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Genocide: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Genocide
In the early 1940s, a Polish-Jewish lawyer named Raphael Lemkin sat in a quiet office and stitched together two ancient words to create a new concept that would define the darkest chapter of human history. He combined the Greek word genos, meaning race or people, with the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing, to coin the term genocide. This was not merely a linguistic invention but a desperate attempt to capture the systematic destruction of entire groups that had been happening since the dawn of human civilization. Lemkin's mind was already racing with the horrors of the Armenian genocide and the rising tide of Nazi criminality, which he saw as the ultimate expression of this evil. He believed that the law could do more than just punish mass slaughter; he envisioned a legal framework that would promote tolerant and pluralistic societies by outlawing the very idea of destroying a people. His manuscript, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, was submitted in early 1942 and published in 1944, just as the world began to understand the full scale of the Holocaust. Lemkin's original definition was far broader than what would eventually be written into international law, encompassing the destruction of political and social institutions, culture, language, and economic existence. He saw genocide as an inherently colonial process, one that had occurred within the Soviet and Nazi empires, and he dated the efforts to criminalize it back to the Spanish critics of colonial excesses, Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas. The Polish court that convicted SS official Arthur Greiser in 1946 was the first to mention the term in a verdict, using Lemkin's original definition, but the path to international recognition would be fraught with political compromise and betrayal.
The Narrowing of Justice
When Raphael Lemkin brought his proposal to criminalize genocide to the newly established United Nations in 1946, he faced opposition far greater than he had anticipated. Powerful countries, including both Western powers and the Soviet Union, secured changes to the convention in an attempt to make it unenforceable and applicable to their geopolitical rivals' actions but not their own. The result was a legal instrument that narrowed Lemkin's original concept to five specific acts, stripping away the anti-colonial conception that had been at the heart of his work. Among the violence freed from the stigma of genocide was the destruction of political groups, which the Soviet Union is particularly blamed for blocking. The convention also omitted the forced migration of populations, which had been carried out by the Soviet Union and its allies, condoned by the Western powers, against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe. Cultural genocide was also taken out, despite Lemkin's argument that it and physical genocide were two mechanisms aiming at the same goal. Before the convention was passed, powerful countries had secured changes to ensure that their own policies, including treatment of indigenous peoples, European colonialism, racial segregation in the United States, and Soviet nationalities policy, would not be labeled genocide. Few formerly colonized countries were represented, and most states had no interest in empowering their victims, past, present, and future. Lemkin privately considered the final result a failure, as the Genocide Convention, adopted on the 9th of December 1948 and coming into effect on the 12th of January 1951, had been transformed into one that favored colonial powers. The convention defines genocide as specific acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, but the issue of what it means to destroy a group as such and how to prove the required intent has been difficult for courts to resolve.
Common questions
Who coined the term genocide and when was it first used in a legal verdict?
Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in the early 1940s by combining the Greek word genos with the Latin suffix cide. The Polish court first used the term in a verdict against SS official Arthur Greiser in 1946.
When was the Genocide Convention adopted and when did it come into effect?
The Genocide Convention was adopted on the 9th of December 1948 and came into effect on the 12th of January 1951. Raphael Lemkin brought his proposal to the United Nations in 1946 but faced significant political opposition that narrowed his original definition.
What specific acts does the Genocide Convention define as genocide?
The Genocide Convention defines genocide as specific acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. This legal definition excludes political groups and cultural destruction which were part of Lemkin's original broader concept.
How does the military contribute to the perpetration of genocide?
The military is often the leading perpetrator of genocide because soldiers are already armed, trained to use deadly force, and required to obey orders. State-sponsored atrocities are frequently carried out in secrecy by paramilitary groups to offer plausible deniability while widening complicity.
What is the responsibility to protect doctrine and when did it emerge?
The responsibility to protect doctrine emerged around 2000 to balance state sovereignty with the need for international intervention to prevent genocide. Disagreements in the United Nations Security Council and a lack of political will have hampered its implementation.
How do survivors of genocide cope with the aftermath and what are the health outcomes?
Survivors of genocide often face depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and post-traumatic growth. Studies show that while some find negative effects, others find no association with genocide survival, and there are no consistent findings that children of genocide survivors have worse health.
The most chilling aspect of genocide is that the perpetrators are often psychologically normal people who believe themselves existentially under threat. Genocide is not an end in itself, but a means to another end, often chosen by perpetrators after other options fail. War is often described as the single most important enabler of genocide, providing the weaponry, ideological justification, polarization between allies and enemies, and cover for carrying out extreme violence. Most genocides are not planned long in advance, but emerge through a process of gradual radicalization, often escalating to genocide following resistance by those targeted. Genocide perpetrators often fear, usually irrationally, that if they do not commit atrocities, they will suffer a similar fate as they inflict on their victims. The foot soldiers of genocide are not demographically or psychologically aberrant; people who commit crimes during genocide are rarely true believers in the ideology behind genocide, although they are affected by it to some extent alongside other factors such as obedience, diffusion of responsibility, and conformity. The military is often the leading perpetrator, as soldiers are already armed, trained to use deadly force, and required to obey orders. Another common strategy is for state-sponsored atrocities to be carried out in secrecy by paramilitary groups, offering the benefit of plausible deniability while widening complicity in the atrocities. Civilians may be the leading agents when the genocide takes place in remote frontier areas. The role of society in genocide is not well understood, and how ordinary people can become involved in extraordinary violence under circumstances of acute conflict remains poorly understood. People's behavior changes over the course of events, and someone might choose to kill one genocide victim while saving another, revealing the complex and often contradictory nature of human behavior in the face of state-sanctioned murder.
