With over 500 members as of 2025,[9] multiple sources describe the IAGS as the world's leading[10][11] and largest organization of scholars studying genocide and crimes against humanity.[12][13][14][15]
Resolutions and statements
The International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) issues formal positions either through its executive board, advisory board, or via resolutions passed by participating members. A resolution on a public issue passes only if over two-thirds of voters approve and more than 20% of members take part in the vote.[16] The usual range of votes received for a resolution falls between 25 and 34%.[17]
Meetings of resolution authors with the full membership are not required by the bylaws but are sometimes held.[17][18] The resolutions passed by the IAGS reflect the association's scholarly assessments on genocide, mass atrocities, and denialism. The IAGS has passed resolutions and issued board statements addressing genocidal crimes and related matters in the following cases:
The Armenian Genocide under the Ottoman Empire.[22] The IAGS issued an open letter to Turkish state authorities in 2005 condemning denial,[23] and a 2006 open letter to others who deny the genocide.[24] In 2007, the IAGS executive board submitted a letter to the United States Congress in support of a resolution recognizing the genocide.[25]
The genocide of the Kurds in Iraq, particularly the Anfal campaign[26]
The 1971 Bangladesh genocide during the war of independence.[27] Out of 626 members, 218 (35%) took part in the voting. Of these 208 approved the resolution, four rejected it and six abstained from voting.[28]
State-led atrocities against the Uyghurs in China[29]
Mass violence and displacement targeting the Rohingya in Myanmar.[30] In 2022, the executive board condemned the banning of an IAGS member's scholarly work in Myanmar.[31]
Crimes committed by ISIS against religious and ethnic minorities, including the Yazidis[36]
Political violence and repression in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe[37]
The situation in Ukraine following the 2022 Russian invasion has also been addressed by the IAGS executive board.[38]
Israel's policies and actions in Gaza meet the legal definition of genocide (see Gaza genocide).[39] Out of its 500 members, 28% took part in the vote and 86% of those who voted supported the resolution.[40]
Unless the copyright status of the text of this page or section is clarified and determined to be compatible with Wikipedia's content license, the problematic text and revisions or the entire page may be deleted one week after the time of its listing(i.e. after 14:20, 11 September 2025 (UTC)).
What can I do to resolve the issue?
If you hold the copyright to this text, you can license it in a manner that allows its use on Wikipedia.
To confirm your permission, you can either display a notice to this effect at the site of original publication or send an e-mail from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-enwikimedia.org or a postal letter to the Wikimedia Foundation. These messages must explicitly permit use under CC BY-SA and the GFDL. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
Note that articles on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view and must be verifiable in published third-party sources; consider whether, copyright issues aside, your text is appropriate for inclusion in Wikipedia.
Otherwise, you may rewrite this page without copyright-infringing material. Your rewrite should be placed on this page, where it will be available for an administrator or clerk to review it at the end of the listing period. Follow this link to create the temporary subpage. Please mention the rewrite upon completion on this article's discussion page.
Simply modifying copyrighted text is not sufficient to avoid copyright infringement—if the original copyright violation cannot be cleanly removed or the article reverted to a prior version, it is best to write the article from scratch. (See Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing.)
For license compliance, any content used from the original article must be properly attributed; if you use content from the original, please leave a note at the top of your rewrite saying as much. You may duplicate non-infringing text that you had contributed yourself.
It is always a good idea, if rewriting, to identify the point where the copyrighted content was imported to Wikipedia and to check to make sure that the contributor did not add content imported from other sources. When closing investigations, clerks and administrators may find other copyright problems than the one identified. If this material is in the proposed rewrite and cannot be easily removed, the rewrite may not be usable.
Add the following template to the talk page of the contributor of the material: {{subst:Nothanks-web|pg=International Association of Genocide Scholars|url=https://genocidescholars.org/about-us/history
Place {{copyvio/bottom}} at the end of the portion you want to blank. If nominating the entire page, please place this template at the top of the page, set the "fullpage" parameter to "yes", and place {{copyvio/bottom}} at the very end of the article.
