination portal

Buchenwald concentration camp

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.^[1]

While a precise definition varies among genocide scholars, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Article 2 of this convention defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."^[2] Because of the insistence of Joseph Stalin, this definition of genocide under international law does not include political groups.^[3][4][5]

The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history,^[2] but it was not until Raphael Lemkin coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials that the United Nations agreed to the CPPCG which defined the crime of genocide under international law.

There was a gap of more than forty years between the CPPCG coming into force and the first prosecution under the provisions of the treaty. To date all international prosecutions of genocide, including those for the Rwandan Genocide and the Srebrenica Genocide, have been by ad hoc international tribunals.^[6] The International Criminal Court came into existence in 2002 and it has the authority to try people from the states that have signed the treaty, but to date it has not tried anyone.

Since the CPPCG came into effect in January 1951 about 80 member states of the United Nations have passed legislation that incorporates the provisions of the CPPCG into their municipal law, and some perpetrators of genocide have been found guilty under such municipal laws, such as Nikola Jorgic ,who was found guilty of genocide in Bosnia by a German court (Jorgic v. Germany).

Critics of the CPPCG point to the narrow definition of the groups that are protected under the treaty, particularly the lack of protection for political groups for what has been termed politicide (politicide is included as genocide under some municipal jurisdictions).^[7] One of the problems was that until there was a body of case law from prosecutions, the precise definition of what the treaty meant had not been tested in court, for example, what precisely does the term "in part" mean? As more perpetrators are tried under international tribunals and municipal court cases, a body of legal arguments and legal interpretations are helping to address these issues.

Another criticism of the CPPCG is that when its provisions have been invoked by the United Nations Security Council, they have only been invoked to punish those who have already committed genocide and been foolish enough to leave a paper trail. It was this criticism that led to the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1674 by the United Nations Security Council on 28 April 2006 commits the Council to action to protect civilians in armed conflict and to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.

Genocide scholars such as Gregory Stanton have postulated that conditions and acts that often occur before, during, and after genocide— such as dehumanization of victim groups, strong organization of genocidal groups, and denial of genocide by its perpetrators— can be identified and actions taken to stop genocides before they happen. Critics of this approach such as Dirk Moses assert that this is unrealistic and that, for example, "Darfur will end when it suits the great powers that have a stake in the region".

Coining of the term genocide

The term "genocide" was coined by Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish legal scholar, in 1944, firstly from the Latin "gens, gentis," meaning "birth, race, stock, kind" or the Greek root génos (γένος) (same meaning); secondly from Latin -cidium (cutting, killing) via French -cide.^[8][9]

In 1933 Lemkin wrote a proposal on the "crime of barbarity" to be presented to the Legal Council of the League of Nations in Madrid. This was his first formal attempt at creating a law against what he would later call genocide. The concept originated in his youth when he first heard of the Ottoman government's mass killings of its Christian population during the First World War.^[10][11] His proposal failed, and his work incurred the disapproval of the Polish government, which was at the time pursuing a policy of conciliation with Nazi Germany.[9]

In 1944, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace published Lemkin's most important work, entitled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, in the United States. This book included an extensive legal analysis of German rule in countries occupied by Nazi Germany during the course of World War II, along with the definition of the term genocide ("the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group").^[12] Lemkin's idea of genocide as an offense against international law was widely accepted by the international community and was one of the legal bases of the Nuremberg Trials (the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders specifies in Count 3 that the defendants "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide—namely, the extermination of racial and national groups..."^[13]) Lemkin presented a draft resolution for a Genocide Convention treaty to a number of countries in an effort to persuade them to sponsor the resolution. With the support of the United States, the resolution was placed before the General Assembly for consideration. In 1943, Lemkin wrote:

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.^[9]

Genocide as a crime

Under international law

In the wake of the Holocaust, Lemkin successfully campaigned for the universal acceptance of international laws defining and forbidding genocide. In 1946, the first session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that "affirmed" that genocide was a crime under international law, but did not provide a legal definition of the crime. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which legally defined the crime of genocide for the first time.

