Genocide Studies Research Articles

Geopolitics and genocide: The Gambia vs. Myanmar at the International Court of Justice

At a time of increasing prominence of the workings and judgements of international courts, recent interdisciplinary work has illuminated the deeply uneven ways in which violence is labelled, understood, and acted upon. Attempting to place work in genocide studies in conversation with current geographical scholarship, this paper argues that there are intrinsic spatial qualities to deliberations over whether an act of violence constitutes genocide. Understanding these invocations of space helps explain how accountability for violence is spatially contained, often severing judgement from wider historical or geopolitical contexts. This argument is made through analysis of the build up to, and enactment of, the legal deliberations at the International Court of Justice brought by The Gambia against Myanmar in relation to the expulsion of the Rohingya from Rakhine State, Myanmar. Such investigative work reveals the intrinsically geographical nature of both designations of genocidal acts and the intimate processes of legal deliberation itself.

Future Research on Theories of Evil:
 An Insuperable Blind Spot?

This reflection explores the theories of evil in the field of genocide studies and highlights a ‘blind spot’ in understanding the motives behind mass killings. It discusses various theories of evil, ranging from individual-based to situational factors, and emphasizes the need for a nuanced understanding of diverse and complex motives. The reflection suggests that incorporating neuroscience into genocide studies may shed light on the motives behind violence by examining the impact of brain trauma and injury. However, it also raises questions about the extent to which neuroscience can provide a comprehensive explanation for motive and the implications of using neuroscientific evidence in genocide trials. The reflection concludes by discussing the limitations of attributing complete responsibility to the brain and the role of behavioral science in understanding criminal responsibility.

Crisis and the International System: A Case Study of Genocide in Rwanda and Ethiopia and the Significance of Early Warning Signals

As the international system encounters armed conflict ongoing in several parts of the globe, concerns have shifted from resolving these conflicts to premeditating and preventing them in the initial stages. However, different continents and societies have inherent peculiarities that shape their conflicts, of which the African continent is not excluded. This paper examines the incidences of genocide in Rwanda and Ethiopia to shed light on the significance of early warning signals in preventing and mitigating such catastrophic events. The research interrogates the complex dynamics of the African continent, exploring how political, social, and economic factors contribute to the emergence and escalation of crises. Through an examination of Rwanda and Ethiopia, the study highlights the importance of recognizing early warning signs as important indicators of potential crises. In essence, policymakers and stakeholders can potentially aver or minimize the devastating consequences of crises by identifying this signal and implementing swift and timely intervention measures. Additionally, the findings emphasize the need for enhanced international cooperation and proactive measures to address and manage crises within the global context effectively.

War Reparations of the Russian Federation to Ukraine for Ecocide and Genocide: Legal Re-alities and Past Experience

Today, the study of ecocide and genocide is of great importance.Since the Russian Federation's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the latter has suffered many losses, including among the civilian population, which in turn has signs of genocide, and is daily subjected to nuclear blackmail and other threats and damages, the realization of which is regarded as ecocide.
 Ecocide and genocide are grave crimes against humanity that are recognized internationally and require significant efforts to prevent them in the future. According to international and national law, ecocide and genocide are punishable by liability, including reparations for the damage caused. Such responsibility pursues two main goals: punishment for crimes committed and creating an example of consequences that will influence the legal consciousness of society in the direction of preserving peace and environmental safety.
 The prosecution for ecocide and genocide, which is currently being carried out in Ukraine by the political and military elite of the Russian Federation, should be no exception. Despite the fact that the military conflict in Ukraine has actually been going on since 2014, the Russian Federation has not yet paid any reparations. In addition, no decision has been made that would impose an obligation on the aggressor state to pay such reparations in favor of Ukraine.
 Currently, the process of paying reparations to Ukraine has been significantly intensified, which is a positive sign for both Ukraine and the entire civilized world. In this regard, the study of historical examples of reparations for ecocide and genocide is also becoming relevant because, in particular, it will help to determine the general vision of the mechanism for making such payments, and at the theoretical level will serve as a basis for the formation of Ukrainian state policy on bringing the aggressor to justice in the form of payment of an appropriate amount of money for the damage caused by military operations.

