Genocide

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During the Cambodian genocide, many perceived dissidents were killed using axes, poles or other agricultural tools. The sites of their mass burial are now collectively referred to as the Killing Fields, and countless memorials have been created to honor them Killing Fields 20170222-1.jpg
During the Cambodian genocide, many perceived dissidents were killed using axes, poles or other agricultural tools. The sites of their mass burial are now collectively referred to as the Killing Fields, and countless memorials have been created to honor them

Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. [1]

Contents

Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by means such as "the disintegration of [its] political and social institutions, of [its] culture, language, national feelings, religion, and [its] economic existence". [2] During the struggle to ratify the Genocide Convention, powerful countries restricted Lemkin's definition to exclude their own actions from being classified as genocide, ultimately limiting it to any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". [3]

Genocide has occurred throughout human history, even during prehistoric times, but is particularly likely in situations of imperial expansion and power consolidation. Therefore, it is associated with colonial empires and settler colonies, as well as with both world wars and repressive governments in the twentieth century. The colloquial understanding of genocide is heavily influenced by the Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims targeted for their ethnic identity rather than for any political reason. Genocide is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil and often referred to as the "crime of crimes", consequently, events are often denounced as genocide.

Origins

Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide. Raphael Lemkin, Photograph 6 (cropped).jpg
Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide.

Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide between 1941 and 1943. [4] [5] Lemkin's coinage combined the Greek word γένος (genos, "race, people") with the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing"). [6] He submitted the manuscript for his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe to the publisher in early 1942, and it was published in 1944 as the Holocaust was coming to light outside Europe. [4] Lemkin's proposal was more ambitious than simply outlawing this type of mass slaughter. He also thought that the law against genocide could promote more tolerant and pluralistic societies. [6]

According to Lemkin, the central definition of genocide was "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" in which its members were not targeted as individuals, but rather as members of the group. The objectives of genocide "would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups". [2] These were not separate crimes but different aspects of the same genocidal process. [7] Lemkin's definition of nation was sufficiently broad to apply to nearly any type of human collectivity, even one based on a trivial characteristic. [8] He saw genocide as an inherently colonial process, and in his later writings analyzed what he described as the colonial genocides occurring within European overseas territories as well as the Soviet and Nazi empires. [6] Furthermore, his definition of genocidal acts, which was to replace the national pattern of the victim with that of the perpetrator, was much broader than the five types enumerated in the Genocide Convention. [6] Lemkin considered genocide to have occurred since the beginning of human history and dated the efforts to criminalize it to the Spanish critics of colonial excesses Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas. [9] The 1946 judgement against Arthur Greiser issued by a Polish court was the first legal verdict that mentioned the term, using Lemkin's original definition. [10]

Crime

Development

The expulsion of Germans was one of the instances of state violence that was deliberately written out of the definition of genocide. Bundesarchiv Bild 183-1983-0422-315, Umsiedler auf dem Guterbahnhof Berlin-Pankow.jpg
The expulsion of Germans was one of the instances of state violence that was deliberately written out of the definition of genocide.

According to the legal instrument used to prosecute defeated German leaders at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, atrocity crimes were only prosecutable by international justice if they were committed as part of an illegal war of aggression. The powers prosecuting the trial were unwilling to restrict a government's actions against its own citizens. [12] In order to criminalize peacetime genocide, Lemkin brought his proposal to criminalize genocide to the newly established United Nations in 1946. He approached the African delegations first in an attempt to build a coalition of smaller states and former colonies that had themselves recently experienced genocide. Lemkin hoped that at this point the major powers—the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union—would step in and take credit for passing the convention. [12]

Opposition to the convention was greater than Lemkin expected due to various countries, and not just great powers, concerned that it would lead their own policies - including treatment of indigenous peoples, European colonialism, racial segregation in the United States, and Soviet nationalities policy - to be labeled genocide. Before the convention was passed, powerful countries (both Western powers and the Soviet Union) secured changes in an attempt to make the convention unenforceable and applicable to their geopolitical rivals' actions but not their own. The result gutted Lemkin's original intentions; he privately considered it a failure. [13] Over the course of these revisions, Lemkin's anti-colonial conception of genocide was transformed into one acceptable to colonial powers. [14] Among the violence freed from the stigma of genocide included the same actions targeting political groups, which the Soviet Union is particularly blamed for blocking. [15] [16] Although Lemkin credited women's NGOs with securing the passage of the convention, the gendered violence of forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce was left out. [17] Additionally omitted was forced migration of populations—which had been recently carried out by the Soviet Union and its satellites, condoned by the Western Allies, against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe. [18]