The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). It contains an internationally-recognized definition of genocide which was incorporated into the national criminal legislation of many countries, and was also adopted by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide:

...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

– Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II

The first draft of the Convention included political killings, but the USSR^[14] along with some other nations would not accept that actions against groups identified as holding similar political opinions or social status would constitute genocide,^[15] so these stipulations were subsequently removed in a political and diplomatic compromise.

The Convention was manifestly adopted for humanitarian and civilizing purposes. Its objectives are to safeguard the very existence of certain human groups and to affirm and emphasize the most elementary principles of humanity and morality. In view of the rights involved, the legal obligations to refrain from genocide are recognized as erga omnes.
When the Convention was drafted, it was already envisaged that it would apply not only to then existing forms of genocide, but also "to any method that might be evolved in the future with a view to destroying the physical existence of a group".^[16] As emphasized in the preamble to the Convention, genocide has marred all periods of history, and it is this very tragic recognition that gives the concept its historical evolutionary nature.
The Convention must be interpreted in good faith, in accordance with the ordinary meaning of its terms, in their context, and in the light of its object and purpose. Moreover, the text of the Convention should be interpreted in such a way that a reason and a meaning can be attributed to every word. No word or provision may be disregarded or treated as superfluous, unless this is absolutely necessary to give effect to the terms read as a whole.^[17]
Genocide is a crime under international law regardless of "whether committed in time of peace or in time of war" (art. I). Thus, irrespective of the context in which it occurs (for example, peace time, internal strife, international armed conflict or whatever the general overall situation) genocide is a punishable international crime.

– UN Commission of Experts that examined violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.^[18]

Intent to destroy

In 2007 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), noted in its judgement on Jorgic v. Germany case that in 1992 the majority of legal scholars took the narrow view that "intent to destroy" in the CPPCG meant the intended physical-biological destruction of the protected group and that this was still the majority opinion. But the ECHR also noted that a minority took a broader view and did not consider biological-physical destruction was necessary as the intent to destroy a national, racial, religious or ethnical group was enough to qualify as genocide.^[19]

In the same judgement the ECHR reviewed the judgements of several international and municipal courts judgements. It noted that International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice had agreed with the narrow interpretation, that biological-physical destruction was necessary for an act to qualify as genocide. The ECHR also noted that at the time of its the judgement, apart from courts in Germany which had taken a broad view, that there had been few cases of genocide under other Convention States municipal laws and that "There are no reported cases in which the courts of these States have defined the type of group destruction the perpetrator must have intended in order to be found guilty of genocide".^[20]

In part

The phrase "in whole or in part" has been subject to much discussion by scholars of international humanitarian law.^[21] The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Trial Chamber I – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2001) ICTY8 (2 August 2001)^[22] that Genocide had been committed. In Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Appeals Chamber – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2004) ICTY 7 (19 April 2004)^[23] paragraphs 8, 9, 10, and 11 addressed the issue of in part and found that "the part must be a substantial part of that group. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole." The Appeals Chamber goes into details of other cases and the opinions of respected commentators on the Genocide Convention to explain how they came to this conclusion.

The judges continue in paragraph 12, "The determination of when the targeted part is substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of considerations. The numeric size of the targeted part of the group is the necessary and important starting point, though not in all cases the ending point of the inquiry. The number of individuals targeted should be evaluated not only in absolute terms, but also in relation to the overall size of the entire group. In addition to the numeric size of the targeted portion, its prominence within the group can be a useful consideration. If a specific part of the group is emblematic of the overall group, or is essential to its survival, that may support a finding that the part qualifies as substantial within the meaning of Article 4 [of the Tribunal's Statute]."^[24][25]

In paragraph 13 the judges raise the issue of the perpetrators' access to the victims: "The historical examples of genocide also suggest that the area of the perpetrators’ activity and control, as well as the possible extent of their reach, should be considered. ... The intent to destroy formed by a perpetrator of genocide will always be limited by the opportunity presented to him. While this factor alone will not indicate whether the targeted group is substantial, it can – in combination with other factors – inform the analysis."^[23]

CPPCG coming into force

After the minimum 20 countries became parties to the Convention, it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951. At that time however, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) were parties to the treaty: France and the Republic of China. Eventually the Soviet Union ratified in 1954, the United Kingdom in 1970, the People's Republic of China in 1983 (having replaced the Taiwan-based Republic of China on the UNSC in 1971), and the United States in 1988. This long delay in support for the Genocide Convention by the world's most powerful nations caused the Convention to languish for over four decades. Only in the 1990s did the international law on the crime of genocide begin to be enforced.

