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Genocide



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

While precise definition varies among genocide scholars
Genocide definitions

This is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. While there are various definitions of the term, it should be noted that that almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crim...
, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations
United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, Social change, human rights and achieving world peace....
 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951....
 (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 nation
Nation

A nation is a cultural and social community. In as much as most members never meet each other, yet feel a common bond, it may be considered an imagined community....
al, ethnical, racial or religious
Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
 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."Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.






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

While precise definition varies among genocide scholars
Genocide definitions

This is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. While there are various definitions of the term, it should be noted that that almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crim...
, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations
United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, Social change, human rights and achieving world peace....
 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951....
 (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 nation
Nation

A nation is a cultural and social community. In as much as most members never meet each other, yet feel a common bond, it may be considered an imagined community....
al, ethnical, racial or religious
Religion

A religion is an organized approach to human spirituality which usually encompasses a set of myth, symbols, beliefs and practices, often with a supernatural or transcendence quality, that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power or truth....
 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."Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

The preamble to the CPPCG states that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history, but it was not until Raphael Lemkin
Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise genocide definitions, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ....
 coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg trials
Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II....
 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 provision of the treaty. To date all international prosecutions of genocide, for the Rwandan Genocide
Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology....
, the Srebrenica Genocide, have been by ad hoc
Ad hoc

Ad hoc is a List of Latin phrases which means "for this [purpose]". It generally signifies a solution designed for a specific problem or task, non-generalisable and which cannot be adapted to other purposes....
 international tribunals. The International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court , Cour p?nale internationale in french language, is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crime against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression ....
 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
Nikola Jorgic

Nikola Jorgic is a Bosnian Serb from the Doboj region who was the leader of a paramilitary group located in the Doboj region. In 1997, Nikola was convicted of genocide in Germany....
 who was found guilty of genocide by a German court (Jorgic v. Germany
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
).

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

Politicide has three related but distinct meanings. It can mean a gradual but systematic attempt to cause the annihilation of an independent political and social entity....
, which is considered genocide in Spain. 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
United Nations Security Council

The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs charged with the maintenance of international security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of international sanctions, and the authorization of war....
, 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
United Nations Security Council

The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs charged with the maintenance of international security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of international sanctions, and the authorization of war....
 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
Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism referring to the persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, or killing of members of an ethnic minority by a majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity in majority-controlled territory....
 and crimes against humanity.

Genocide scholars such as Gregory Stanton
Gregory Stanton

Gregory H. Stanton is the founder and president of Genocide Watch , the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the founder and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide....
 have postulated that conditions and acts that often occur before, during, and after genocide— such as dehumanization
Dehumanization

Dehumanization is the process by which members of a group of people assert the "inferiority" of another group through subtle or overt acts or statements....
 of victim groups, strong organization of genocidal groups, and denial
Denial

Denial is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence....
 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
Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin was a Poles lawyer of Jewish descent. Before World War II, Lemkin was interested in the Armenian Genocide and campaigned in the League of Nations to ban what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism"....
 (1900–1959), a Polish
Poles

The Polish people, or Poles , are a West Slavs ethnic group of Central Europe, living predominantly in Poland. Poles are sometimes defined as people who share a common Polish culture and are of Polish descent....
-Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish legal scholar, in 1944, firstly from the Latin "gens, gentis," meaning "birth, race, stock, kind" or the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 root génos (same meaning); secondly from Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 -cidium (cutting, killing) via French -cide.

