In his courses at Yale Law School after the passage of the UN Genocide Convention in 1948, Lemkin taught his broad definition of genocide to his students-in contrast to the definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention. And, finally, notice in both the UN treaty and Axis Rule that genocide can be committed without killing anyone (see Irvin-Erickson, Raphaël Lemkin, chapter 6). Notice Lemkin’s broad definition of social groups in Axis Rule (his definition of a national group was much broader than our current definitions of nations), and notice how he defines genocide as a colonial process of removing the national patterns of the oppressed and imposing the national patterns of the oppressors. Compare the two texts below: the legal definition of genocide in the 1948 Convention, left, and Lemkin’s social scientific definition, on the right, from Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, which was written between late 1941 and early 1943, and published in 1944. Rather, it was a compromise worked out by delegates representing UN member states. Genocide prevention work demands a radical vision of reconciliation as something that must occur before genocide occurs, so that conflicts that seem intractable today can be dislodged and de-escalated long before they escalate into genocidal conflicts (see Irvin-Erickson, Raphaël Lemkin, Chapter 7 and Conclusion).Įven though Lemkin led the movement at the United Nations to draft the Genocide Convention, the definition of genocide in the 1948 Genocide Convention was not Lemkin’s definition. Most importantly, for Lemkin, this was underpinned by the rule of law, and the necessity of trans-national social movements to defend the moral authority of international institutions and international law when states begin to repress their own populations. True prevention requires a commitment to making and building peace, supporting recognition efforts, and championing inclusive societies that are free of all forms of bias and discrimination, promoting economic justice, encouraging bystanders to become advocates long before the outbreak of direct violence, working to connect victims and the marginalized to local and global networks of solidarity, and striving to create the structural conditions-from the local to the global-that provide all groups and individuals with equal access social, cultural, economic, and political opportunities and rights. This means there is no prescription for prevention but rather genocide prevention involves de-escalating identity-based conflicts, working to dislodge deeply rooted conflicts, and building peaceful, inclusive, and just societies. Actual physical destruction is the last and most effective phase of genocide” - Lemkin, Introduction to the Study of Genocideīecause genocide and mass atrocities are complex social processes, prevention is also a social process and equally complex. Each of these methods is a more or less effective means of destroying a group. For Lemkin, what made genocide so difficult to prevent was that it involved “countless small and different actions that, when taken separately, constituted different crimes, or sometimes did not constitute a crime at all, but when taken together constituted a type of atrocity that threatened the existence of social collectivities and threatened the peaceful social order of the world.” … genocide is a gradual process and may begin with political disenfranchisement, economic displacement, cultural undermining and control, the destruction of leadership, the break-up of families and the prevention of propagation. Yet, genocide was often committed by people who did not think they were committing genocide, and often held no hate in their hearts. In Lemkin’s analysis of genocide, we find a theory of group destruction that involves systems of repression and oppression, direct and indirect violence, structural and cultural violence, a direct link between the economic destruction of targeted groups and their cultural suppression, and the denial of the victims’ right to exist because of their social identity-all in an effort to eradicate group identities from the fabric of society. He saw genocide as a type of conflict that sometimes escalated into direct violence, but not always. Raphaël Lemkin did not define genocide as an act of mass killing.
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