Security Council responsibility to protect

UN Security Council Resolution 1674, adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 28 April 2006, "reaffirms the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document regarding the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity".^[26] The resolution commited the Council to action to protect civilians in armed conflict.^[27]

Under municipal law

Since the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) came into effect in January 1951 about 80 member states of the United Nations have passed legislation that incorporates the provisions of the CPPCG into their municipal law.

Criticisms of the CPPCG and other definitions of genocide

William Schabas has suggested that a permanent body as recommended by the Whitaker Report to monitor the implementation of the Genocide Convention, and require States to issue reports on their compliance with the convention (such as were incorporated into the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture), would make the convention more effective.^[28]

Writing in 1998 Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Björnson stated that the CPPCG was a legal instrument resulting from a diplomatic compromise. As such the wording of the treaty is not intended to be a definition suitable as a research tool, and although it is used for this purpose, as it has an international legal credibility that others lack, other definitions have also been postulated. Jonassohn and Björnson go on to say that none of these alternative definitions have gained widespread support for various reasons.^[29]

Jonassohn and Björnson postulate that the major reason why no single generally accepted genocide definition has emerged is because academics have adjusted their focus to emphasise different periods and have found it expedient to use slightly different definitions to help them interpret events. For example Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn studied the whole of human history, while Leo Kuper and R. J. Rummel in their more recent works concentrated on the 20th century, and Helen Fein, Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr have looked at post World War II events. Jonassohn and Björnson are critical of some of these studies arguing that they are too expansive and concludes that the academic discipline of genocide studies is too young to have a canon of work on which to build an academic paradigm.^[29]

The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in the CPPCG legal definition has been criticized by some historians and sociologists, for example M. Hassan Kakar in his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982^[30] argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted,^[31] and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator and quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: "Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator."^[32] While there are various definitions of the term, Adam Jones states that the majority of genocide scholars consider that "intent to destroy" is a requirement for any act to be labelled genocide, and that there is growing agreement on the inclusion of the physical destruction criterion.^[33]

Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr defined genocide as "the promotion and execution of policies by a state or its agents which result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a group ...[when] the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality."^[34] Harff and Gurr also differentiate between genocides and politicides by the characteristics by which members of a group are identified by the state. In genocides, the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality. In politicides the victim groups are defined primarily in terms of their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups.^[35][36] Daniel D. Polsby and Don B. Kates, Jr. state that "... we follow Harff's distinction between genocides and 'pogroms,' which she describes as 'short-lived outbursts by mobs, which, although often condoned by authorities, rarely persist.' If the violence persists for long enough, however, Harff argues, the distinction between condonation and complicity collapses."^[37]

According to R. J. Rummel, genocide has 3 different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This also includes non-killings that in the end eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. It is to avoid confusion regarding what meaning is intended that Rummel created the term democide for the third meaning.^[38]

A major criticism of the international community's response to the Rwandan Genocide was that it was reactive, not proactive. The international community has developed a mechanism for prosecuting the perpetrators of genocide but has not developed the will or the mechanisms for intervening in a genocide as it happens. Critics point to the Darfur conflict and suggest that if anyone is found guilty of genocide after the conflict either by prosecutions brought in the International Criminal Court or in an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal, this will confirm this perception.