What Enables or Constrains Mass Expulsion? A New Decision-Making Framework

Given similar probabilities of mass expulsion, why do some governments expel ethnic groups en masse and others refrain? Extending the genocide studies literature on the dynamics of restraint, this theory-building study introduces a new framework to conceptualize the process of governments’ mass expulsion policy decisions. The novel paired-comparison case study of Asian minorities in postcolonial Uganda and Kenya generates new hypotheses about what enables and constrains a specific type of eliminationist policy. Despite analogous contexts, target populations, and motives to expel, in 1972 Uganda systematically expelled up to 80,000 South Asians en masse, whereas in 1967–69 Kenya did not. The negative case of Kenya, a country that seemed likely to expel but refrained, highlights important factors that constrain government expulsion decisions: alliances, target group “homeland” state(s), and international organizations. Evidence was drawn from archival research conducted at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The article concludes by outlining a research agenda to test the new analytical framework to contribute to our understanding of demographic engineering policies and restraints on ethnic violence.

A vision of coexistence-centred African culture: when the synagogue becomes a court

ABSTRACTThis article explores the meaning of coexistence-centred African culture, a world in which racial colonial violence does not interrupt our sense of how we value other African people. Accountability for conquest and the return of everything and everybody that has been stolen through slavery, colonialism, imprisonment, forced labour, land theft, rape, torture, and cruelty begins with the recognition of our many African selves as one. The author first began exploring this idea in the early days of the end of apartheid as a distinguished scholar of genocide studies in South Africa. In this article, he discusses the restoration of the Paul Kruger Street Synagogue in Pretoria as offering the potential to house and collectively explore new visions of coexistence-centred African futures.

Education Supplement for International Holocaust Remembrance Day

About This Issue This Education Supplement has been created in honor of International Holocaust Remem-brance Day, marked on 27 January of each year. It begins with a brief background of the commemoration day and then moves into the harder work of defining the Holocaust. Here, students are presented with five definitions of the Holocaust and asked to read them for similarities and differences before considering which they feel is most appropriate. The heart of this supplement consists of three Genocide Studies International articles. Each has been selected because of its important content and the critical conversation it will provoke. In addition, each piece employs a different style of writing commonly seen in academic articles.

Education Supplement for Genocide Awareness Month

Genocide Studies International ( GSI) is owned, operated, and managed by the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (a division of the Zoryan Institute). The journal is published twice a year by the University of Toronto Press. Zoryan Institute, a nonprofit organization, serves the cause of scholarship and public awareness relating to issues of universal human rights, genocide, and diaspora-homeland relations. This is done through the systematic continued efforts of scholars and specialists using a comparative and multidisciplinary approach and in accordance with the highest academic standards.

The Importance of Theory and Scientific Theories for the Scientific Study of Genocide in the Context of the Contribution to the Development of the Science of Genocide

The research problem is the importance of scientific theory and theories in the scientific study of genocide. The main objective and purpose of the work are to enable, through an appropriate, correct, and scientifically verified methodological approach, the acquisition of real scientific knowledge about the study of a very complex social phenomenon - genocide - and the contribution of scientific theory to this research, builds a separate scientific discipline - the science of genocide. The main results of the work are prerequisites for successful genocide research and the formation of a special science that would deal with this problem, it is necessary to develop theory and scientific theory as a basis for the development of genocide science because the underdevelopment of theoretical assumptions reflects the development of methodological empirical research and the limited use of research procedures, methods, and techniques. If the theoretical basis of empirical research is weaker, then the source of research knowledge is limited. This suggests that there is a direct causal relationship with the research results obtained, which calls into question their value and validity. The research conducted in this thesis has the characteristics of scientific theoretical research, which is necessarily qualitative in nature. As it is theoretical research of a qualitative nature, the qualitative method of document content analysis is mainly applied as one of the methods of data collection. In addition to this method, all the basic analytical-synthetic methods will be used as individual methods and in certain combinations, correlations, and relationships as necessary, as well as the hypothetico-deductive, axiomatic and comparative methods of the group of general scientific methods. The study will add to and complete the body of scientific information on genocide research.
 
 Received: 18 September 2022 / Accepted: 25 December 2022 / Published: 5 January 2023

The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature

The Broken Voice: Reading Post-Holocaust Literature

Holocaust and Genocide Studies in Nursing Education: Nurse Practitioners as Critical Intellectuals.