In Noah 1933, Lemkin prepared an essay entitled the Crime of Barbarity in which genocide was portrayed as a crime against international law. The concept of the crime, which later evolved into the idea of genocide, originated with the experience of the Assyrians
Assyrian people

The Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac people are an ethnic group whose origins lie in the Fertile Crescent, their Assyrian/Syriac homeland today being divided between Northern Iraq, Syria, Western Iran, and Turkey's Southeastern Anatolia....
 massacred
Simele massacre

The Simele massacre was the first of many Wiktionary:massacre committed by the Iraqi government during the systematic targeting of Assyrians of Northern Iraq in August 1933....
 in Iraq
Iraq

Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq , is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros Mountains, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
 on 11 August 1933. To Lemkin, the event in Iraq evoked "memories of the slaughter of Armenians
Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide , also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, the Great Calamity —refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian people population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I....
" during World War I
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
. He presented his first proposal to outlaw such "acts of barbarism" to the Legal Council of the League of Nations in Madrid the same year. The 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
Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party , which established a Totalitarianism dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945....
.

In 1944, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace is a formally private, nonprofit organization, in practice closely associated with the United States Department of State, many President of the United States, "numerous private foreign affairs groups" and the leaders of major US political parties....
 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
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, along with the definition of the term genocide. 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
Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II....
 (the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders
Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II....
 specifies in Count 3 that the defendants "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide—namely, the extermination of racial and national groups...") 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. Defining genocide in 1943, Lemkin wrote:

Genocide as a crime


Under international law

In the wake of the Holocaust
The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as , Churben is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler....
, Lemkin successfully campaigned for the universal acceptance of international law
International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of states and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond domestic legal interpretation and enforcement....
s defining and forbidding genocide. This was achieved in 1948, with the promulgation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951....
.

The CPPCG was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal United Nations System and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation....
 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
Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court is the treaty that established the International Criminal Court . It was adopted at a diplomatic conference in Rome on 17 July 1998 and it entered into force on 1 July 2002....
, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court , Cour p?nale internationale in french language, is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crime against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression ....
 (ICC). The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide:

The first draft of the Convention included political killings, but the USSR
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 along with some other nations would not accept that actions against groups identified as holding similar political opinions or social status would constitute genocide, so these stipulations were subsequently removed in a political and diplomatic compromise.

Intent to destroy

In 2007 the European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was established under the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 to monitor compliance by Contracting Parties....
 (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.

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
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a body of the United Nations establis...
 and the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands....
 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 law
Municipal law

Municipal law is the national, domestic, or internal law of a Sovereignty state defined in opposition to international law. Municipal law includes not only law at the national level, but law at the state, provincial, territorial, regional or local levels....
s 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".

In part

The phrase "in whole or in part" has been subject to much discussion by scholars of international humanitarian law. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a body of the United Nations establis...
 found in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic - Trial Chamber I - Judgment - IT-98-33 (2001) ICTY8 (2 August 2001) that Genocide had been committed. In Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic - Appeals Chamber - Judgment - IT-98-33 (2004) ICTY 7 (19 April 2004) 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]."

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."

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
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
 and the Republic of China
Republic of China

The Republic of China , also known as Nationalist China is a country in East Asia that has evolved from a single-party state with full global recognition into a multi-party democratic state with Political status of Taiwan....
. Eventually the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 ratified in 1954, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
 in 1970, the People's Republic of China
People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the List of countries by population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population....
 in 1983 (having replaced the Taiwan-based Republic of China on the UNSC in 1971), and the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 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
United Nations Security Council

The United Nations Security Council is one of the principal organs charged with the maintenance of international security. Its powers, outlined in the United Nations Charter, include the establishment of peacekeeping operations, the establishment of international sanctions, and the authorization of war....
 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". The resolution
United Nations Security Council Resolution

A United Nations Security Council Resolution is a United Nations resolution voted on by the fifteen members of the United Nations Security Council; the United Nations organization charged with "primary responsibility for the maintenance of...
 commits the Council to action to protect civilians in armed conflict.

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
Municipal law

Municipal law is the national, domestic, or internal law of a Sovereignty state defined in opposition to international law. Municipal law includes not only law at the national level, but law at the state, provincial, territorial, regional or local levels....
.