Genocide Convention

Participation in the Genocide Convention
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Signed and ratified
Acceded or succeeded
Only signed Genocide Convention Participation.svg
Participation in the Genocide Convention
  Signed and ratified
  Acceded or succeeded
  Only signed

On 9 December 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG); [19] it came into effect on 12 January 1951 after 20 countries ratified it without reservations. [20] The convention's definition of genocide was adopted verbatim by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and by the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). [21] Genocide is defined 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. [3]

In addition, attempted genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to genocide, and complicity in genocide are criminalized. [22] The convention does not allow the retroactive prosecution of events that took place prior to 1951. [22] Many countries have incorporated genocide into their municipal law, varying to a lesser or greater extent from the convention. [23]

A specific "intent to destroy" is the mens rea requirement of genocide. [24] The issue of what it means to destroy a group "as such" and how to prove the required intent has been difficult for courts to resolve. The legal system has also struggled with how much of a group can be targeted before triggering the Genocide Convention. [25] [26] [27] The two main approaches to intent are the purposive approach, where the perpetrator specifically intends to commit genocide, and the knowledge-based approach, where the perpetrator understands that genocidal outcomes will result from his actions. [28] Perpetrators do not always make their intentions clear in public statements, although courts sometimes ascribe intent based on other factors. [29] Perpetrators often take advantage of the legal special intent requirement to claim that they merely sought the removal of the group from a given territory, instead of destruction as such, [30] or that the genocidal actions were collateral damage of military activity. [31]

Prosecutions

During the Cold War, genocide remained at the level of rhetoric because both superpowers (the United States and the Soviet Union) felt vulnerable to accusations of genocide, and were therefore unwilling to press charges against the other party. [32] Despite political pressure to charge "Soviet genocide", the United States government refused to ratify the convention fearing countercharges of racial segregation against African Americans. [33] The first conviction for genocide in an international court was in 1998 for a perpetrator of the Rwandan genocide. The first head of state to be convicted of genocide was in 2018 for the Cambodian genocide. [5]

Prosecutions for genocide do not obviously satisfy any of the purposes that criminal prosecution is supposed to serve. Retribution is impossible because any punishment proportionate to the crime would require collective punishment, which violates the principle of individual guilt. [34] The most plausible rationale for prosecuting genocide perpetrators is that it could prevent future genocides, but very few perpetrators are ever brought to trial and evidence of a deterrent effect is lacking. [35] However, genocide prosecutions might still serve the goal of upholding the power of international law. [36]

Genocide studies

The field of genocide studies emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, as social science began to consider the phenomenon of genocide. [37] Due to the occurrence of the Bosnian genocide, Rwandan genocide, and the Kosovo crisis, genocide studies exploded in the 1990s. [38] In contrast to earlier researchers who took for granted the idea that liberal and democratic societies were less likely to commit genocide, revisionists associated with the International Network of Genocide Scholars emphasized how Western ideas led to genocide. [39] Pioneers of research into settler colonialism such as Patrick Wolfe spelled out the genocidal logic of settler projects, prompting a rethinking of colonialism. [40]

Definitions

The definition of genocide generates controversy whenever a new case arises and debate erupts as to whether or not it qualifies as a genocide. Sociologist Martin Shaw writes, "Few ideas are as important in public debate, but in few cases are the meaning and scope of a key idea less clearly agreed." [41] [42] Some scholars and activists use the Genocide Convention definition. [14] Others prefer narrower definitions that indicate genocide is rare in human history, reducing genocide to mass killing [43] or distinguishing it from other types of violence by the innocence, [44] helplessness, or defencelessness of its victims. [45] Most genocides occur during wartime, and distinguishing genocide or genocidal war from non-genocidal warfare can be difficult. [46] Likewise, genocide is distinguished from violent and coercive forms of rule that aim to change behavior rather than destroy groups. [47] [48] Some definitions include political or social groups as potential victims of genocide. [49] Many of the more sociologically oriented definitions of genocide overlap that of the crime against humanity of extermination, which refers to large-scale killing or induced death as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population. [50] Isolated or short-lived phenomena that resemble genocide can be termed genocidal violence. [51]

