Genocide Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

A concept created by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, the term genocide was originally used for Nazi patterns of state violence against the European Jewish populations during World War II (1939–1945).The word combines the Greek prefix for race or tribe (geno-) with the Latin suffix for killing/murder (-cide). The most frequently cited examples of genocide include the Holocaust during World War II, the “killing fields” of Cambodia in the 1970s, the “100 days” in Rwanda in 1994, and the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 1995.

In 1948, Lemkin’s concept of genocide was codified and established as an international crime through the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention defined the term as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” It is important to note that the convention’s definition does not include the targeting of political, ideological, economic, professional, or other groups. Genocide refers solely to groups one is born into, what Rudolph Rummel (1994) refers to as “indelible groups.”

As defined by the convention, overt acts of genocide include (1) killing members of the group, (2) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, (3) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, (4) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, and (5) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

In addition to defining the crime of genocide, Article 1 of the UN (United Nations) Genocide Convention calls on signatories “to prevent and to punish” genocide whether it is committed in times of war or peace. The responsibility for the prosecution of genocide currently rests with the International Criminal Court (ICC). Created by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court in 1998, the ICC has jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

The enforcement of the UN Genocide Convention and the prosecution of genocide are problematized by its definition. The concept, the behavior, and the designation of relevant actors, as such, are highly contested on numerous grounds. First, identifying and proving the intent of the perpetrator is extremely difficult. Because of the legal obligation to prove that the specific and targeted destruction of a group was the intended act of the perpetrator, governments and prosecutors have favored the more broadly defined charge of “crimes against humanity.” Violent acts against a group without the intent of that group’s total destruction could be prosecuted as crimes against humanity but would not meet the threshold of evidence necessary for the charge of genocide.

Second, the manifestation of genocidal behavior has been problematic to define. Although biased toward extremely violent, overt, short-term activities such as mass killing, the concept of genocide can also be applied to relatively less violent, covert, long-term activities such as depriving a group of access to water with the intent of that group’s imminent destruction. The latter is similar to the “structural violence” discussed by Johan Galtung (1969). In addition to structural violence, systematic acts of targeted destruction such as mass rape are increasingly being considered for prosecution under the Genocide Convention.

Third, while the original focus of the crime is on the perpetration of genocide by political authorities (government officials, militaries, police, and militias), it is possible for actors unaffiliated with these authorities to undertake relevant genocidal activities (e.g., rebels and revolutionaries). The attention on governments is largely explained by their affiliation with the largest and most famous instances of genocide as well as the fact that to engage in relevant behavior, the perpetrator would generally need access to resources that only political authorities would have at their disposal: lethal weapons, extensive human resources, and large-scale administrative capability.

The concept, behavior, and designations of actors are not the only controversial elements involved. Exactly what is to be done when genocide is identified is another complex matter. Following World War II, there was an informal claim among advanced, democratic nations that they would “never again” allow something like the Holocaust to occur, but the record of stopping such abuse seems at face value to be lacking. Designations of genocide are few, and even when specific behavior has been so labeled by one member nation, there are ways that other signatories can block, delay, or completely undermine the initial effort preventing intervention and contributing to impunity.

Bibliography:

Chalk, Frank, and Kurt Jonassohn. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analysis and Case Studies. New Haven:Yale University Press, 1990.
Charny, Israel W., ed. Encyclopedia of Genocide, vols. 1–2. Santa Barbara, Ca.: ABC-Clio, 1999.
Fein, Helen. Human Rights and Wrongs: Slavery,Terror, Genocide. Boulder: Paradigm, 2007.
Galtung, Johan. “Violence, Peace and Peace Research.” Journal of Peace Research 6, no. 3 (1969): 167–191.
Lemkin, Raphael. Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944.
Rummel, Rudolph J. Death By Government. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1994.
Totten, Samuel,William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny, eds. Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. New York: Routledge, 2004.
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Adopted by Resolution 260 (III) A of the United Nations Assembly on December 9, 1948.

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