Context Of Genocide Research Articles

Implicit Rhetoric of Genocide in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan (1956)

The article explores the complex nexus of the legal and the literary by re-envisioning the idea of genocide as a legal, social as well as political concept, as the violence engendered by it continues to cast its shadow over humankind. The relevance of Khushwant Singh’s novel Train to Pakistan lies in its vivid portrayal of how mass passions of religious antagonism result in gripping accounts of bloodshed and forced expulsion of ordinary people in South Asia. The paper also seeks to contest the narrow understanding of genocide where the victim and perpetrator communities are perceived as exclusive categories. Through this exemplary novel, the paper attempts to foreground how fictional narratives mirror the basic conceptualizations of genocide as enshrined in the United Nations Genocide Convention (1948). The paper delves into the blurred distinction between victim and perpetrator communities in the context of partition in South Asia. The article engages in a close textual analysis to shed light on the synthesis of the literary and legal context of genocide in Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan. The paper establishes how reading the novel from the legal point of view underscores the contentious nature of genocide that prevailed during the time of Partition.

Families Formed Under Forced Marriage During the Genocide in Cambodia: Exploring the Perspectives of Men, Women, and Children

This paper explores the realities of men and women forced to marry by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, as well as the perspectives of children born of forced marriages. Forced marriage has been predominantly investigated in relation to violence and coercion towards girls and women. However, less attention has been paid to forced unions involving both spouses, as well as to children born of these couples. Data were collected from 80 participants, including in-depth interviews with 28 women and 30 men who experienced forced marriage, and focus groups with 22 children born of forced marriages. Those who experienced forced marriage highlighted the coercion and threats of violence that underlay the marriage process. However, interviews also pointed to spouses’ key coping mechanisms and resources, such as the long-term acceptance of the marriage and support from larger community, which sustained positive familial relations. Children born of these unions, who regarded their parents’ marriage as generally loving and supportive, corroborated these findings. Our study revealed the ways in which forced marriages within the context of genocide were not necessarily characterized by domestic violence and abuse. We suggest that the shared and widespread nature of forced marriage and post-genocide community support may play a role in leading to positive family relationships in the context of unwanted unions.

The ICC’s First ‘Forced Pregnancy’ Case in Historical Perspective

Abstract Reproductive violence, as distinct from the related issue of sexual violence, is yet to be truly ‘surfaced’ in international criminal law. Yet, this kind of violence has long been a feature of war, and is repugnant to the values that international criminal law protects. The Ongwen case, which commenced trial in the International Criminal Court in December 2016, is a step forward in this regard. Not only is this the first case in any international criminal court to include charges of ‘forced pregnancy’; it is also one of the only cases in which reproductive violence outside the context of genocide or ‘ethnic cleansing’ has been understood as a crime under international law. This article situates this landmark case is its historical contex, and raises some broader concerns about the limited response to reproductive violence in the development and enforcement of international criminal law. Based on an analysis of the law and practice of past and present international criminal courts, it shows that accountability for conflict-related reproductive violence has been patchy at best, and that there has been little recognition of the harms that such violence causes to individual victims, as distinct from the groups to which they ‘belong’. The article concludes by sketching out some steps to remedy these omissions, building on the progress made in the Ongwen case. Underlying the article is a view that reproductive autonomy is a distinct value from sexual autonomy, and that, where possible, conduct which offends this value should be punished as a separate crime.