Cultural genocide or ethnocide—actions targeted at the reproduction of a group's language, culture, or way of life [52] —was part of Raphael Lemkin's original concept, and its proponents in the 1940s argued that it, along with physical genocide, were two mechanisms aiming at the same goal: destruction of the targeted group. Because cultural genocide clearly applied to some colonial and assimilationist policies, several states with overseas colonies threatened to refuse to ratify the convention unless it was excluded. [53] Most genocide scholars believe that both cultural genocide and structural violence should be included in the definition of genocide, if committed with intent to destroy the targeted group. [54] Although included in Lemkin's original concept and by some scholars, political groups were also excluded from the Genocide Convention. The result of this exclusion was that perpetrators of genocide could redefine their targets as being a political or military enemy, thus excluding them from consideration. [55]

Criticism of the concept of genocide and alternatives

The death of large numbers of civilians as collateral damage of military activity such as aerial bombings is excluded from the definition of genocide, even when they make up a significant portion of a nation's population. Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. CL3400 (cropped).jpg
The death of large numbers of civilians as collateral damage of military activity such as aerial bombings is excluded from the definition of genocide, even when they make up a significant portion of a nation's population.

Most civilian killings in the twentieth century were not from genocide, which only applies to select cases. [57] [58] Alternative terms have been coined to describe processes left outside narrower definitions of genocide. Ethnic cleansing—the forced expulsion of a population from a given territory—has achieved widespread currency, although many scholars recognize that it frequently overlaps with genocide, even where Lemkin's definition is not used. [59] Other terms have proliferated, such as Rudolph Rummel's democide, for the killing of people by a government. [60] Words like ethnocide, gendercide, politicide, classicide, and urbicide were coined for the destruction of particular types of groupings (ethnic groups, genders, political groups, social classes, and a particular locality). [60] [61]

Historian A. Dirk Moses argues that because of its position as the "crime of crimes", the concept of genocide "blinds us to other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities and the 'collateral damage' of missile and drone strikes, blockades, and sanctions". [62] [63]

History

Massacre of Polish hostages after an attack on a German policeman. The Bochnia massacre German-occupied Poland 1939.jpg
Massacre of Polish hostages after an attack on a German policeman.
The Holocaust heavily influences the popular understanding of genocide, as mass killing of innocent people based on their ethnic identity. Stroop Report - Warsaw Ghetto Uprising BW.jpg
The Holocaust heavily influences the popular understanding of genocide, as mass killing of innocent people based on their ethnic identity.

Lemkin applied the concept of genocide to a wide variety of events throughout human history. He and other scholars date the first genocides to prehistoric times. [65] [66] [9] Genocide is mentioned in various ancient sources including the Hebrew Bible, in which God commanded genocide (herem) against some of the Israelites' enemies, especially Amalek. [67] [68] Genocide in the ancient world often consisted of the massacre of men and the enslavement or forced assimilation of women and children—often limited to a particular town or city rather than applied to a larger group. [69] Potential medieval examples are found in Europe, even though experts caution against applying a modern term like genocide to such events. [70] Overall, premodern examples that can be considered genocide were relatively uncommon. [71] Beginning in the early modern period, racial ideologies emerged as a more important factor. [72]

The destruction of indigenous societies as part of European colonialism, including in colonial states such as United States and Australia, was initially not recognized as a form of genocide. [73] [74] Such genocides were often characterized by an initial violent struggle for land and resources on an imperial frontier which escalates to extermination. Later on, the survivors face ongoing genocide in the form of "a wide range of eliminatory practices such as cultural suppression, expulsion, segregation, child confiscation, assimilation, and of course, continued violence". [75]

According to Mohamed Adhikari, the two main drivers of settler genocide is, in the long run, the pursuit of profit on the global commodity market and in the short run, indigenous resistance that triggered settler retaliation. [76] Economic activities such as mining, ranching, and agriculture prove so destructive to indigenous societies that the elimination of indigenous people is quicker when settlers are more integrated into global markets and have a higher expectation of profit. [77] While the lack of law enforcement on the frontier ensured impunity for settler violence, the closing of the frontier enabled settlers to consolidate their gains using the legal system. [78] According to Mark Levene, seeing native people as "savages" and racism "played a critical role in psychocultural justifications for genocide" in areas such as Australia and North America. [79]

Genocide was committed on a large scale during both world wars. The prototypical genocide, the Holocaust, involved such large-scale logistics that it reinforced the impression that genocide was the result of civilization drifting off course and required both the "weapons and infrastructure of the modern state and the radical ambitions of the modern man". [80] Scientific racism and nationalism were common ideological drivers of many twentieth century genocides. [81]

Causes and perpetration

We have been reproached for making no distinction between the innocent Armenians and the guilty: but that was utterly impossible in view of the fact that those who are innocent today might be guilty tomorrow. The concern for the safety of Turkey simply had to silence all other concerns.