Criticisms of the CPPCG and other definitions of genocide


Much debate about genocides revolves around the proper definition of the word "genocide." 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 argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted, 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." 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.

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." Harff and Gurr also differentiate between genocides and politicide
Politicide

Politicide has three related but distinct meanings. It can mean a gradual but systematic attempt to cause the annihilation of an independent political and social entity....
s 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. Daniel D. Polsby and Don B. Kates, Jr. state that "... we follow Harff's distinction between genocides and 'pogrom
Pogrom

A pogrom is a form of riot directed against a particular group, whether ethnic, religious, or other, and characterized by the killing and destruction of their homes, businesses, and religious centers....
s,' 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."

According to R. J. Rummel
R. J. Rummel

Rudolph Joseph Rummel is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii. He has spent his career assembling data on collective violence and war with a view toward helping their resolution or elimination....
, 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
Democide

Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel for "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the legal definition of genocide, and it has found currency among...
 for the third meaning.

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
Darfur conflict

The War in Darfur is a conflict that is in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Unlike the Second Sudanese Civil War, the current lines of conflict are seen by some reporters to be ethnic and tribal, rather than religious....
 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
Bahrain

The Kingdom of Bahrain, in , , literally Kingdom of the Two Seas).Bahrain is an Arabic island country in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Al Khalifa regime....
, Bangladesh
Bangladesh

, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south....
, India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
, Malaysia
Malaysia

Malaysia is a federation that consists of States of Malaysia in Southeast Asia with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government....
, the Philippines
Philippines

The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, Singapore
Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country microstate located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. It lies 137 kilometres north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands....
, the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
, Vietnam
Vietnam

Vietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by People's Republic of China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east....
, Yemen
Yemen

Yemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is an Arab country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. Yemen has an estimated population of more than 23 million people and is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the North, the Red Sea to the West, the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden to the South, and Oman to the east....
, and Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia

File:LocationYugoslavia2.pngYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century....
 — signed with the proviso that no claim of genocide could be brought against them at the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands....
 without their consent. Despite official protests from other signatories (notably Cyprus
Cyprus

Cyprus , officially the Republic of Cyprus , is an island country situated in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, east of Greece, west of Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, south of Turkey and north of Egypt....
 and Norway
Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a constitutional monarchy in Northern Europe that occupies the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula....
) on the ethics and legal standing of these reservations, the immunity
Immunity (legal)

In law, immunity is the status of a person or body that places them beyond the law and makes them free from law obligations, such as liability for torts or damages or prosecution under criminal law....
 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
Yugoslavia

File:LocationYugoslavia2.pngYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century....
 following the 1999 Kosovo War
Kosovo War

Kosovo War occurred after the Rambouillet Agreement failed in February 1999. The term Kosovo War or Kosovo Conflict is used to describe two sequential and at times parallel armed conflicts in Kosovo:...
.

It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, genocide has been illegal under customary international law
Custom (law)

In law, custom can be described as the established patterns of behavior that can be objectively verified within a particular social setting. A claim can be carried out in defense of "what has always been done and accepted by law." Generally, customary law exists where:...
 as a peremptory norm
Peremptory norm

A peremptory norm is a fundamental principle of international law which is accepted by the international community of states as a Norm from which no derogation is ever permitted....
, as well as under conventional international law
Treaty

A Treaty is an agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely states and international organizations. A Treaty may also be known as: agreement, protocol, covenant, convention, exchange of letters, etc....
. 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 law
International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of states and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond domestic legal interpretation and enforcement....
s, 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
The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as , Churben is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler....
 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
Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin was a Poles lawyer of Jewish descent. Before World War II, Lemkin was interested in the Armenian Genocide and campaigned in the League of Nations to ban what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism"....
, appeared in the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders
Nuremberg Trials

The Nuremberg Trials were a series of trials, or tribunals, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of Nazi Germany after its defeat in World War II....
, Count 3, stated that all the defendants had "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide – namely, the extermination of racial and national groups..."