Framing Rape: Patriarchy, Wartime, and the Spectacle of Genocidal Rape

Clearly, epidemic occurrence of genocidal as has happened in numerous war-torn countries and countries embattled by ethnic conflict-requires an urgent thinking-through of issues at stake and context in order to understand what a proper response and resolution should be. Because of richness and density of this text, it is impossible to address all strands that Bergoffen has woven together to defend and illuminate implications of judgment of International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in trial of three Bosnian-Serb soldiers, namely that recognizing that genocidal rape is a violation of human rights affirms dignity of vulnerable body. Bergoffen's first few chapters describe situation of women who were raped in contexts of ethnic cleansings of former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. She begins by pointing to trials that were authorized by UN Security Council; she then reflects on judgment of International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): namely, that these rapes were against humanity, the second most egregious international criminal offense.As Bergoffen points out: ICTR judgment against one of rapists linked criminality of rape to criminality of genocide, and that rape, like torture, was a criminal genocidal tactic (6). In case of ICTY's trials, ICTR verdict was acknowledged, and link between rape and genocide was also acknowledged. The ICTY ruling went even further in several ways: First, coercive tactics against rape need not include physical violence . . . [and] rape could not be identified as a species of torture (7); second, ICTY convicted Bosnian-Serb soldiers of crimes against humanity; and third, ICTY ruling that rapes and associated such as sexual enslavement and assault violated women's right to sexual thereby constructing the right to sexual integrity (6-7).For Bergoffen, these rulings are path-breaking in that they go above and beyond simple understanding of human rights violations as those of liberal conceptions of human rights, namely of right to autonomy and self-determination. Rather, these rulings transform our understanding of magnitude of depth of injury and violation, by pointing to rape within context of genocide rather than ethnic cleansing. Bergoffen points to depth of implications of classifying rape within former rather than latter category. To locate rape within context of ethnic cleansing closes off possibility that scope of act has an effect on community's future viability; it also precludes acknowledgment that forced relocation has long-standing effects on its viability (20).1Let me address fact that locating of rape within context of genocide changes nature and scope of recognition of violation of rape. To understand rape within context of genocide is to understand, not only elements of coercion, power, and violation, but also of humiliation and dehumanization, as well loss of right to cultural determination, sexual self-determination, viability of one's self-chosen community. Bergoffen quotes Claudia Card's notion of social death as one of intrinsic factors in genocide-in order to illustrate its relevance in resituating impact of rape as a human rights violation. I think it is helpful to bring up Bergoffen's description of Card's notion here: To equate genocide with physical annihilation (qua ethnic cleansing), we miss unique evil of genocide-social death. According to Card, our singular and collective identities are inextricably linked. We are who we are through bonds we forge with each other as members of a common culture. Our shared histories, traditions and languages anchor meanings of our lives. Tactics that destroy these bonds produce social death. …

The Influence of Domestic Legal Traditions on the Gender Jurisprudence of International Criminal Tribunals

International criminal law is often seen as more progressive than many domestic legal traditions in its consideration of gender-based crimes such as rape. That said, domestic legal traditions have profoundly influenced how international criminal law has addressed gender-based crimes, especially crimes of sexual violence. In turn, international criminal law has also, to a lesser extent, influenced domestic law on gender-based crimes, again especially with respect to sexual violence. This seems to indicate an ongoing dialogue on sexual violence between the international and national spheres, but a closer examination raises questions about the appropriateness of that exchange. For example, have the correct domestic laws been considered when searching for international general principles of law on rape? Has gender-based discrimination in domestic laws been taken into account when considering the lessons those laws provide to international criminal law? And, perhaps most central to the consideration of whether there should be a flow of influence from the domestic to the international and back to the domestic: are the circumstances of international criminal law—namely the context of genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes—so different from domestic circumstances that there can be no useful comparison? This article begins with an examination of two examples of the flow from domestic to international criminal law. The first example relates to how rape has been defined by international criminal courts and tribunals. It demonstrates that, after an initial rejection of engagement with the domestic sphere, international criminal law has cautiously (in the case of the International Criminal Court) or fully (in certain cases before the International Criminal Tribunals for the

From comparative to international genocide studies: The international production of genocide in 20th-century Europe

Genocide is widely seen as a phenomenon of domestic politics, which becomes of international significance because it offends against international law. Hence there are as yet inadequate International Relations analyses of the production of genocide. This article challenges the idea of the domestic genesis of genocide, and critiques the corresponding approach of ‘comparative genocide studies’ which is dominant in the field. It analyses the emergence of more fruitful ‘relational’ and ‘international’ approaches in critical genocide studies, while identifying the limitations of their accounts of the ‘international system’. As first steps towards an adequate international account, the article then explores questions of the international meaning and construction of genocidal relations, and of international relations as the context of genocide. It argues for a historical and sociological approach to the international relations of genocide, and examines 20th-century European genocide in this light. Arguing for a broader conception of this historical experience than is suggested by an exclusive focus on the Holocaust, the article offers an interpretation of genocide as increasingly endemic and systemic in international relations in the first half of the century. It concludes by arguing that this account offers a starting point, but not a model, for analyses of genocide in global international relations in the 21st century.