International prosecution of genocide

By ad hoc tribunals

All signatories to the CPPCG are required to prevent and punish acts of genocide, both in peace and wartime, though some barriers make this enforcement difficult. In particular, some of the signatories — namely, Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia — signed with the proviso that no claim of genocide could be brought against them at the International Court of Justice without their consent.^[39] Despite official protests from other signatories (notably Cyprus and Norway) on the ethics and legal standing of these reservations, the immunity from prosecution they grant has been invoked from time to time, as when the United States refused to allow a charge of genocide brought against it by Yugoslavia following the 1999 Kosovo War.^[40]

It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish for prosecution, because a chain of accountability must be established. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily because the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.

Nuremberg Trials

Because the universal acceptance of international laws, defining and forbidding genocide was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), those criminals who were prosecuted after the war in international courts, for taking part in the Holocaust were found guilty of crimes against humanity and other more specific crimes like murder. Nevertheless the Holocaust is universally recognized to have been a genocide and the term, that had been coined the year before by Raphael Lemkin,^[41] appeared in the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders, Count 3, stated that all the defendants had "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide – namely, the extermination of racial and national groups..."^[42]

Rwanda

Skulls of Rwandan genocide victims in museum

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda during the genocide which occurred there during April, 1994, commencing on 6 April. The ICTR was created on 8 November 1994 by the Security Council of the United Nations in order to judge those people responsible for the acts of genocide and other serious violations of the international law performed in the territory of Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994.

So far, the ICTR has finished nineteen trials and convicted twenty seven accused persons. On December 14, 2009 two more men were accused and convicted for their crimes. Another twenty five persons are still on trial. Twenty-one are awaiting trial in detention, two more added on December 14, 2009. Ten are still at large.^[43] The first trial, of Jean-Paul Akayesu, began in 1997. He was executed the same day that Jean Kambanda, the interim Prime Minister, pled guilty, March 21, 2003.

Former Yugoslavia

The cemetery at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery to Genocide Victims

The term Bosnian Genocide is used to refer either to the genocide committed by Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995,^[44] or to ethnic cleansing that took place during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War (an interpretation rejected by a majority of scholars).^[45]

In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judged that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide.^[46]

On 26 February 2007 the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the Bosnian Genocide Case upheld the ICTY's earlier finding that the Srebrenica massacre constituted genocide, but found that the Serbian government had not participated in a wider genocide on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war, as the Bosnian government had claimed.^[47]

On 12 July 2007, European Court of Human Rights when dismissing the appeal by Nikola Jorgic against his conviction for genocide by a German court (Jorgic v. Germany) noted that the German courts wider interpretation of genocide has since been rejected by international courts considering similar cases.^[48][49][50] The ECHR also noted that in the 21 century "Amongst scholars, the majority have taken the view that ethnic cleansing, in the way in which it was carried out by the Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to expel Muslims and Croats from their homes, did not constitute genocide. However, there are also a considerable number of scholars who have suggested that these acts did amount to genocide"^[51]

About 30 people have been indicted for participating in genocide or complicity in genocide during the early 1990s in Bosnia. To date after several plea bargains and some convictions that were successfully challenged on appeal only Radislav Krstic had been found guilty of complicity in genocide in an international court. Three others have been found guilty of participating in genocides in Bosnia by German courts, one of whom Nikola Jorgic lost an appeal against his conviction in the European Court of Human Rights. Several former members of the Bosnian Serb security forces are currently on trial in Bosnia and Herzegovina indicted on several charges including genocide.

Slobodan Milosevic, as the former President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia was the most senior political figure to stand trial at the ICTY. He died on 11 March 2006 during his trial where he was accused of genocide or complicity in genocide in territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina, so no verdict was returned. In 1995 the ICTY issued a warrant for the arrest of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic on several charges including genocide. On 21 July 2008 Karadzic was arrested in Belgrade, and he is currently in The Hague prison awaiting trial. Ratko Mladic is still at large.

