Genocide and the Brain: Neuroscience, Mental Harm, and International Law

Abstract

ABSTRACT Genocide scholarship rarely gives direct consideration to the Genocide Convention’s description of “causing serious bodily and mental harm” as an act of genocide. This article examines the historical rationales for including this act in the international legal definition of genocide. It shows that mental harm was included because of a concern for the impact of narcotics and other substances on cognitive functioning and brain health. Building off this observation, the article draws genocide research into a conversation with emerging neuroscience on brain injury, cognitive stress, and brain development. When the Genocide Convention was first written nearly eighty years ago, neuroscience did not exist, and politicians could not have anticipated the now well-demonstrated importance of environmental, social, nutritional, and linguistic enrichment for brain development and health. Contemporary neuroscience has revealed the profound vulnerability of the brain and body to multiple techniques of violence and observed that long-term damage to both an individual and their capacity to function in a social group may result from even low-levels of brain injury. As such, this article argues that genocide studies should to be more attuned to emerging neuroscientific literature because it has the potential to drastically change our understanding of the form, intensity, scale, and regularity of events of genocide. Moreover, emerging brain science greatly strengthens claims about the damaging, genocidal effects of cultural violence, intoxication, and residential schools in the context of colonial and indigenous genocide.