The Final Solution: A Genocide

This is a challenging book with far-reaching implications for our understanding of the Holocaust and its place in the history of the twentieth century. Based upon a careful and judicious reading of the most important literature on the Holocaust, Donald Bloxham seeks to situate the mass-murder of European Jewry between 1941 and 1945 within the broader history of European genocide from 1875 to 1945. In doing so, he takes issue with Steven Katz, and those who insist that the Jewish Holocaust was a unique event in human history, and argues instead that the full meaning of the final solution can only be understood if placed in the larger context of genocide that characterised much of European history from the Congress of Berlin through to the end of the Second World War. The crux of Bloxham's argument is that, with the disintegration and eventual collapse of the three great multi-national empires that dominated the map of central and eastern Europe—the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian empires—and the emergence of new states based upon the principle of ethnic domination, the status of all religious and ethnic minorities, particularly in the shatterzones where the three empires abutted against each other, became increasingly problematic. Those minorities that were suspected either of having loyalties to other territorial states outside the state in which they lived, or of harbouring hopes of becoming part of a state in which their ethnic group was dominant, were particularly vulnerable. For such minorities, the only answer was expulsion and repatriation to states in which the ethnic groups to which they belonged were dominant. Generally this was to be accomplished through population transfer, but in those cases where population transfer was not feasible the answer was often genocide.

Autobiographical representations of the Rwanda genocide and black diasporic identities in Africa

This article uses the example of the Rwandan genocide to deconstruct notions of African diaspora based on margin to centre and pull and push factors. Representing patterns of African migrations and diasporas through the autobiographical mode reveals multiple genocides that took place not only in Rwanda but in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Umutesi's novel, Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (2004) complicates our standard understanding of what is known of genocide in Africa, forcing us to revise our notions of diaspora because the autobiographical narrative highlights differences within a single refugee diaspora. Umutesi's personal account of the links between genocide and diaspora in the Great Lakes Region interrogates the very authority that is accorded individual subjectivities in autobiographical works of Africa. The contingent nature of African politics, particularly, within the unnatural context of genocide renders African identities transient and perpetually diasporic.

The Holocaust and strategic bombing: genocide and total war in the twentieth century

Introduction The Problem Of Governmental Mass Killing The Historical Ubiquity of Slaughter The Historiography of Total War and Genocide The Relationship Between Genocide and Total War A Conceptual Framework for Further Analysis Case Studies In The Psychology, Organization, And Technology Of Twentieth-Century Genocide And Total War The Global Context of Genocide and Total War, 19311945 The Evolution of the Holocaust, 19191945 The Evolution of Allied Strategic Bombing, 19391945 Psychological Factors in the Holocaust and Strategic Bombing Organizational and Scientific-Technological Factors in the Holocaust and Strategic Bombing Lessons, Legacies, And Prospects What We Have Learned from This Study Changing the Future.

Accounting for genocide after 1945: Theories and some findings

AbstractGenocide has been related in social theory to both social and political structure: i.e., plural society (ethnoclass exclusion and discrimination) and types of polities - revolutionary, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. War has also been noted as an instigator or frequent context of genocide. This paper reviews theoretical expectations and examines the empirical relation between genocides (and other state massacres) and indices of ethnic discrimination, polity form, and war among states in Asia, Africa and the Mid-East from 1948 to 1988. Findings show that (1) most users of genocide are repeat offenders. (2) There is a high likelihood of political exclusion and discrimination of ethnoclasses producing rebellions which instigate genocides and other state-sponsored massacres. (3) As expected, unfree, authoritarian, and one-party communist states (in ascending order) are most likely to use genocide. Democratic states in this era are not perpetrators against their citizens but have been patrons and accomplices of genocidal regimes elsewhere. One-party communist states are 4.5 times more likely to have used genocide than are authoritarian states. (4) States involved in wars are many more times as likely to have employed genocide than other states. Exploring these cases, we find that genocides both lead to war and war leads to genocide through several processes. (5) The use of genocide in conflicts within the state in the regions surveyed tripled between 1968-88 compared to the preceding score of years (10:3 cases). Genocide and genocidal massacres occur so often that they may be considered normal in these regions. Both the theoretical and the policy implications of these findings are discussed. Observing on the latter, we note that journalists and scholars have often confused recognition of genocide and genocidal massacres by framing these cases as 'ethnic conflicts', by confounding the toll of war and massacre and by conflating concepts. To deter genocide, we should promote nonviolent change in order to eliminate ethnoclass domination and monitor civil wars to detect