The history of the term “genocide”

• Mass killing of groups is not a new practice, but the term “genocide” is

• Raphael Lemkin coined “genocide” in 1944

  • Polish lawyer of Jewish descent
  • Deeply troubled by the deliberate destruction of national groups
  • Had proposed it as an international crime as early as 1933

• He combined: Greek genos: “race” or “tribe” with Latin cide: “to kill”

Lemkin’s definition

• Lemkin saw killing as only one of the many different techniques of genocide

• Equally important: the systematic destruction of the foundations of a group’s life

Nuremberg trials (content note: some graphic images)

• For discussion: What stands out to you about the tone of the video? How is it framed? Who is centered? Who is absent? Listen for what crimes are named. What is missing?

• 1945: “genocide” appeared in the Nuremberg indictments due largely to Lemkin’s efforts
  • But it did not appear in the Tribunal’s Charter or the final judgment
  • No atrocities inside Germany or before September 1939 were prosecuted

From Nuremberg to the United Nations

• 1946: UN General Assembly Resolution 96(I)
  • “A crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations”
  • Passed unanimously (53-0)
• 1948: Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
  • The first human rights treaty adopted by the UN
  • Criminalizes genocide and obligates states to enforce its prohibition

Votes on UNDHR compared to UN definition of genocide

Abstaining on UNDHR (1948):

The UNGC definition: Article II

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group:

• (a) Killing members of the group
• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
• (c) Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about 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”

The UNGC definition: too narrow? Too broad?

Think-pair-share: Lemkin versus UN definition

• What does Lemkin’s definition include that the UNGC’s does not?
• Which groups are not protected under Article II?
• What are some potential problems with Lemkin’s definition? The UN definition?
• Why might that matter?

Which groups qualify?

• The UNGC covers: national, ethnical, racial, and religious groups

• Conspicuously absent: political groups and economic classes

  • This was no accident: the USSR and others blocked their inclusion during drafting

• Some of the bloodiest mass killings of the 20th century targeted political and class enemies:

  • Soviet Union: kulaks, “counterrevolutionaries,” Old Bolsheviks
  • China: landlords, “rightists,” “capitalist roaders”
  • Cambodia: “new people,” intellectuals, anyone with an education

How to define intent?

• The UNGC requires intent to destroy a group “in whole or in part”

• Two problems:

  1. Intent is extremely difficult to prove in court
  2. “In whole or in part”

• Creates a very high bar for legal prosecution

• Creates perverse incentives: perpetrators deny intent, claim security necessity instead

Crimes against humanity

• Acts that are not classified as genocide can still be prosecuted as crimes against humanity

  • E.g., ethnic cleansing, enslavement, enforced disappearances, systematic persecution

• Courts are often reluctant to classify events as genocide

• So some perpetrators can still be prosecuted (no impunity gap)

• However, some victims feel their suffering is diminished if “only” a crime against humanity

Security justifications for state violence

• Moses: Holocaust as not the only way to understand and define a genocide

• Problem: most states do not claim to be killing civilians because they hate them

  • They claim the need to protect themselves from danger

• Security logic and racial animus intersect

• Permanent security: violent strategy where states eliminate perceived threats for safety

  • Helps justify ongoing, open-ended civilian killing

• States routinely target civilians by invoking immediate and future threats

  • “They will organize resistance”
  • “The children will grow up and fight us”
  • “The population supports the insurgents”

• This logic spans settler colonialism, bombing cities, even blockades or sanctions

The role of civilians in permanent security

• Classical international law: civilians are presumed innocent

• Total warfare logic: anyone in the area contributes to the war effort \(\rightarrow\) legitimate target

• Moses: people do not need to be passive to be deemed innocent

  • Resistance to conquest does not forfeit your status as a civilian

• Insurgency scenarios are the most common context for mass civilian killing

  • “The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea” — Mao Zedong

Applying permanent security and its implications

• Narrow genocide definition \(\rightarrow\) “hierarchy of crimes”
  • Could possibly blind us to other systematic violence by powerful governments
• The Violence of the Post-9/11 Wars (Crawford & Lutz, 2019):
  • Afghanistan & Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen: 300,000–400,000+ direct war deaths
  • Plus indirect deaths from infrastructure destruction, sanctions, disease
• These deaths resulted from deliberate choices: aerial bombardment, blockades, sanctions

Mass killing as an alternative concept for analysis

• Mass killing: the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants

What mass killing covers that genocide does not

Different definitions: your perspective