Hughes, J. (2016) ‘Genocide’

Hughes, J. (2016) ‘Genocide’, in K. Cordell and S. Wolff, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Ethnic Conflict, 2. ed, London, Routledge, 122-139.

1. Still no consensual definition of Genocide (‘G’), nor a reason able possibility of plausible prediction.
2. Controversy as to whether G is a modern phenomenon or recurrent throughout history.

Definition

• R. Lemkin: formulated the concept of G in 1933, but coined it in 1944.
• GC was passed by the UNGA in Dec. 1948 and became international law in 1951.
• Employed in 1945 Nurnberg Trials.
• Humanitarian intervention emerged in the 1990s to constrain G (Blair, UK).
• Ethnic cleaning as a precursor or precipitant of genocide.
• Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court in 1998 incorporated the GC definition and established G as the most serious crime under its jurisdiction.
• 2004: UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide: Juan E. Mendez (2004-7): Darfur is ‘genocide by attrition’ (127).

Causes

1. Charismatic leaders and racist ideologies in a climate of violence.
2. Structural (functional) approach vs. internationalist approach.
3. Neumann and Arendt: totalitarian state connected with G – a crime of state (128).
4. Relationship between G and modern state formation goes back historically to sixteenth century.
5. Levine: systemic genocide occurs in societies undergoing systemic crisis and with an ideology of radical social transformation (129).
6. Kuper: G is an ancient crime based on pervasive social cleavages in plural societies that become polarised into dominant and subordinate groups. Mass violence against whole communities can ensue.
7. Intent must be organised and systematic, around an ideology of racial superiority concerned with ‘identity, purity sand security’ (Semelin 2007) (130): ‘Enemy within’.
8. Nationalist ideologies stressing organic concept of state, people, culture, territory.
9. Both structure and agency are important historically.
10. Different stages: pre-genocide, genocide, post-genocide. When are individuals by-standers or perpetrators?
11. G has been a recurrent feature of war since Antiquity (Thucydides, Melian Dialogue).
12. G characterises ‘wars where ‘laws and norms’ of war have been refuted by one or the other party’ (131): relationship between military culture and G.
13. ‘Threat perception’ by dominant group: ‘security dilemma’ focusing on other groups both within and across countries.
14. Materialist rationales: land greed, conquest, forced seizure, settler colonialism.
15. ‘…genocide is not a product of banality, but of extraordinary political, economic and social conditions” (135).