Thornberry, P. (1991) ‘The Convention on Genocide and the Protection of Minorities’, in P. Thornberry, International Law and the Rights of Minorities, Oxford, OUP, 59-85.

1. CG is first post WWII international document concerned with minorities’ protection.
2. CG remains a product of its time: concern more for individual than collective rights.
3. G is a historical phenomenon going back to earliest times, but the term is modern: Lemkin 1933.
4. G had 2 phases: destruction of national pattern of oppressed group and replacement with that of oppressor.
5. Criminality of G; Established in 1945 by Nuremberg Trials.
6. UNGC: 1948 – in effect in 1951.
7. Establishes G as a crime under international law and ‘a matter of international concern’ whose perpetrators are punishable.
8. GC Art. II protects national, ethnical, racial or religious groups: ‘stable’ characteristics beyond control of its members.
9. Political and economic groups not included.
10. Art. II categories are exhaustive, not illustrative: both physical and biological genocide elements, as well as cultural genocide (II.(e): children).
11. Is Cultural G minority rights protection under a different guise?
12. CG does not cover Cultural G except in II(e): G is sui generis & must be differentiated from human & minority rights.
13. G only applies if dolus specialis – intent to destroy a group in whole or in part – is present.
14. Art. IV: Responsibility: individual responsibility, but no state responsibility.
15. Implementation has both national and international aspects: states must implement CG nationally.
16. Territorial jurisdiction: competent courts those of states where crime took place; universal jurisdiction was retained in theory, but not implemented in practice.

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).

Harff, B. (2003) ‘No Lessons Learned from the Holocaust?’ Assessing Risks of Genocide and Political Mass Murder since 1955’, The American Political Science Review 97 (1), 57-73.

1. Empirical definition: ‘genocides and politicides are the promotion, execution, and / or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents – or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities – that are intend ed to destroy, in whole or in part, a communal, political, or politicizied ethnic group.” (58)
2. Genocides: groups defined by perpetrator; politicides: groups defined in terms of political opposition to the regime; carried out “at the explicit or tacit direction of state authorities” (59).
3.  37 cases examined between 1995 and 1998: “deliberate and sustained efforts by authorities aimed at destroying a collectivity in whole or in part” (61).
4. Six Key Preconditions.
   1. Political Upheaval: structural social crisis. All but 1 of the 37 exhibited it. Magnitude of upheaval is critical.
   2. Prior Genocides: more than four years prior considered a different episode.
   3. Political systems exhibiting exclusionary ideologies and autocratic rule. Democratic systems have checks and balances constraining elites from engaging in such acts.
   4. Ethnic and religious cleavages: differential treatment of ethnic groups, dominant elite ethnicity.
   5. Low Economic Development.
   6. International Context of economic and political interdependence does not favor occurrence of genocides.
5. Structural Model developed: best-fit 6-variable model: correctly classifies 74% of all cases as genocides or non-genocides.
6. Model can generate a global ‘Watch List’ with countries susceptible of genocide in the future. 25 are listed. Risk assessments also highlight violations of human rights and need for policy-makers to engage proactively in prevention in such high-risk situations before killings have actually begun.

Chalk, F. (1989) ‘‘Genocide in the Twentieth Century’: Definitions of Genocide and their Implications for Prediction and Prevention’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4 (2), 149-160

1. Key issues: State as pepetrator – distinctiveness – intentionality – ideological motivation – NOT a continuous variable (Abstract)
2. Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish émigré, first came up with the term ‘genocide’ nad defined it as ‘the coordinated and planned annihilation of a national, religious or racial group by a variety of actions aimed at undermining the foundations essential to the survival of the group as a group’ (150).
3. RL was key driver behind UN’s Convention on Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. (‘GC’)
4. Aim of social scientists: protecting political and social groups not covered by the GC.
5. Research definition: “Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator” (151).
6. State as perpetrator: acts of omission are not covered by the GC, but should be.
7. Distinctiveness and intentionality: intentionality is persistence of policies known to lead to annihilation of a group by government and its citizens (154).
8. For some, intentionality is problematic because of modern structural forces that shape the character of the world (154); ‘relations of destruction’ instead (Tony Barta).
9. Can forms of social organisation be responsible for genocide?
10. Seamus Thompson: genocide as a’continuous variable’. No evidence for this. (155)
11. Structural issues lead to a ‘genocidal society’ argument.
12. “Systemic variables facilitate genocide, but it is people who kill” (156).
13. Role of ideology: “urge to purify the world through the annihilation of some category of human beings imagined as agents of corruption and incarnations of evil”. (157)
14. Key factors: role of state, intentionality, ideology; need to include social and political groups in definition.