Talaat Pasha in Berliner Tageblatt , 4 May 1916 [82] [83]

Imperial Russian Army soldiers in the former Armenian village of Sheykhalan near Mush, 1915 Russian soldiers Sheykhalan 1915.jpg
Imperial Russian Army soldiers in the former Armenian village of Sheykhalan near Mush, 1915

Genocide is not an end of itself, but a means to another end—often chosen by perpetrators after other options failed. [84] Moses argues that security—particularly the quest for absolute security informed by paranoia—is the underlying rationale behind all atrocity crimes, including genocide. [85] Genocide perpetrators harm noncombatants along with combatants because of the collective guilt ascribed to an entire people—defined according to race but targeted because of its supposed security threat. [86] Likewise, Jonathan Leader Maynard argues that "mass killings are strategies to achieve familiar security-centric aims, such as defeating perceived enemies, upholding regimes, policing societies, and winning wars", but argues that ideological factors are necessary to explain why such atrocities seem to be a desirable solution to the identified security problem. [87] When exaggerations of the threat are combined with such rationales as military necessity, defense against aggression, and national security, people can be induced to support extreme atrocities. [88] Other motives for genocide have included theft, land grabbing, and revenge. [3]

A large proportion of genocides occurred under the course of imperial expansion and power consolidation. [89] The organizer of genocide is often assumed to be a centralized totalitarian government. [90] While genocides are often carried out by states and military forces, [91] in many cases, paramilitaries and other decentralized forces are involved. [90] In response to greater international scrutiny of genocide, state-sponsored atrocities can be carried out in secrecy by paramilitary groups that are offered impunity for their crimes. This offers the benefit of plausible deniability while widening complicity in the atrocities. [92] [93] Although genocide is typically organized around pre-existing identity boundaries, it has the outcome of strengthening them. [94] Although many scholars have emphasized the role of ideology in genocide, there is little agreement in how ideology contributes to violent outcomes. [95] Others have cited rational explanations for atrocities. [87]

How ordinary people can become involved in extraordinary violence under circumstances of acute conflict is poorly understood. [96] [97] The foot soldiers of genocide (as opposed to its organizers) are not demographically or psychologically aberrant. [98] People who commit crimes during genocide often do not fit stereotypes of evil, nor recognize themselves as perpetrators. [99] Furthermore, researchers have recognized that people's behavior changes under the course of events, and someone might choose to kill one genocide victim while saving another. [100] [101] Although genocide perpetrators have often been assumed to be male, the role of women in perpetrating genocide—although they were historically excluded from leadership—has also been explored. [102] Anthropologist Richard Rechtman writes that in circumstances where atrocities such as genocides are perpetrated, many people refuse to become perpetrators, which often entails great sacrifices such as risking their lives and fleeing their country. [103]

Reactions

According to rational choice theory, it should be possible to intervene to prevent genocide by raising the costs of engaging in such violence relative to alternatives. [104]

Responsibility to protect is a doctrine that emerged around 2000, in the aftermath of several genocides around the world, that seeks to balance state sovereignty with the need for international intervention to prevent genocide. [105] Yet, in practice it is primarily deployed by the United States and its allies against less powerful countries, without affecting the immunity of powerful countries and their allies from legal liability for genocide. [106]

Effects

Mourners at a 2007 funeral for victims of the Srebrenica massacre Srebrenica Massacre - Reinterment and Memorial Ceremony - July 2007 - Women Mourners 2.jpg
Mourners at a 2007 funeral for victims of the Srebrenica massacre

Most of the qualitative research on genocide has focused on the testimonies of victims, survivors, and other eyewitnesses. [107] Studies of genocide survivors have examined rates of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and post-traumatic growth. While some have found negative results, others find no association with genocide survival. [108] There are no consistent findings that children of genocide survivors have worse health than comparable individuals. [109]