The Architecture of Destruction
The methods of genocide are as varied and flexible as the technology available to the perpetrators, ranging from the use of gas chambers in the Holocaust to the reliance on harsh desert conditions in the Herero genocide. Men, particularly young adults, are disproportionately targeted for killing before other victims to stem resistance, while women and children face wide-ranging non-lethal abuses such as sexual violence, enslavement, and the forcible transfer of children. The combination of the killing of men and sexual violence against women is often intended to disrupt the reproduction of the targeted group. Indirect forms of killing include starvation and the deprivation of other basic needs such as water, clothing, shelter, and medical care, which have been the main method of destruction in many genocides. Forced displacement is a common feature of many genocides, with the victims often transported to another location, where their destruction is easier for the perpetrators, and killed or deprived of the necessities of life. People are often killed by the displacement itself, as was the case for many Armenian genocide victims, and their homes are razed or stolen. Cultural genocide usually refers to tactics that target a group by means other than attacking its physical, biological existence, encompassing attacks against the victims' language, religion, cultural heritage, political and intellectual leaders, and traditional lifestyle. It is particularly common during settler-colonial consolidation, where perpetrators often deny indigenous groups' existence and identity. The weapons of genocide are varied and flexible, with perpetrators' strategies varying based on the technology available, and a countervailing tendency is to avoid appearing like the stereotypical genocide by employing more selective violence, such as drone warfare.
The Failure of Intervention
Historically and even after the ratification of the Genocide Convention, genocide was considered a sovereign privilege in which foreign intervention would be inappropriate. More recently, the prevention of genocide has come to be seen as a goal, but this has not translated into effective intervention. Although several organizations compile lists of states where genocide is considered likely to occur, the accuracy of these predictions is not known, and there is no scholarly consensus over evidence-based genocide prevention strategies. Intervention against genocide has often been considered a failure due to most countries' prioritization of business, trade, and diplomatic relationships, as a consequence, the usual powerful actors continue to use violence against vulnerable populations with impunity. The responsibility to protect is a doctrine that emerged around 2000, in the aftermath of several genocides around the world, that seeks to balance state sovereignty with the need for international intervention to prevent genocide. However, disagreements in the United Nations Security Council and a lack of political will have hampered its implementation. Although military intervention to halt genocide has been credited with reducing violence in some cases, it remains deeply controversial and is usually illegal. Researcher Gregory H. Stanton found that calling crimes genocide rather than something else, such as ethnic cleansing, increased the chance of effective intervention. Almost all genocides are brought to an end either by the military defeat of the perpetrators or the accomplishment of their aims, leaving the world to grapple with the aftermath of violence that could have been prevented.
The Century of Genocide
The twentieth century has often been referred to as the century of genocide, committed on a large scale during both world wars. The prototypical genocide, the Holocaust, involved such large-scale logistics that it reinforced the impression that genocide was the result of civilization drifting off course and required both the weapons and infrastructure of the modern state and the radical ambitions of the modern man. After the horrors of World War II, the United Nations attempted to proscribe genocide via the Genocide Convention. Despite the promise of never again and the international effort to outlaw genocide, the practice has continued to occur. The Cold War included the perpetration of mass killings by both communist and anti-communist states, although these atrocities usually targeted political and social groups, therefore not meeting the legal definition of genocide. The 1990s saw a surge of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda that led to a resurgence in interest in genocide. In the twenty-first century, new communications technologies have also transformed genocide, with both perpetrators and victims able to communicate instantly across borders and raise transnational support. Ancient and medieval genocides were often committed by empires, but unlike traditional empires, settler colonialism, particularly the settlement of Europeans outside of Europe, is characterized by militarized populations of settlers in remote areas beyond effective state control. Rather than labor or economic surplus, settlers want to acquire land from indigenous people, making genocide more likely than with classical colonialism. While the lack of law enforcement on the frontier ensured impunity for settler violence, the advance of state authority enabled settlers to consolidate their gains using the legal system.
The Aftermath of Silence
In the aftermath of genocide, many survivors attempt to prosecute perpetrators through the legal system and obtain recognition and reparations, but except where the perpetrators were militarily defeated, for example, following the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocides, they usually evade accountability. Most of the states that have perpetrated genocide and their citizens deny or ignore it, reject responsibility for the harms suffered by victims, and want to draw a line under the past. Even acknowledgements of victims' suffering remain elusive, although such acknowledgements improve relations between perpetrator and victim groups, as well as with third parties. Genocide not only affects victim and perpetrator groups, but also those who benefited from or observed it, and the effects of genocide on societies are under-researched. Much of the qualitative research on genocide has focused on the testimonies of victims, survivors, and other eyewitnesses. Studies of genocide survivors have examined rates of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and post-traumatic growth. While some have found negative effects, others find no association with genocide survival. There are no consistent findings that children of genocide survivors have worse health than comparable individuals. Most societies can recover demographically from genocide, but this is dependent on their position early in the demographic transition. In the aftermath of genocide, many survivors experience forced displacement from their homes and may face additional challenges due to being labeled as immigration offenders. Success at rebuilding lives in another country is high, despite survivors' limited resources upon arrival. Because genocide is often perceived as the crime of crimes, it grabs attention more effectively than other violations of international law, and consequently, victims of atrocities often label their suffering as genocide as an attempt to gain attention to their plight and attract foreign intervention.