Rwanda
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , or the Tribunal p?nal international pour le Rwanda , is an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in order to judge those people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of the international law performed in the te...
 (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations
United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are to facilitate cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, Social change, human rights and achieving world peace....
 for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda
Rwanda

The Republic of Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa, bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania....
 during the genocide which occurred there
Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan Genocide was the 1994 mass killing of hundreds of thousands of Rwanda's Tutsis and Hutu political moderates by Hutus under the Hutu Power ideology....
 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 five accused persons. Another twenty five persons are still on trial. Nineteen are awaiting trial in detention. Ten are still at large. The first trial, of Jean-Paul Akayesu
Jean Akayesu

Jean-Paul Akayesu is a former teacher, school inspector, and Mouvement D?mocratique R?publicain politician from Rwanda. He served as mayor of Taba, Rwanda commune from April 1993 until June 1994....
, began in 1997. Jean Kambanda
Jean Kambanda

Jean Kambanda was the Prime Minister of Rwanda in the caretaker government of Rwanda from the start of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. He is the only head of government to plead guilty to genocide, in the first group of such convictions since the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into effect in 1951....
, interim Prime Minister, pleaded guilty.

Former Yugoslavia

The term Bosnian Genocide is used to refer either to the genocide
Srebrenica massacre

The Srebrenica Massacre, also known as the Srebrenica Genocide, was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniaks men and boys in the area of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska command responsibility of Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian War....
 committed by Serb forces in Srebrenica
Srebrenica

Srebrenica is a town and municipality in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the Republika Srpska Political divisions of Bosnia and Herzegovina....
 in 1995, or to ethnic cleansing
Ethnic cleansing

Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism referring to the persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, or killing of members of an ethnic minority by a majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity in majority-controlled territory....
 that took place during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War (an interpretation rejected by a majority of scholars).

In 2001 the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia

The International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, more commonly referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia or ICTY, is a body of the United Nations establis...
 (ICTY) judged that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre
Srebrenica massacre

The Srebrenica Massacre, also known as the Srebrenica Genocide, was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,000 Bosniaks men and boys in the area of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by units of the Army of Republika Srpska command responsibility of Ratko Mladic during the Bosnian War....
 was an act of genocide.

On 26 February 2007 the International Court of Justice
International Court of Justice

The International Court of Justice is the primary judicial organ of the United Nations. It is based in the Peace Palace in The Hague, Netherlands....
 (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.

On 12 July 2007, European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was established under the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 to monitor compliance by Contracting Parties....
 when dismissing the appeal by Nikola Jorgic
Nikola Jorgic

Nikola Jorgic is a Bosnian Serb from the Doboj region who was the leader of a paramilitary group located in the Doboj region. In 1997, Nikola was convicted of genocide in Germany....
 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. 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"

About 30 people have been indicted for participating in genocide or complicity in genocide during the early 1990s in Bosnia
Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country on the Balkans peninsula of South Eastern Europe with an area of 51,129 square kilometres . Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the south, Bosnia and Herzegovina is Landlocked#Nearly landlocked, except for 26 kilometres of the Adriatic Sea coas...
. To date after several plea bargain
Plea bargain

A plea bargain is an agreement in a criminal case whereby the prosecutor offers the defendant the opportunity to plead guilty, usually to a lesser charge or to the original criminal charge with a recommendation of a lighter than the maximum sentence....
s and some convictions that were successfully challenged on appeal only Radislav Krstic
Radislav Krstic

Radislav Krstic was the Chief of Staff/Deputy Commander of the Drina Corps of the Republika Srpska from October 1994 until 12 July 1995. He was promoted to the rank of General-Major in June 1995 and assumed command of the Drina Corps on 13 July 1995....
 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
Nikola Jorgic

Nikola Jorgic is a Bosnian Serb from the Doboj region who was the leader of a paramilitary group located in the Doboj region. In 1997, Nikola was convicted of genocide in Germany....
 lost an appeal against his conviction in the European Court of Human Rights
European Court of Human Rights

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg was established under the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 to monitor compliance by Contracting Parties....
. 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
Ratko Mladic

Ratko Mladic , born March 12, 1942, a war crimes fugitive, was the Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War of 1992-1995....
 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
United States and the International Criminal Court

Positions in the United States concerning the International Criminal Court vary widely. At the present, the position of the United States is set by the outgoing Presidency of George W....
, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.