Genocide recognition

The word genocide inherently carries a value judgement [110] as it is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil. [111] In the past this was not the case, and violence that could be labeled genocide was sometimes celebrated [112] —although it always had its critics. [113] Although in a strict legal sense, genocide is not more severe than other atrocity crimescrimes against humanity or war crimes—it is often perceived as the "crime of crimes" and grabs attention more effectively than other violations of international law. [114] Consequently, victims of atrocities often label their suffering genocide as an attempt to gain attention to their plight and attract foreign intervention. [115]

The colloquial understanding of genocide is heavily influenced by the Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims targeted for their ethnic identity rather than for any political reason. [44] Genocide is incorrectly conceived of as a large-scale hate crime motivated by racism instead of political reasons, [44] although this does not accurately identify the motivations for the Holocaust itself. [86]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethnic cleansing</span> Systematic removal of a certain ethnic or religious group

Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction. Both the definition and charge of ethnic cleansing is often disputed, with some researchers including and others excluding coercive assimilation or mass killings as a means of depopulating an area of a particular group.

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), or the Genocide Convention, is an international treaty that criminalizes genocide and obligates state parties to pursue the enforcement of its prohibition. It was the first legal instrument to codify genocide as a crime, and the first human rights treaty unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, on 9 December 1948, during the third session of the United Nations General Assembly. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951 and has 153 state parties as of June 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Raphael Lemkin</span> Polish lawyer who coined the term "genocide" (1900–1959)

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent who is known for coining the term genocide and campaigning to establish the Genocide Convention. During the Second World War, he campaigned vigorously to raise international awareness of atrocities in Axis-occupied Europe. It was during this time that Lemkin coined the term "genocide" to describe Nazi Germany's extermination policies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocidal massacre</span> Small-scale massacres with genocidal component

The term genocidal massacre was introduced by Leo Kuper (1908–1994) to describe incidents which have a genocidal component but are committed on a smaller scale when they are compared to genocides such as the Rwandan genocide. Others such as Robert Melson, who also makes a similar differentiation, class genocidal massacres as "partial genocide".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethnocide</span> Extermination of a culture

Ethnocide is the extermination or destruction of ethnic identities. Bartolomé Clavero differentiates ethnocide from genocide by stating that "Genocide kills people while ethnocide kills social cultures through the killing of individual souls". According to Martin Shaw, ethnocide is a core part of physically violent genocide. Some substitute cultural genocide for ethnocide, and other argue the distinction between ethnicity and culture. Cultural genocide and ethnocide have been used in different contexts. While the term "ethnocide" and "ethnic cleansing" are similar, the intentions of their use vary. The term "ethnic cleansing" has been criticized as a euphemism for genocide denial, while "ethnocide" tries to facilitate the opposite.

Genocide definitions include many scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. The word is a compound of the ancient Greek word γένος and the Latin word caedō ("kill"). While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG).

Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary and include forced migration, ethnic cleansing and population transfers.

Donald Bloxham FRHistS is a Professor of Modern History, specialising in genocide, war crimes and other mass atrocities studies. He is the editor of the Journal of Holocaust Education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pacification of Algeria</span> Series of military operations after the French conquest of the Regency of Algiers

The pacification of Algeria, also known as the Algerian genocide, refers to a series of violent military operations that took place from 1830 to 1875, during the French conquest of Algeria. France aimed to put an end to various tribal rebellions and the resistance of the native Algerians to the French invasion. During this period, between 500,000 and 1 million Algerians were killed in campaigns of ethnic cleansing, massacres and forced displacement, out of an estimated population of 3 million. This era also witnessed France's formal annexation of Algeria in 1834, as well as the settlement of approximately 1 million European settlers in the Algerian colony. Various governments and scholars have considered France's actions in Algeria as constituting a genocide.

The genocide of indigenous peoples, colonial genocide, or settler genocide is the elimination of indigenous peoples as a part of the process of colonialism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">California genocide</span> Widespread killing of Native Americans (1846–1873)

The California genocide was a series of systematized killings of thousands of Indigenous people of California by United States government agents and private citizens in the 19th century. It began following the American Conquest of California from Mexico, and the influx of settlers due to the California Gold Rush, which accelerated the decline of the Indigenous population of California. Between 1846 and 1873, it is estimated that non-Natives killed between 9,492 and 16,094 California Natives. In addition, between several hundred and several thousand California Natives were starved or worked to death. Acts of enslavement, kidnapping, rape, child separation and forced displacement were widespread. These acts were encouraged, tolerated, and carried out by state authorities and private militias.

