Genocide is a popular term for mass ethnic cleansing, yet is very rarely convicted.
Nazi German Wartime Death Camp. - (WIX, 2024)
Since the horrors of the Second World War became public knowledge, the term genocide has been at the forefront of human rights and legal research to determine its ability to be used in global circumstances. First used by Raphael Lemkin in 1944, the term genocide has been used in a variety of contexts since the Holocaust to describe many forms of ethnic cleansing and massacre (UN, 2024). In 1946, it first became coined under international law, bringing it into the mainstream of modern political thought on mass violence against people. The modern definition of the word is, "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, as such:
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;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." (UN, 2024).
This terminology has, up until recently, been considered the standard baseline for understanding genocide. However, conflict in Ukraine, Gaza, Haiti, and other states has meant that the word has become criticized for its inability to be used critically regarding issues that surround or are not perfectly within those categories. Instead, many feel it is nearly impossible to convict of genocide, and as history shows, it is complicated.
Rwanda, Bosnia, Armenia, Sudan, Libya, Myanmar, China, and many more nations have had widespread ethnic cleansing in the last couple of decades. However, only some of these cases have ever made it to be considered genocides officially. China, Libya, and Armenia's ethnic ceasing have not been considered official genocides, while Bosnia, Rwanda, Myanmar, and Sudan have all been recognized as such. This stems from a set of legal qualifications for genocide legally. "To establish genocide, prosecutors must first show that the victims were part of a distinct national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This excludes groups targeted for political beliefs. Genocide is harder to show than other violations of international humanitarian law, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, because it requires evidence of specific intent."Genocide is a difficult crime to prove. Parties have to bring a lot to the table," said Melanie O'Brien, president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. She cited the combined requirement of showing intent, the targeting of a protected group, and crimes like killings or forcibly removing children." (Reuters, 2022). This essentially means that intent becomes the basis and structure to form a legal argument for genocide, making it extremely difficult to prove when evidence and information can be skewed. According to the UN, to prove the intent, you must identify the motive and how it was carried out and backtrack; often, this is the most challenging part to prove. (UN, 2024).
Rwanda was the sight of one of history's fastest and deadliest genocides to date. In 4 months, 1 million people were killed in ethnic cleansing attacks carried out by the Hutu majority against the Tutsi minority. In this case, the legal aspect of intent was argued and debated by numerous states, such as the US and France, who claimed it was ethnic cleansing but not necessarily genocide. In the end, it was legally identified as a genocide due to its particular and deliberate mass murder of a sub-group identity. Importantly, it took years to achieve this legal definition. Today, many, like South Africa, accuse countries like Israel of committing genocide. Like in Rwanda and many other cases, the debate and deliberations are often graphic, complex, and, in many cases, years long. However, whether or not Israel/Russia/ other states are committing genocide will be up to the ICJ to determine, but it is unlikely to be an easy nor straightforward decision as the repercussions are often enormous and diplomatically devastating.
Bibliography
Blakemore, Erin. 2022. “How Genocide Is Defined-and Why It’s so Difficult to Prove.” History. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/how-genocide-is-defined-and-why-its-difficult-to-prove (April 15, 2024).
Explainer: How to prove genocide, the most serious war crime? | reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/how-prove-genocide-gravest-war-crimes-2022-04-13/ (April 15, 2024b).
An issue of intent: The struggles of proving genocide. https://scholarship.shu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2428&context=student_scholarship (April 15, 2024c).
LeBlanc, Paul. 2022. “Analysis: Here’s What ‘genocide’ Means and Why It’s so Hard to Prove | CNN Politics.” CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/13/politics/genocide-russia-invasion-ukraine-what-matters/index.html (April 15, 2024).
Segal, Raz, and Penny Green. 2024. “Intent in the Genocide Case against Israel Is Not Hard to Prove.” Al Jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/1/14/intent-in-the-genocide-case-against-israel-is-not-hard-to-prove (April 15, 2024).
South Africa’s genocide case against Israel: The International Court of Justice explained. https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/01/south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel-international-court-justice-explained (April 15, 2024a).
“United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect.” United Nations. https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/genocide.shtml#:~:text=The%20intent%20is%20the%20most,to%20simply%20disperse%20a%20group. (April 15, 2024).
“Why Genocide Is Difficult to Prove before an International Criminal Court.” 2022. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2022/04/12/1092251159/why-genocide-is-difficult-to-prove-before-an-international-criminal-court (April 15, 2024).
Comments