Genocide
An Evolving International Framework
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Genocide is a term created during the Holocaust and declared an international crime in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: |
Genocide - Mass murder |
1944 - The Crime is Named
Before 1944, no word existed to describe a coordinated assault on civilian populations. That year Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish legal scholar who had fled Nazi-occupied Poland and arrived in the United States in 1941, introduced the word "genocide" to give the crime a name. Raphael Lemkin prepares for a talk on UN radio, probably between 1947 and 1951. UN Photo above. |
coordinated - planned together
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1945-1946 - A New, but Limited, Legal Sanction is Issued
Allied forces codified the general principle of "crimes against humanity" into enforceable law and prosecuted Nazi war criminals for atrocities they committed against both their own and other nation's citizens. However, the law was limited in scope, applying only to crimes committed during an international conflict. Photo Above: Defendants in the dock at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) trial of war criminals, Nuremberg, Germany, November 1945. National Archives and Records Administration
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sanction - authorize
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1948 - An International Promise to Prevent and Punish Genocide is Made
Due in no small part to the efforts of Raphael Lemkin, the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was unanimously adopted on December 9, 1948. The Convention entered into force on January 12, 1951, after more than 20 countries from around the world ratified it.
The Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a. Killing members of the group; b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its 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.
Photo Above: On October 14, 1950, the number of countries that signed the UN Genocide Convention surpassed the 20 necessary for the convention to come into effect, which it did in January 1951. Several delegates from signatory nations: front, from left: Korea; Haiti; Iran; France; Costa Rica; rear, from left: Assistant Secretary General for Legal Affairs; Secretary General; representative from Costa Rica; and Raphael Lemkin, the Convention's chief proponent. UN Photo
1950-1990s - The Promise Goes Unfulfilled
Though massive atrocities against civilian populations were committed in the years following the Holocaust and throughout the Cold War, the very countries that signed their names to the Genocide Convention scarcely considered whether these crimes constituted genocide.
Photo Above: Not one country invoked the Genocide Convention when the Khmer Rouge (1975–79) regime in Cambodia caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million people. Cambodia itself ratified the convention in 1950. These prisoners were interred at Tuol Sleng (Security Prison 21), a secret center operated by the Khmer Rouge in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Documentation Center of Cambodia, Phnom Penh
1988 - The United States Ratifies the Convention
Despite facing strong opposition by those who believed it would diminish U.S. sovereignty, President Ronald Reagan signed the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide on November 4, 1988. Among the Convention's most vocal advocates was Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire, who delivered more than 3,000 speeches before Congress arguing for its passage.
Photo Above: William Proxmire (1915-2005) served in the United States Senate for the state of Wisconsin from 1957 to 1989. Wisconsin Historical Society.
1993 - The World Acts to Punish but Not to Halt Atrocities in the Former Yugoslavia
Targeted civilian groups suffered brutal atrocities throughout the conflicts in the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia (1991-95) and Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-95). Though the international community showed little will to stop the crimes as they were taking place, the UN Security Council did establish the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague. It was the first international criminal tribunal since Nuremberg and the first mandated to prosecute the crime of genocide.
Nonetheless, the single worst atrocity to occur in Europe since the Holocaust came two years later. In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army overran the United Nations declared "safe haven" of Srebrenica. In the following days, they killed some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. This incident would later be judged to constitute "genocide" by the ICTY. In total, 100,000 people died during the Bosnian conflict; some 80% of the civilians killed were Bosniaks.
Photo Above: A Bosniak woman forcibly displaced from Srebrenica at a makeshift refugee camp, July 1995. Ron Haviv/VII
1994 - After the Genocide Ends, the World Creates a Tribunal for Rwanda
From April through mid-July, at least 500,000 civilians, mostly of the Tutsi minority, were murdered with devastating brutality and speed while the international community looked on. In October, the UN Security Council extended the mandate of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to include a separate but linked tribunal for Rwanda, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, located in Arusha, Tanzania.
Photo Above: A cemetery in Nyanza-Rebero, Rwanda, where genocide victims are buried. USHMM/Jerry Fowler
1998 - The First Conviction for Genocide is Won
On September 2, 1998, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda issued the first conviction for genocide after a trial, declaring Jean-Paul Akayesu guilty for acts he engaged in and oversaw as mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba.
Photo Above: The skulls of hundreds of victims rest at Ntarama memorial, one of dozens of churches where Tutsis gathered to seek protection during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. November, 2007. USHMM
1998 - A Permanent Court to Prosecute Atrocities against Civilians is Established
Through an international treaty ratified on July 17, 1998, the International Criminal Court was permanently established to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The treaty reconfirmed the definition of genocide found in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. It also expanded the definition of crimes against humanity and prohibits these crimes during times of war or peace.
Crimes Against Humanity: Any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
(a) Murder;
(b) Extermination
(c) Enslavement
(d) Deportation or forcible transfer of population
(e) Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law
(f) Torture
(g) Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity
(h) Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court
(i) Enforced disappearance of persons
(j) The crime of apartheid
(k) Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
Photo Above: The burning of the Um Zeifa village in Darfur, Sudan after the Janjaweed looted and attacked. Brian Steidle
2004 - U.S. Declares that Genocide Is Occuring in Darfur, Sudan
Testifying before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on September 9, 2004, Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that "genocide has been committed in Darfur." Though the United Nations and other governments agreed on the scale of atrocities being committed against civilians, they did not declare them "genocide."
Photo Above: A man who fled violence in Darfur, Sudan. Touloum refugee camp, Chad, May 2004. USHMM/Jerry Fowler