Stopping Genocide: Taking the Lead or Muddling Through?

Fri., Apr. 21, 2006

�The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.�
Robert Jackson, Chief Prosecutor
The Nuremberg Trials

The incidents of mass atrocities we see on the nightly news�are they genocide? When large groups are being murdered or driven to physical destruction because of their race or religion, how could it not be? But while some say it is, others say no. Should it matter?

The International Military Tribunal at the opening session of the trial of war criminals at Nuremberg, Germany; 1945. © U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

In fact, the debate over when to define such incidents as �genocide� would fill volumes. Today, so much time is often spent discussing whether to call something �genocide,� that valuable time is lost addressing the conflict itself. Witness the murder of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda in the space of around 6 weeks in 1994 while the international community tried to decide whether genocide was really taking place and what to do about it. Although much soul searching has since taken place at the United Nations on why the international community was not able to prevent this atrocity�or the one in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica a year later�many assert that it is still happening in 2006 in western Sudan, or is at risk of occurring in places like Cote d�Ivoire.

Historical Roots

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-born jurist who served as an adviser to the U.S. Department of War during World War II, first coined the term �genocide� and defined it as �the criminal intent to destroy or to cripple permanently a human group.� Many would argue that genocide is not a new phenomenon and has been practiced for centuries. According to the Encylopedia Brittanica, for example, it was common in ancient times for victors in war to massacre all the men of a conquered population.

It was only about 60 years ago, however, that the UN General Assembly made the crime of genocide punishable under international law. The shock of Nazi Germany�s mass extinction of some 6 million Jews and millions more Poles and Soviet prisoners during World War II led to the Nuremberg Trials from 1945-1949 in which Nazi war criminals were charged with �crimes against humanity.�

Although some criticized these trials because the war�s winning powers took on the role of judge and prosecutor, they nonetheless set precedents for holding individuals�not just states�accountable for heinous crimes. And they gave momentum to the effort to codify laws to combat genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide entered into force a few years later in 1951. Genocide is defined in this Convention as �the intentional physical destruction of groups in whole or in part.� For these purposes, �groups� can be defined by their national, ethnic, racial, or religious characteristics. Despite some inherent flaws in the Convention�like its lack of enforcement provisions�it has nonetheless helped to establish a body of customary international law against such extreme abuses. As signatories, 137 states have acknowledged a clear moral and legal obligation to prevent and punish genocide.

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