Darfur, Sudan

The on-going conflict in Darfur
Darfur

Darfur is a region in Sudan. An independent sultanate for several hundred years, it was incorporated into Sudan by History of the Anglo-Egyptian co-dominium....
, Sudan
Sudan

Sudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest in the African continent and the Arab World, and List of countries and outlying territories by total area by area....
, which started in 2003, was declared a "genocide" by United States Secretary of State
United States Secretary of State

The United States Secretary of State is the head of the United States Department of State, concerned with foreign affairs. The Secretary is a member of the President's United States Cabinet and the highest-ranking cabinet secretary both in United States presidential line of succession and United States order of precedence....
 Colin Powell
Colin Powell

Colin Luther Powell, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath, Meritorious Service Decoration, is an American statesman and a former four-star General in the United States Army....
 on 9 September 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations

The United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations is a Standing committee of the United States United States Senate. It is charged with leading Foreign policy of the United States and debate in the Senate....
. 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." 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." 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. Two permanent members of the Security Council, the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 and China
People's Republic of China

The People's Republic of China , commonly known as China, is the largest country in East Asia and the List of countries by population in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population....
, abstained from the vote on the referral resolution. 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.

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
Janjaweed

The Janjaweed is a blanket term used to describe mostly armed gunmen in Darfur, western Sudan, and now eastern Chad. Using the United Nations definition, the Janjaweed comprised nomadic Arabic-speaking African tribes , the core of whom are from the Abbala background with significant Lambo recruitment from the Baggara people....
 leader, Ali Kushayb
Ali Kushayb

Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, commonly known as Ali Kushayb, is a former senior Janjaweed commander supporting the Sudanese government against Darfur rebel groups, and currently is sought under an arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes suspect....
, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court
International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court , Cour p?nale internationale in french language, is a permanent tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crime against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression ....
 (ICC), filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir
Omar al-Bashir

Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir is the current List of Presidents of Sudan of Sudan and the head of the National Congress . He came to power in 1989 when, as a colonel in the Military of Sudan, he led a group of officers in a bloodless coup d'?tat that ousted the government of Prime Minister of Sudan Sadiq al-Mahdi....
: 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. The ICC's prosecutor for Darfur, Luis Moreno-Ocampo
Luis Moreno-Ocampo

Luis Moreno-Ocampo is an Argentina lawyer who has been the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court since 16 June 2003. He previously worked as a prosecutor in Argentina, famously combating corruption and prosecuting human rights abuses by senior military officials....
, is expected within months to ask a panel of ICC judges to issue an arrest warrant for al-Bashir.

Genocide in history

The preamble to the CPPCG not only 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", but that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity".

Determining which historical events constitute genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear-cut matter. Furthermore, in nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide is certainly not taken lightly and will almost always be controversial. Revisionist attempts
Historical revisionism (negationism)

Historical revisionism is either the legitimate scholastic correction of existing knowledge about an historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more favourable light....
 to deny or challenge genocides (mainly the Holocaust and the Armenian
Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide , also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, the Great Calamity —refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian people population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I....
) are, in some countries, illegal.

