Portal:Genocide

The Genocide Portal

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.

In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.

The Political Instability Task Force estimated that 43 genocides occurred between 1956 and 2016, resulting in about 50 million deaths. The UNHCR estimated that a further 50 million had been displaced by such episodes of violence up to 2008. Genocide is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil. Genocide has been referred to as the "crime of crimes". (Full article...)

Selected article

The term Bosnian genocide refers to either genocide at Srebrenica and Žepa committed by Bosnian Serb forces in 1995 or the wider ethnic cleansing campaign throughout areas controlled by the Army of Republika Srpska that took place during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War. The events in Srebrenica in 1995 included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosniak ("Bosnian Muslim") men and boys, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000–30,000 Bosniak civilians, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by units of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladić.

In the 1990s, several authorities asserted that ethnic cleansing as carried out by elements of the Bosnian Serb army was genocide. These included a resolution by the United Nations General Assembly and three convictions for genocide in German courts (the convictions were based upon a wider interpretation of genocide than that used by international courts). In 2005, the United States Congress passed a resolution declaring that "the Serbian policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing meet the terms defining genocide".

However, in line with a majority of legal scholars, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have ruled that, in order for actions to be deemed genocide, there must be physical or biological destruction of a protected group and a specific intent to commit such destruction. To date, only the Srebrenica massacre has been found to be a genocide by the ICTY, a finding upheld by the ICJ. On 24 March 2016, former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić and the first president of the Republika Srpska, was found guilty of genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes, and crimes against humanity—10 of the 11 eleven charges in total—and sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment.

Selected biography

Martin Shaw (born 30 June 1947 in Driffield, Yorkshire, England) is a British sociologist and academic. He is a research professor of international relations at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals, and emeritus professor of international relations and politics at Sussex University. He is best known for his sociological work on war, genocide and global politics. (Full article...)

Quote

"Over the past five years, I have often recalled that the United Nations’ Charter begins with the words: “We the peoples.” What is not always recognized is that “we the peoples” are made up of individuals whose claims to the most fundamental rights have too often been sacrificed in the supposed interests of the state or the nation. A genocide begins with the killing of one man – not for what he has done, but because of who he is. A campaign of ‘ethnic cleansing’ begins with one neighbour turning on another. Poverty begins when even one child is denied his or her fundamental right to education. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life, all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations."
 — Kofi Annan, Nobel lecture, 2001

Selected images

  • Picture showing Armenians killed during the Armenian Genocide. Image taken from Ambassador Morgenthau's Story, written by Henry Morgenthau, Sr. and published in 1918.
  • Corpse of Soviet Famine victims transported to the cemetery. (Kherson)
  • Bones of anti-Nazi German women still are in the crematoriums in the German concentration camp at Weimar (Buchenwald), Germany, taken by the 3rd U.S. Army. Prisoners of all nationalities were tortured and killed. 04/14/1945
  • Gas canisters and hair of Holocaust victims from a Nazi concentration camp.
  • Rwandan refugee camp in Zaire.
  • Mummified victims of the Rwandan Genocide (1994) at Murambi Technical School. Photograph taken in July 2001 by Emmanuel Cattier.
  • "A relic of the Armenian massacres at Erzingan", image taken from US Ambassador Henry Morgenthau's memoirs (1918).
  • Original caption states: "Deep gashes delivered by the killers are visible in the skulls that fill one room at the Murambi School." Aftermath of Rwandan genocide.
  • Emaciated corpses of children in Warsaw Ghetto.
  • The bodies of the dead lie awaiting burial in a mass grave at the camp. (Bergen-Belsen concentration camp)

Did you know...

Genocide lists

International prosecution of genocide (ad hoc tribunals)

It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish, for prosecution, since intent, demonstrating a chain of accountability, has to be established. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily because the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.

For more information see:

International prosecution of genocide (International Criminal Court)

To date all international prosecutions for genocide have been brought in specially convened international tribunals. Since 2002, the International Criminal Court can exercise its jurisdiction if national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute genocide, thus being a "court of last resort," leaving the primary responsibility to exercise jurisdiction over alleged criminals to individual states. Due to the United States concerns over the ICC, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.[1]

For more information see:

References
  1. "Statement by Carolyn Willson, Minister Counselor for International Legal Affairs, on the Report of the ICC, in the UN General Assembly" (PDF). (123 KiB) November 23 2005

Genocide topics

Genocide Article Index

Categories

Select [►] to view subcategories
Genocide
Genocides
Cultural genocide
Genocide education
Ethnic cleansing
Eugenics
Genocidal rape
Genocide prevention
Incitement to genocide
Razed cities
Responses to genocide
White genocide conspiracy theory
Works about genocide

Things you can do
Here are some tasks awaiting attention:
  • Collaborate : Update news section
  • Maintain : Maintain portal

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Web resources

Discover Wikipedia using portals
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.