Anthony Dirk Moses is an Australian scholar who researches various aspects of genocide. In 2022 he became the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York, after having been the Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Global Human Rights History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a leading scholar of genocide, especially in colonial contexts, as well as of the political development of the concept itself. He is known for coining the term racial century in reference to the period 1850–1950. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Genocide Research.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide studies</span> Academic field of study that researches genocide

Genocide studies is an academic field of study that researches genocide. Genocide became a field of study in the mid-1940s, with the work of Raphael Lemkin, who coined genocide and started genocide research, and its primary subjects were the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust; the Holocaust was the primary subject matter of genocide studies, starting off as a side field of Holocaust studies, and the field received an extra impetus in the 1990s, when the Bosnian genocide and Rwandan genocide occurred. It received further attraction in the 2010s through the formation of a gender field.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide recognition politics</span>

Genocide recognition politics are efforts to have a certain event (re)interpreted as a "genocide" or officially designated as such. Such efforts may occur regardless of whether the event meets the definition of genocide laid out in the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Perpetrator studies, also known as perpetrator research, is a nascent interdisciplinary, scholarly field of research into the perpetrators of mass killings and/or political violence. It is covered in Journal of Perpetrator Research and other publications.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocides in history</span>

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 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: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group's conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

This is a select annotated bibliography of scholarly English language books and journal articles about the subject of genocide studies; for bibliographies of genocidal acts or events, please see the See also section for individual articles. A brief selection of English translations of primary sources is included for items related to the development of genocide studies. Book entries may have references to journal articles and reviews as annotations. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below; see Further Reading for several book and chapter-length bibliographies. The External links section contains entries for publicly available materials on the development of genocide studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of genocide studies</span>

Below is an outline of articles on the academic field of genocide studies and subjects closely and directly related to the field of genocide studies; this is not an outline of acts or events related to genocide or topics loosely or sometimes related to the field of genocide studies. The Event outlines section contains links to outlines of acts of genocide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genocide of Indigenous Australians</span> 18th to 20th-century eradication of the Australians and their culture by the British colonisers

The genocide of Indigenous Australians is the systematic and deliberate actions taken primarily by British colonisers and their descendants, particularly during the 18th to the 20th centuries, aimed at eradicating Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, languages, and people. Motivations for the genocide varied, and included motivations aimed at preserving a "white Australia", or assimilating Indigenous populations "for their own good".

Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress is a 1944 book by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin that is best known for introducing the concept of genocide, which Lemkin coined from the Greek word γένος with the Latin suffix -caedo.

