Britain and genocide: historical and contemporary parameters of national responsibility

This article (originally given as the Annual War Studies Lecture at King's College, London, on 25 January 2010) challenges the assumption that Britain's relationship to genocide is constituted by its `vigilance towards the genocide of others. Through a critical overview of the question of genocide in the historical and contemporary politics of the British state and society, the article suggests their wide-ranging, complex relationships to genocide. Utilising a conception of genocide as multi-method social destruction and applying the interpretative frames of the genocide literature, it argues that the British state and elements of identifiably British populations have been involved directly and indirectly in genocide in a number of different international contexts. These are addressed through five themes: the role of genocide in the origins of the British state; the problem of genocide in the Empire and British settler colonialism; Britain's relationships to twentieth-century European genocide; its role in the genocidal violence of decolonisation; and finally, Britain's role in the genocidal crises of the post-Cold War world. The article examines the questions of national responsibility that this survey raises: while rejecting simple ideas of national responsibility as collective guilt, it nevertheless argues that varying kinds of responsibility for genocide attach to British institutions, leaders and population groups at different points in the history surveye

Genocide

Overview: Before the 1940s the word genocide did not exist. There was no name for unique mass killings involving thousands to millions of targeted people. A man named Raphael Lemkin coined and popularized the word genocide and took on the responsibility to get the Genocide Convention passed. In the 1980s the United States finally joined The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (The Genocide Convention), however this came with many clauses and restrictions, causing the terms to be less effective. The convention defined genocide as any criminal acts harming or destroying national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups, but left the terms very vague and confusing. It gave no specifics on a number of crimes or deaths which must be reached to qualify as genocide. Even with the passing of the Genocide Convention, there still was no judiciary system to enforce the international law and give repercussions. Many nations, including the U.S., remain resistant to intervene on genocide, and the United Nations has little authority due to limited funding and no military power. The Genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda are strong examples of the lack of willingness of the United States and international community to acknowledge genocide, intervene on the crimes, and hold war criminals responsible for their action

The Contribution of Social Movement Theory to Understanding Genocide

Recent years have witnessed a turn in the field of contentious politics toward the study of political violence, yet scholars have yet to focus their lens on genocide. Moreover, research on genocide is characterized by fundamental disagreements about its definition, origins, and dynamics, leading to a lack of generalizable theory. As a remedy, this article suggests that research on genocide can be improved by incorporating concepts from social movements. After reviewing the history of research on social movements and genocide, I analyze civilian participation in the Rwandan genocide as an example of how social movement theory helps explain civilian mobilization for genocide. Finally, I propose that a contentious politics approach to genocide would consider it one among many forms of contentious collective action, analyzable within the existing framework of social movement theory

Group Rights, Group Intentions, and the Value of Groups

This paper is part of a symposium on Berel Lang’s 2016 book Genocide: The Act as Idea (University of Pennsylvania Press). While agreeing with much of Lang’s important argument about the moral significance of criminalizing genocide as a crime against groups, I raise several objections and questions. Lang ties the crime of genocide to group rights, specifically the right of groups to exist in the future; I argue that the concept of group rights obscures rather than clarifies the crime of genocide. What matters is not the rights of groups but the value of groups, both to their members and to non-members. The two leading accounts are those of Arendt and Lemkin, one pluralist and one universalist, and Lang leaves the issue dividing them unresolved. He also neglects an important objection to the criminalization of genocide, namely that placing so much emphasis on groups invites just the kind of tribalist mentality that fosters genocide. Finally, I raise doubts about Lang’s claim that anyone who commits genocide knows it is wrong

Patterns of the Past: Determining Common Pre-Genocide Characteristic to Predict and Prevent Future Genocides

Certain warning signs of genocide – segregation, identification symbols, dehumanization, death lists, and executioners-in-training – existed in Nazi-controlled territories prior to the extermination of the Jews. Can these signs be seen in all past genocides? And, if so, can this pattern be effectively utilized to predict and prevent future genocides? By comparing pre-genocide characteristics that warned of the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan genocide, one can indeed see that these are common characteristics of a country on the verge of genocide. As Gregory H. Stanton has theorized, there are common stages in the genocidal process, each with distinct characteristics signaling what is to come. This can be proven by a careful examination and comparison of how the three previously listed genocides moved through Stanton\u27s stages. Understanding this process is currently of great importance. By recognizing the early signs of past genocides, the international community can identify countries currently nearing genocide and, with enough political and public will, pursue proactive prevention before more innocent lives are lost