Stages of genocide and efforts to prevent it



In 1996 Gregory Stanton
Gregory Stanton

Gregory H. Stanton is the founder and president of Genocide Watch , the founder and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the founder and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide....
 the president of Genocide Watch
Genocide Watch

Genocide Watch is an international organization based in the United States which attempts to predict, prevent, limit, eliminate, and punish genocides throughout the world through reporting, public awareness campaigns, and judicial or quasi-judicial follow-up....
 presented a briefing paper called "The 8 Stages of Genocide" at the United States Department of State
United States Department of State

The United States Department of State, often referred to as the State Department, is the United States Cabinet-level foreign affairs agency of the United States Federal government of the United States, similar to foreign ministries, foreign offices, ministries of external relations, etc....
. In it he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are "predictable but not inexorable".

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.

Stage Characteristics Preventive measures
1.
Classification
People are divided into "us and them". "The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend
Racial integration

Racial integration, or simply integration includes desegregation . In addition to desegregation, integration includes goals such as leveling barriers to association, creating equal opportunity regardless of Race , and the development of a culture that draws on diverse traditions, rather than merely bringing a racial minority into the m...
... divisions."
2.
Symbolization
"When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah
Pariah

Pariah may refer to:*A member of the Paraiyar in Hindu society*the Dalit of Indian society in general*by extension, anything or anyone considered an "outcaste", see social stigma...
 groups..."
"To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden as can hate speech
Hate speech

Hate speech is a term for speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against a person or group of people based on their Race , gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, language ability, ideology, social class, list of occupations, appearance , mental...
".
3.
Dehumanization
"One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases." "Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen."
4.
Organization
"Genocide is always organized... Special army units or militia
Militia

The term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service....
s are often trained and armed..."
"The U.N. should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations"
5.
Polarization
"Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda
Propaganda

Propaganda is the dissemination of information aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of large numbers of people. As opposed to Objectivity providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense presents information in order to influence its audience....
..."
"Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights
Human rights

Human rights refer to the "basic rights and freedom to which all humans are entitled." Examples of rights and freedoms which have come to be commonly thought of as human rights include civil and political rights, such as the right to life and liberty, freedom of speech, and equality before the law; and social, cultural and economic rights, i...
 groups...Coups d’état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions."
6.
Preparation
"Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity..." "At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. ..."
7.
Extermination
"It is "extermination" to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human." "At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed international protection."
8.
Denial
Genocide denial

Genocide denial occurs when an otherwise accepted act of genocide is met with attempts to deny the occurrence and minimize the scale or death toll....
"The perpetrators... deny that they committed any crimes..." "The response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts."


In a paper for the Social Science Research Council
Social Science Research Council

The Social Science Research Council is an independent research organization based in New York City.The SSRC was founded in 1923 to foster better understanding of complex processes of social, cultural, economic, and political change....
 Dirk Moses criticises Stanton approach concluding:

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
William Cohen

William Sebastian Cohen is an author and Politics of the United States from the U.S. state of Maine. A Republican Party , Cohen served as United States Secretary of Defense under Democratic Party President of the United States Bill Clinton....
, a former US Secretary of Defence, released its final report which concludes that the US government can prevent genocide and mass atrocities in the future.

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.”

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 an body within the United States National Security Council
    United States National Security Council

    The White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and Foreign relations of the United States matters with his senior National Security Advisor s and United States Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the Presid...
     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


See also

  • Autogenocide
    Autogenocide

    Autogenocide is the extermination of a country's citizens by its own people or government. Auto comes from the Greek language reflexive pronoun while genocide comes from Greek genos meaning "race, tribe" and the Latin word -cidere meaning "kill"....
  • Crime against humanity
    Crime against humanity

    Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, "are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings....
  • Cultural genocide
    Cultural genocide

    Cultural genocide is a term used to describe the deliberate destruction of the cultural heritage of a people or nation for political, military, religious, ideological, ethnical, or racial reasons....
  • Customary international law
    Customary international law

    Customary international law are those aspects of international law that derive from Custom . Coupled with Sources_of_international_law#General_principles_of_law and Treaties, custom is considered by the International Court of Justice, jurists, the United Nations, and its member states to be among the primary sources of international law....
  • Democide
    Democide

    Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel for "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder." Rummel created the term as an extended concept to include forms of government murder that are not covered by the legal definition of genocide, and it has found currency among...
  • Ethnic cleansing
    Ethnic cleansing

    Ethnic cleansing is a euphemism referring to the persecution through imprisonment, expulsion, or killing of members of an ethnic minority by a majority to achieve ethnic homogeneity in majority-controlled territory....
  • Ethnocide
    Ethnocide

    Ethnocide is a concept related to genocide. Primarily, the term, close to cultural genocide, is used to describe the destruction of a culture of a people, as opposed to the people themselves....
  • Fondation Chirezi
    Fondation Chirezi

    is a local non-governmental organisation established in the African Great Lakes Region by Floribert Kazingufu Kasirusiru . The core objective of is to build a campaign for a non-killing society in the Great Lakes Region - eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of the Congo which has suffered both the Second Congo War and terrible waves of geno...
  • Gendercide
    Gendercide

    Gendercide is a neologism that refers to the systematic killing of members of a specific sex, either males or females. The term is intended to be sex-neutral, but in mainstream feminism it is mostly used to refer to female victims ....
  • Genocide Convention
  • Genocide denial
    Genocide denial

    Genocide denial occurs when an otherwise accepted act of genocide is met with attempts to deny the occurrence and minimize the scale or death toll....
  • Genocides in history
    Genocides in history

    Genocide is the mass killing of a group of people. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnicity, Race or religion group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodil...
  • Historical revisionism (negationism)
    Historical revisionism (negationism)

    Historical revisionism is either the legitimate scholastic correction of existing knowledge about an historical event, or the illegitimate distortion of the historical record such that certain events appear in a more favourable light....
  • International Association of Genocide Scholars
    International Association of Genocide Scholars

    The International Association of Genocide Scholars is a global, interdisciplinary, non-partisan organization that seeks to further research and teaching about the nature, causes, and consequences of genocide, and advance policy studies on prevention of genocide....
  • Midian War
    Midian war

    The Midian War documented in the Hebrew Bible, Book of Numbers 31, was the final military action that Moses personally led. According to the Bible, the Midian War was intended to exterminate the Midianites, who had "led the people of Israel to sin against God"....
  • Minority Rights Group International
    Minority Rights Group International

    Minority Rights Group International is an organisation founded with the objective of promoting respect for the human rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples around the world....
  • Nazi eugenics
    Nazi eugenics

    Nazi eugenics were Nazi Germany's Nazism and race social policies that placed the improvement of the Race through eugenics at the center of their concerns and targeted those humans they identified as "life unworthy of life" , including but not limited to the Crime, Degeneration, Gleichschaltung, feeble-minded, History of homosexual people in...
  • Policide
    Policide

    Policide is a neologism used in political science to describe the intentional destruction of a city or nation....
  • Rwanda
    Rwanda

    The Republic of Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa, bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania....
  • Regicide
    Regicide

    The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a monarch. In a narrower sense, in the United Kingdom tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after alleged due process of law....
  • Sudan
    Sudan

    Sudan is a country in northeastern Africa. It is the largest in the African continent and the Arab World, and List of countries and outlying territories by total area by area....
  • Ten Threats
    Ten threats

    The ten threats identified by the High Level Threat Panel of the United Nations are these:# Poverty# Infectious disease# Environmental degradation...
     identified by the UN
  • Universal jurisdiction
    Universal jurisdiction

    Universal jurisdiction or universality principle is a principle in international law whereby states claim criminal jurisdiction over persons whose alleged crimes were committed outside the boundaries of the prosecuting state, regardless of nationality, country of Residency , or any other relation with the prosecuting country....
  • Völkerstrafgesetzbuch
    Völkerstrafgesetzbuch