References

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  2. 1 2 Bachman 2022, p. 48.
  3. 1 2 3 Kiernan 2023, p. 6.
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  5. 1 2 Kiernan 2023, p. 2.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Irvin-Erickson 2023, p. 14.
  7. Shaw 2015, p. 39.
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  10. Irvin-Erickson 2023, pp. 7–8.
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  12. 1 2 Irvin-Erickson 2023, p. 20.
  13. Irvin-Erickson 2023, pp. 20–21.
  14. 1 2 Irvin-Erickson 2023, p. 22.
  15. Weiss-Wendt 2017, p. 4.
  16. Bachman 2022, p. 53.
  17. Irvin-Erickson 2023, p. 8.
  18. Weiss-Wendt 2017, pp. 267–268, 283.
  19. Weiss-Wendt 2017, p. 3.
  20. Weiss-Wendt 2017, p. 158.
  21. Ozoráková 2022, p. 281.
  22. 1 2 Kiernan, Madley & Taylor 2023, p. 2.
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  24. Schabas 2010, pp. 136, 138.
  25. Ozoráková 2022, pp. 292–295.
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  27. Schabas 2010, p. 136.
  28. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 35.
  29. Kiernan, Madley & Taylor 2023, pp. 4, 9.
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  31. Bachman 2022, p. 47.
  32. Weiss-Wendt 2017, p. 9.
  33. Weiss-Wendt 2017, p. 266.
  34. Bloxham & Pendas 2010, p. 632.
  35. Bloxham & Pendas 2010, pp. 633–634.
  36. Bloxham & Pendas 2010, p. 636.
  37. Kiernan et al. 2023, pp. 13, 17.
  38. Kiernan et al. 2023, pp. 17–18.
  39. Kiernan et al. 2023, pp. 23–24.
  40. Kiernan et al. 2023, p. 9.
  41. Shaw 2015, p. 38.
  42. Williams 2020, p. 8.
  43. Shaw 2014, p. 4.
  44. 1 2 3 4 Moses 2023, p. 19.
  45. Shaw 2015, Sociologists redefine genocide.
  46. Shaw 2014, pp. 6–7.
  47. Shaw 2014, p. 7.
  48. Kiernan, Madley & Taylor 2023, pp. 11–12.
  49. Kiernan et al. 2023, p. 3.
  50. Kiernan et al. 2023, pp. 3–4.
  51. Shaw 2014, p. 5.
  52. Bachman 2022, pp. 56–57.
  53. Bachman 2022, p. 62.
  54. Bachman 2021, p. 375.
  55. Bachman 2022, pp. 45–46, 48–49, 53.
  56. Moses 2023, pp. 22–23.
  57. Moses 2023, p. 25.
  58. Graziosi & Sysyn 2022, p. 15.
  59. Shaw 2015, Chapter 5.
  60. 1 2 Shaw 2015, Chapter 6.
  61. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 33.
  62. Moses 2021, p. 1.
  63. Bachman 2022, p. 118.
  64. Shaw 2015, Conclusion of Chapter 4.
  65. Naimark 2017, p. vii.
  66. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 31.
  67. Naimark 2017, pp. 7–9.
  68. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, pp. 50–51.
  69. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, pp. 39, 50.
  70. Fraser 2010, p. 277.
  71. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 47.
  72. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 55.
  73. Kiernan, Madley & Taylor 2023, p. 6–10.
  74. Blackhawk 2023 , p. 38: "With these works, a near consensus emerged. By most scholarly definitions and consistent with the UN Convention, these scholars all asserted that genocide against at least some Indigenous peoples had occurred in North America following colonisation, perpetuated first by colonial empires and then by independent nation-states"
  75. Adhikari 2023, p. 43.
  76. Adhikari 2023, pp. 46–47.
  77. Adhikari 2023, pp. 44–46.
  78. Adhikari 2023, pp. 45–46.
  79. Levene 2015, p. 430.
  80. Kiernan et al. 2023, p. 7.
  81. Kiernan et al. 2023, p. 8.
  82. Ihrig 2016, pp. 162–163.
  83. Moses 2023, p. 32.
  84. Kathman & Wood 2011, pp. 737–738.
  85. Moses 2023, pp. 16–17, 27.
  86. 1 2 Moses 2021, p. 329.
  87. 1 2 Maynard 2022, p. 308.
  88. Maynard 2022, p. 319.
  89. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 49.
  90. 1 2 Shaw 2014, p. 8.
  91. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, pp. 36–37.
  92. Anderson & Jessee 2020, p. 12.
  93. Anderton 2023, p. 146.
  94. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 50.
  95. Maynard 2022, p. 307.
  96. Anderson & Jessee 2020, p. 3.
  97. Rechtman 2021, p. 174.
  98. Williams 2020 , pp. 1–2, 211; Anderson & Jessee 2020 , pp. 8–9; Rechtman 2021 , p. 190; Maynard 2022 , p. 319
  99. Anderson & Jessee 2020, p. 11.
  100. Anderton 2023, p. 143.
  101. Rechtman 2021, p. 177.
  102. Kiernan et al. 2023, p. 10.
  103. Rechtman 2021, pp. 181–182, 187, 191.
  104. Kathman & Wood 2011, p. 738.
  105. Bachman 2022, p. 119.
  106. Bachman 2022, pp. 133–134.
  107. Anderson & Jessee 2020, p. 7.
  108. Lindert et al. 2019, p. 2.
  109. Lindert et al. 2017, p. 246.
  110. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, pp. 31–32.
  111. Lang 2005, pp. 5–17.
  112. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, p. 32.
  113. Lemos, Taylor & Kiernan 2023, pp. 45–46.
  114. Moses 2023, p. 22.
  115. Moses 2023, p. 23.

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