Effects of Intergenerational Trauma on Attitudes Toward Reconciliation Among Genocide Survivors in Rwanda

The 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda was a one-hundred-day period of mass slaughter that culminated from decades of ethnic tension. It is estimated that over a million Rwandans lost their lives as a result of this violence. While the effects of traumatic events and government-sponsored programs on reconciliation have been studied in Rwanda, limited research has been conducted on the effects of intergenerational trauma on those born during or after the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi. This thesis determines and evaluates the attitudes of young genocide survivors toward reconciliation in Rwanda. This thesis first reviews existing research on the effects of trauma on reconciliation following mass violence. It then discusses the methods used to identify participants and conduct interviews with 21 genocide survivors of varying ages and levels of exposure to trauma caused by the genocide. This study found that young genocide survivors in Rwanda support the simplification of the Commemoration period, as well as marriage between people of differing backgrounds. Additionally, members of this cohort confidently believe that mass violence will not occur again in Rwanda. These findings indicate that, overall, young genocide survivors in Rwanda may have more positive attitudes toward reconciliation than their older counterparts.No embargoAcademic Major: International Studie

Calling Genocide by Its Rightful Name: Lemkin\u27s Word, Darfur, and the UN Report

When the United Nations commission investigating Darfur issued its report in January 2005, it concluded that the Darfur atrocities represented war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide. This had the harmful effect of deflating efforts to mobilize political support to halt the Darfur atrocities. But the Commission\u27s conclusion was based entirely on technicalities in the legal definitions of the international crimes, not on denial that extermination is going on in Darfur. In this paper, the author argues that the legal and popular meanings of genocide have diverged in harmful ways: where laymen understand that mass killings and rapes that are exterminating a civilian population simply are genocide, lawyers also require a specific intent to destroy a protected group as such. The original motivation for defining genocide differently from extermination (a crime against humanity) lay in a theory that religious, racial, and national groups have value over and above the value of the individuals in them. But, subsequent developments have thinned the connection between the crime of genocide and the theory of group pluralism. Hence, there is no longer a good reason to draw a sharp legal distinction between genocide and extermination, which today functions to provide a fig leaf for inaction by the world community. The author proposes adding the crime against humanity of extermination to the other crimes in the definition of genocide

Memories of an Unfulfilled Promise: Internationalism and Patriotism in Post-Soviet Oral Histories of Jewish Survivors of the Nazi Genocide

Memories of Soviet Jews who were born during the first two decades of the existence of the USSR show that the destruction of the Soviet society and its ideological tenets is central to their experience of the Nazi genocide. Elderly survivors of the Nazi genocide remember their lives based on comparative evalu- ations of their lives in the Soviet Union and under the Nazi regime, making a strong case for understanding memory as a relational construct. Interrogating the significance of growing up secular and Soviet for experiencing and remembering the Nazi genocide reveals that in order to understand Soviet Jews’ responses to German occupation and genocide and how they remember them, we must turn to their prewar socialization as Soviet internationalists and patriots

Is the Duty to Prevent Genocide an Obligation of Result or an Obligation of Conduct according to the ICJ? (blogpost)

This post analyses the duty to prevent genocide embodied in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention as described by the International Court of Justice in the Bosnia v. Serbia case. In particular, the paper addresses an issue that has received scant attention in legal literature: the consequences of considering the duty to prevent genocide an obligation of conduct regulated by due diligence, as affirmed by the International Court of Justice, in relation to the commission of a wrongful act

On Genocide, Economic Reasons vs. Ethnic Passion

The traditional vision of genocide is exogenous. In this framework, ethnies have a real sense. The economic approach of conflicts has expressed slight differences in the relation between ethnies and conflicts. However it does not reject this explanation. Here we propose an alternative approach, an endogenous vision of genocide. Genocide appears in society where social capital plays a major role in solidarities. But social capital is a weak asset in the individual portfolio. Economic and social shocks may have impacts on the assets structure and may produce conflicts such as genocide. In this new framework, policy makers may have to adopt prudential rules.Conflicts, Ethnocide, Genocide, Policies implications, Social capital