By the International Criminal Court

To date all international prosecutions for genocide have been brought in specially convened international tribunals. Since 2002, the International Criminal Court can exercise its jurisdiction if national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute genocide, thus being a "court of last resort," leaving the primary responsibility to exercise jurisdiction over alleged criminals to individual states. Due to the United States concerns over the ICC, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.^[52]

Darfur, Sudan

The on-going conflict in Darfur, Sudan, which started in 2003, was declared a "genocide" by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on 9 September 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.^[53] Since that time however, no other permanent member of the UN Security Council has followed suit. In fact, in January 2005, an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, issued a report to the Secretary-General stating that "the Government of the Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide."^[54] Nevertheless, the Commission cautioned that "The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide."^[54] In March 2005, the Security Council formally referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, taking into account the Commission report but without mentioning any specific crimes.^[55] Two permanent members of the Security Council, the United States and China, abstained from the vote on the referral resolution.^[56] As of his fourth report to the Security Council, the Prosecutor has found "reasonable grounds to believe that the individuals identified [in the UN Security Council Resolution 1593] have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes," but did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute for genocide.^[57]

In April 2007, the Judges of the ICC issued arrest warrants against the former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmad Harun, and a Militia Janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.^[58]

On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC), filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC's prosecutors have claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity.

On 4 March 2009 the ICC issued a warrant of arrest for Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan as the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I concluded that his position as head of state does not grant him immunity against prosecution before the ICC. The warrant was for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It did not include the crime of genocide because the majority of the Chamber did not find that the prosecutors had provided enough evidence to include such a charge.^[59]

Genocide in history

The preamble to the CPPCG states that "genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world," and that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity."

In many cases where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans have fiercely disputed such an interpretation and the details of the event. This often leads to the promotion of vastly different versions of the event in question. Revisionist attempts to deny or challenge claims of genocides are illegal in some countries. For example, several European countries ban denying the Holocaust, whilst in Turkey it is illegal to refer to mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire towards the end of the First World War as a genocide.

Stages of genocide and efforts to prevent it

For genocide to happen, there must be certain preconditions. Foremost among them is a national culture that does not place a high value on human life. A totalitarian society, with its assumed superior ideology, is also a precondition for genocidal acts.^[60] In addition, members of the dominant society must perceive their potential victims as less than fully human: as “pagans,” “savages,” “uncouth barbarians,” “unbelievers,” “effete degenerates,” “ritual outlaws,” “racial inferiors,” “class antagonists,” “counterrevolutionaries,” and so on.^[61] In themselves, these conditions are not enough for the perpetrators to commit genocide. To do that—that is, to commit genocide—the perpetrators need a strong, centralized authority and bureaucratic organization as well as pathological individuals and criminals. Also required is a campaign of vilification and dehumanization of the victims by the perpetrators, who are usually new states or new regimes attempting to impose conformity to a new ideology and its model of society.^[62]

– M. Hassan Kakar^[63]

In 1996 Gregory Stanton the president of Genocide Watch presented a briefing paper called "The 8 Stages of Genocide" at the United States Department of State.^[64] In it he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are "predictable but not inexorable".^[64][65]

The Stanton paper was presented at the State Department, shortly after the Rwanda genocide and much of the analysis is based on why that genocide occurred. The preventative measures suggested, given the original target audience, were those that the United States could implement directly or use their influence on other governments to have implemented.

In a paper for the Social Science Research Council Dirk Moses criticises Stanton approach concluding:

In view of this rather poor record of ending genocide, the question needs to be asked why the "genocide studies" paradigm cannot predict and prevent genocides with any accuracy and reliability. The paradigm of "genocide studies," as currently constituted in North America in particular, has both strengths and limitations. While the moral fervor and public activism is admirable and salutary, the paradigm appears blind to its own implication in imperial projects that are themselves as much part of the problem as they are part of the solution. The US government called Darfur a genocide to appease domestic lobbies, and because the statement cost it nothing. Darfur will end when it suits the great powers that have a stake in the region.