The origins of the IAGS go back to the early 1980s. At this time, a small group of scholars and teachers were using a comparative framework to study genocide. Leo Kuper published his seminal book Genocide[41] in 1980 and Helen Fein published Accounting for Genocide[42] in 1979.
Israel Charny organized the first conference on the comparative analysis of genocide in Jerusalem in 1982. The Institute for the Study of Genocide was founded in New York in 1982 by Helen Fein. Gregory Stanton founded The Cambodian Genocide Project in 1982 to bring Khmer Rouge leaders to justice. It became part of Genocide Watch in 1999.[citation needed]
These early genocide scholars, a number of whom began with study of the Holocaust, were attacked by other scholars who[who?] insisted on the "uniqueness" of the Holocaust.[citation needed]
Traditional academic disciplines did not find room for the interdisciplinary nature of genocide studies, so universities seldom had faculty positions for genocide scholars.[citation needed]
However, what had been a marginalized area of study became one of urgent interest and scholarship as a response to the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans in 1994 and 1995.
The idea for an organization of genocide scholars grew out of a meeting between Israel Charny, Helen Fein, Robert Melson and Roger Smith at the Remembering for the Future Two conference, held at Humboldt University in Berlin in 1994. With over 500 persons in attendance and numerous panels and presentations, there was only one three-hour session on the comparative study of genocide. Hence, there was discussion of the need to create an organization that focused on the study and prevention of genocide.[citation needed]
With the rapid growth and global interest in genocide studies, a number of scholars[who?] pushed for a more international perspective and argued that conferences should be held outside North America. The organization revised its by-laws in 2001 and was renamed the International Association of Genocide Scholars. The revised bylaws provided that at least one officer be from outside North America, and that biennial conferences regularly be held outside North America.[citation needed]
The International Association of Genocide Scholars
The IAGS holds regular international conferences. The IAGS conference at the University of Galway, Ireland in 2003 was the first held outside North America. There were over 200 participants, with a significant increase in participation by European scholars. The increase also reflected growing scholarship in comparative genocide studies. In 2005, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida, hosted the IAGS conference. Israel Charny was elected president.[citation needed]
In 2006, the IAGS, in partnership with the Zoryan Institute, an Armenian organization in Toronto, Canada, began publication of Genocide Studies and Prevention. It became an on-line publication, free to all, in 2012. At that time, the Zoryan Institute withdrew its co-sponsorship of the IAGS Journal in favor of publishing its own journal.[citation needed]
In 2007, Gregory Stanton became President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Stanton incorporated the IAGS and obtained its non-profit status. The IAGS launched the organization's listserv and website and revised its bylaws. Its financial practices were reformed.[citation needed]
The 2007 IAGS biennial conference was held in Sarajevo, Bosnia. It was the first IAGS conference to be held in a country that had recently experienced genocide, with major participation from genocide survivors in their own language. Over 500 people attended the conference, including many participants from Bosnia, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. The 2009 IAGS conference was held at George Mason University, Virginia, US. [citation needed]
The association held its first conference in South America in 2011 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It included over 300 participants, a significant number of whom were from Argentina and other Latin American countries. The 2013 IAGS conference was held in Siena, Italy. In 2014 the IAGS held a mid-term conference at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It was the first conference to focus on the genocide of Aboriginal Americans. It included sessions with these First Peoples on their own land.[citation needed]
The 2015 IAGS Biennial Meeting held in Yerevan, Armenia, focused on the Armenian genocide. The 2017 conference in Brisbane, Australia, focused on the genocide of the Aboriginal peoples of Australia. The 2019 IAGS conference was held in Cambodia. It focused on the Cambodian genocide and other Asian genocides and included significant participation from Cambodians. It was the first IAGS conference held in Asia.[citation needed]
The 2021 IAGS conference