    The V?lkerstrafgesetzbuch is the German law that regulates the crimes against public international law. It was created to bring German criminal law into accordance with the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court....
  • War crime
    War crime

    War crimes are "violations of the laws or customs of war"; including but not limited to "murder, the ill-treatment or deportation of civilian residents of an occupied territory to slave labor camps", "the murder or ill-treatment of prisoner of war", the killing of hostages, "the wanton destruction of cities, towns and villages, and any devast...
  • The Specific Intent to Commit Genocide
    The Specific Intent to Commit Genocide

    On December 9, 1948, H. V. Evatt, the Australian President of the United Nations General Assembly, announced that ?the supremacy of international law had been proclaimed and a significant advance had been made in the development of international criminal law." The event at issue was the General Assembly's unanimous adoption of Resolution 260, the...


Footnotes


Further reading

Books
  • Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, Yale University Press, 1990
  • Israel W. Charny, Encyclopedia of Genocide, ABC-Clio Inc, 720 pages, ISBN 0-87436-928-2 (1 December 1999)
  • Daniele Conversi, 'Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and nationalism', in Gerard Delanty and Krishan Kumar (eds) Handbook of Nations and Nationalism. London: Sage Publications, 2005, vol. 1, pp. 319-333
  • Barbara Harff, Early Warning of Communal Conflict and Genocide: Linking Empirical Research to International Responses, Westview Press, August 2003, paperback, 256 pages, ISBN 0-8133-9840-1
  • Michael J. Kelly, Nowhere to Hide: Defeat of the Sovereign Immunity Defense for Crimes of Genocide & the Trials of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein (Peter Lang 2005)
  • Alexander Laban. Genocide: An Anthropological Reader, Blackwell Publishing 2002 ISBN 063122355X
  • Catharine A. MacKinnon Are Women Human?: And Other International Dialogues, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006
  • Powers, Samantha
    Samantha Power

    Samantha Power is an Irish American journalist, writer, academic, and government official. She is currently affiliated with the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government....
    , "A Problem from Hell": America and the Age of Genocide Harper Perennial (2003) paperback, 656 pages ISBN 0-06-054164-4
  • Rosenfeld, Gavriel D. Holocaust and Genocide Studies
    Holocaust and Genocide Studies

    Holocaust and Genocide Studies are the leading international peer-reviewed academic journal addressing the issue of the Holocaust and other genocides....
     1999 13(1):28-61; doi:10.1093/hgs/13.1.28
  • R.J. Rummel. . Transaction Publishers
    Transaction Publishers

    Transaction Publishers is a publishing house that specializes in social sciences books and scientific journal since 1962....
    , 496 pages, ISBN 1-56000-927-6 (March 1997)
  • Martin Shaw, What is Genocide? Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007.
  • Lyal S. Sunga, The Emerging System of International Criminal Law: Developments in Codification and Implementation , Kluwer (1997) 508 p. (ISBN 90-411-0472-0)
  • Lyal S. Sunga, Individual Responsibility in International Law for Serious Human Rights Violations, Nijhoff (1992) 252 p. (ISBN 0-7923-1453-0)
  • Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny, Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2004
  • Benjamin A. Valentino. Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century. Cornell University Press, 2004. ISBN 0801439655


Overviews
  • An independent international organisation dedicated to eliminating genocide
  • ; Responding to Threats of Genocide
  • - fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
  • stages of genocide
  • International youth genocide prevention organization; organized the 2004 Rwanda Forum at the Imperial War Museum in London.
  • - global human rights and development network looks at genocide from a variety of perspectives
  • Staff, ,
  • - a learning resource at the British Library
  • - a list of the some of the worst genocides in the 20th century. Listing from the most amount of victims to the least amount.
  • - a learning resource, highlighting the cases of Myanmar, Bosnia, the DRC, and Darfur


Resources


Research Programs
  • by Christian Davenport (University of Maryland) and Allan Stam (Dartmouth University)