– Dirk Moses^[66]

Prevention of Genocide Task Force

On 8 December 2008, the Prevention of Genocide Task Force, co-chaired by Madeline Albright, a former US Secretary of State, and William Cohen, a former US Secretary of Defense, released its final report which concludes that the US government can prevent genocide and mass atrocities in the future.^[67]

In the words of Mr. Cohen, “This report provides a blueprint that can enable the United States to take preventive action, along with international partners, to forestall the specter of future cases of genocide and mass atrocities.”^[68]

Recommendations include:

• a proactive role of the US president which would demonstrate to the US and the World that preventing genocide and mass atrocities is a national priority
• creating a body within the United States National Security Council to analyze threats and consider preventative action
• set up a fund of $250 million for crisis prevention and response
• help create an international network for the sharing of information and the coordination of preventative action ^[69]

See also

• Autogenocide
• Cultural genocide
• Ethnocide
• Fondation Chirezi
• Gendercide
• International Association of Genocide Scholars
• Minority Rights Group International
• Nazi eugenics
• Policide
• Ten Threats identified by the UN
• Universal jurisdiction
• Völkerstrafgesetzbuch
• Stolen Generations

Notes

References

• Kakar, M. Hassan. Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0520085914.
• Lemkin, Raphael (1944). Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation – Analysis of Government – Proposals for Redress. Washington, D.C: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 

Further reading

Articles

• The Genocide in Darfur is Not What It Seems Christian Science Monitor

Books

• Andreopoulos, George J., ed. (1994). Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0812232496. 
• Chalk, Frank; Kurt Jonassohn (1990). The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300044461. 
• Charny, Israel W. (1 December 1999). Encyclopedia of Genocide. ABC-Clio Inc. ISBN 0874369282. 
• Conversi, Daniele (2005). "Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and nationalism". In Gerard Delanty, Krishan Kumar (eds). Handbook of Nations and Nationalism. vol. 1. London: Sage Publications. pp. 319–333. ISBN 1412901014. 
• Goldhagen, Daniel (2009). Worse Than War: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity. PublicAffairs. pp. 672. ISBN 1586487698. 
• Harff, Barbara (August 2003). Early Warning of Communal Conflict and Genocide: Linking Empirical Research to International Responses. Westview Press. ISBN 0813398401. 
• Hochschild, Adam (1998). King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 0395759242. 
• Horowitz, Irving (2001). Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power (5th ed.). Transaction Publishers. ISBN 0765800942. 
• Jonassohn, Kurt; Karin Björnson (1998). Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560003146. 
• Jones, Adam (2010). Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. Routledge. ISBN 041548619X. 
• Kelly, Michael J. (2005). Nowhere to Hide: Defeat of the Sovereign Immunity Defense for Crimes of Genocide & the Trials of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein. Peter Lang. ISBN 0820478350. 
• Kiernan, Ben (2007). Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur. Yale University Press. ISBN 0300100981. 
• Laban, Alexander (2002). Genocide: An Anthropological Reader. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 063122355X. 
• Lemarchand, René (1996). Burundi: Ethnic Conflict and Genocide. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521566231. 
• MacKinnon, Catharine A. (2006). Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674025555. 
• Power, Samantha (2003). "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide. Harper Perennial. ISBN 0060541644. 
• Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. (1999). "The Politics of Uniqueness: Reflections on the Recent Polemical Turn in Holocaust and Genocide Scholarship". Holocaust and Genocide Studies 13 (1): 28–61. doi:10.1093/hgs/13.1.28. 
• Rotberg, Robert I.; Thomas G. Weiss (1996). From Massacres to Genocide: The Media, Public Policy, and Humanitarian Crises. Brookings Institution Press. ISBN 0815775903. 
• Rummel, R.J. (March 1997). Death by Government. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1560009276. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM. 
• Shaw, Martin (2007). What is Genocide?. Cambridge: Polity Press. ISBN 0745631827. 
• Sunga, Lyal S. (1997). The Emerging System of International Criminal Law: Developments in Codification and Implementation. Kluwer. ISBN 9041104720. 
• Sunga, Lyal S. (1992). Individual Responsibility in International Law for Serious Human Rights Violations. Springer. ISBN 0792314530. 
• Totten, Samuel; William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny (2008). Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts (3rd ed.). Routledge. ISBN 0415990858. 
• Valentino, Benjamin A. (2004). Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. Cornell University Press. ISBN 0801439655. 
• Weitz, Eric D. (2003). A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation. Princeton University Press. pp. 360. ISBN 0691122717. 