According to the IAGS, its origin is based on the scholars who studied genocide in the 1980s including Helen Fein who published "Accounting for Genocide" in 1979[43] and Leo Kuper who published "Genocide" in 1982,[44] and a genocide conference organised by Israel Charny in Jerusalem in 1982.[45] The IAGS itself was created in 1994,[46]:9[47] initially with the name Association of Genocide Scholars and holding biennial conferences in the United States and Canada.[45] In 2001, the name was changed to International Association of Genocide Scholars along with a change in the bylaws requiring at least one officer to be from outside of North America, and that the biennial conferences be "regularly" held outside of North America.[45] The original group of scholars was small, with the first conference, held in June 1995 at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia in the US, taking place in a single room with about fifty participants. According to Jack Nusan Porter, the Williamsburg conference included Porter reading a paper by his colleague Steven T. Katz that led to major controversy at the meeting about whether the Holocaust was "the only 'true' genocide".[48]:257,258
According to Porter, IAGS finances were managed "carelessly" prior to Porter becoming the treasurer in 2007 and Greg Stanton becoming president of the IAGS, which led to the financial management returning to "a firm footing".[48]:258 During Stanton's presidency, IAGS leaders visited Erbil to prepare a conference in Brussels on the Anfal campaign, a massacre of Kurds in Iraq under Saddam Hussein that Porter views as a genocide.[48]:259
A parallel genocide researchers' association, the International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS), was created in 2005. Jack Nusan Porter describes INoGS as a split from the IAGS, mainly by European researchers, for two reasons: the researchers who created INoGS viewed IAGS as concentrating too much on declarations rather than research; and a public conflict occurred between Israel Charny and Martin Shaw over the assessment of Israel's role in the Deir Yassin massacre and its occupation of Palestinian territories.[48]:259–260 Charny described the creation of INoGS as occurring independently of IAGS, stating, "There was no prior collaboration with IAGS about the development of INOGS."[46]:16
Another publishing split occurred with the creation of the journal Genocide Studies International, in association with the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights at the Zoryan Institute.[48]:260
The 2023 IAGS conference was scheduled to be held at the University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.[51] The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre is scheduled to host the 2025 IAGS conference in October 2025.[52]
Structure and membership
Jack Nusan Porter stated that the early membership of IAGS, during 1994–2007, was "mostly Jewish and Armenian, with some Israelis, and, of course, mostly male and all white."[48]:257 By 2023, according to Porter, IAGS had become "fully international and no longer American or European-centred", with "all conferences since 2011 [held] outside the USA."[48]:261
The IAGS describes its members as including "academic scholars, human rights activists, students, museum and memorial professionals, policymakers, educators, anthropologists, independent scholars, sociologists, artists, political scientists, economists, historians, international law scholars, psychologists, and literature and film scholars."[53] Despite the wide range of professions represented, the IAGS stated in early September 2025 that its membership was still composed primarily of "scholars/academics from a wide range of disciplines".[17]
In January 2012, IAGS stated that it had 339 members, about half from North America.[54]As of 2015[update], IAGS had about 500 members.[13] In October 2023, 150 members were listed publicly on the IAGS website,[55] 280 in April 2024,[56] and 440 on 1 September 2025.[57][58]
↑ "IAGS Journal". Homepage. International Association of Genocide Scholars. Archived from the original on 15 September 2017. Retrieved 22 March 2015.
↑ "Israel committing genocide in Gaza, world's leading experts say". www.bbc.com. 2025-09-01. Retrieved 2025-09-05. The world's leading association of genocide scholars has declared that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza... The IAGS is the world's largest professional association of genocide scholars and includes a number of Holocaust experts. Out of its 500 members...
↑ Cardashian, Vahan; Yeghiayan, Vartkes (2008). Vahan Cardashian: advocate extraordinaire for the Armenian cause. Glendale (Calif.): Center for Armenian Remembrance. pp.XIX. ISBN978-0-9777153-3-6.
↑ "By-Laws". International Association of Genocide Scholars.
1 2 3 "Reactions to IAGS resolution on Gaza". International Association of Genocide Scholars. 2025-09-04. Archived from the original on 2025-09-08. Retrieved 2025-09-08. The figure of membership who voted (28%) [on the IAGS Gaza Resolution] is within the usual range of votes received for a resolution, which falls between 25-34%. ... IAGS' membership is predominantly made up of scholars/academics from a wide range of disciplines, and with experts in the fields of genocide prevention, education and punishment, such as policymakers, NGO representatives and legal professionals.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