• "Preventing Genocide and Mass Killing: The Challenge for the United Nations" (PDF). Archived from the original on 2007-07-03. http://web.archive.org/web/20070703100816/http://www.minorityrights.org/admin/Download/pdf/MRGGenocideReport.pdf. PDF (366 KB), report by Minority Rights Group International, 2006

Overviews

• "Aegis Trust (genocide prevention trust)". Archived from the original on 2007-04-04. http://web.archive.org/web/20070404004937/http://www.aegistrust.org/.  An independent international organisation dedicated to eliminating genocide
• BBC on defining genocide
• Committee on Conscience of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; Responding to Threats of Genocide
• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at Law-Ref.org – fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
• Documents and Resources on War, War Crimes and Genocide
• Facing History and Ourselves
• Genocide Intervention Network
• Genocide Watch stages of genocide
• International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS)
• Institute for the Study of Genocide/International Association of Genocide Scholars
• Never Again International youth genocide prevention organization; organized the 2004 Rwanda Forum at the Imperial War Museum in London.
• Never Again Wiki
• OneWorld Perspectives Magazine: Preventing Genocide (April/May 2006)- global human rights and development network looks at genocide from a variety of perspectives
• Staff, The Crime of Genocide in Domestic Laws and Penal Codes, Prevent Genocide International
• Voices of the Holocaust – a learning resource at the British Library
• Worst Genocides of the 20th Century – a list of the some of the worst genocides in the 20th century. Listing from the most amount of victims to the least amount.
• Genocide & Crimes Against Humanity – a learning resource, highlighting the cases of Myanmar, Bosnia, the DRC, and Darfur
• Whitaker Report
• The 50 Million Missing Campaign – Fighting Female Genocide in India

Resources

• Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation
• USA for UNHCR Web site
• War Crimes TV Videos and Communities against War Crimes and Genocide

Research Programs

• Centre for the Study of Genocide and Mass Violence, Sheffield, United Kingdom
• Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
• Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota
• Genocide Studies Program, Yale University
• GenoDynamics: Understanding Genocide Through Time and Space by Christian Davenport (University of Maryland) and Allan Stam (Dartmouth College)
• Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, Concordia University
• Minorities at Risk project at the University of Maryland
• The Inforce Foundation (International Forensic Centre of Excellence), UK

Racism History of racism Racial Equality Proposal · Civil rights movement · The Holocaust · Racism by country · South Africa under apartheid Racist ideologies Aryanism · Black supremacy · Kahanism · Ketuanan Melayu · Nazism · Neo-Nazism · White supremacy Acts of racism Crime of apartheid · Hate speech · Institutional racism · Interminority racism · Racial segregation · Scientific racism · Slavery · State racism Racial violence Ethnic cleansing · Genocide · Hate crime · Lynching · Race war Racism against groups Anti-Arabism · Anti-Armenianism · Anti-Irish racism · Anti-Italianism · Anti-Japanese sentiment · Anti-Korean sentiment · Anti-Mexican sentiment · Anti-Polish sentiment · Antisemitism · Anti-Turkism · Anti-Ukrainian sentiment · Antiziganism · Francophobia · Hispanophobia · Indophobia · Russophobia · Sinophobia · Stereotypes of African Americans · Stereotypes of East Asians in the Western world · Stereotypes of Native Americans · Stereotypes of South Asians · Stereotypes of white people · Western stereotypes of West and Central Asians Racist groups Grey Wolves · Heathen Front · Kach and Kahane Chai · Ku Klux Klan · National Party of South Africa · New Black Panther Party Anti-racist groups and movements Anti-Defamation League · Anti-Fascist Action · Anti-racism · Civil rights movement · Diversity/Multiculturalism · Fighting Discrimination/Human Rights First · National Association for the Advancement of Colored People · Searchlight · Southern Poverty Law Center