In most nursing schools, Holocaust and genocide studies are not part of the curriculum. However, studying past horrors involving health care professionals is essential for forming a clear moral compass to navigate future nursing practice. This article analyzes a unique Holocaust and genocide curriculum for graduate nurse practitioner students and its effects on participants. The students wrote reflective accounts, which were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The studies had a profound effect on the students, who adopted a critical perspective and became more sensitive to wrongdoing and social suffering, more involved in current ethical and social issues, and more willing to engage in social advocacy. The course strengthened the moral responsibility of the students, transforming them into critical intellectuals. Holocaust and genocide studies enhance nurses' humanistic approach and help them confront dogma, challenge social denial, and resist oppression, discrimination, and structural racism. [J Nurs Educ. 2022;61(11):624-632.].

Genocide and Victimology. By Yarin Eski (ed.) (Routledge, 2021, 234pp., £96.00 hbk)

This edited collection includes contributions from scholars who specialize in genocide studies and victimology research. Interdisciplinary in nature, it seeks to foreground victims while also exploring the dynamics and processes of victimization. On the surface, it examines how people become victims of genocide; who is victimized; why they are targeted; and it considers the difficult relationship between victims, perpetrators, and the state. At a deeper level, the book is about colonial interference, the heteronormative and Western definition of genocide and the plight of strangers that need our help. It is a book that turns our gaze on the stereotyping, racism, homophobia and gender conformity that contribute to people being victimized, silenced and erased from the face of the earth. The book also broadens our understanding of the connectedness of humanity to life-giving ecosystems and the need for safe havens. It is ultimately about the ‘dark side of ourselves’ (p. 202).

“Kill the Armenian/Indian; Save the Turk/Man: Carceral Humanitarianism, the Transfer of Children and a Comparative History of Indigenous Genocide”

Abstract This article draws the genocide of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire into the comparative study of indigenous genocide. Using a Human Rights Studies approach, I focus on the transfer of indigenous children by state authorities through carceral institutions to argue that the ideology and practice of modern humanitarianism is a definitive shared element of indigenous genocides across the late-19th and early-20th Centuries. Common experiences of denial by powerful states and cultural erasure invite added comparison and intersectional solidarity. The article is written to address Native American and Armenian Studies scholars together, elaborate a working vocabulary for future collaborative research in Human Rights Studies and serve as a point of departure for public scholarship and policy engagement.

Empire of Destruction: A History of Nazi Mass Killing

Alex Kay’s Empire of Destruction is an excellent study of systematic acts of mass killing carried out by Nazi Germany during World War II. The book synthesizes some of the most up-to-date scholarship on different victim groups, particularly German-language works, offering readers a wide-reaching yet focused study of the connections between seven killing campaigns directed against: people considered mentally and physically disabled within Germany and, later, in occupied territories; Polish ruling classes and elites; Jews; Sinti and Roma; captive Red Army soldiers; the Soviet urban population within occupied territories; and civilians targeted for reprisal killings (primarily in rural Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland and the USSR). Holocaust and Genocide Studies experts will recognize many of the specific findings in the book, but the breadth of topics covered means there should be new information for all readers to discover. The book’s great contribution is that it coherently brings together a range of findings, offering a single point of reference for innovative research from the past two decades and beyond.

Round Table (Full Symposium): What’s Raphaël Lemkin Got to do with Genocide Studies? A Conversation on Gender, Culture, Economics, Categorical Violence, and Colonization with Professors Sarah Federman, Dirk Moses, Max Pensky, and Scott Straus

Round Table (Full Symposium): What’s Raphaël Lemkin Got to do with Genocide Studies? A Conversation on Gender, Culture, Economics, Categorical Violence, and Colonization with Professors Sarah Federman, Dirk Moses, Max Pensky, and Scott Straus

Réfutation du livre The Betrayal of Anne Frank (Qui a Trahi Anne Frank ?) de Rosemary Sullivan

The publication on January 17, 2022 of a book entitled The Betrayal of Anne Frank by best-selling author Rosemary Sullivan, claiming to “understand what triggered the roundup of August 4, 1944,” during which the young diarist was arrested and deported, has caused a shockwave and controversy. The book’s thesis pointed to a “traitor,” Arnold van den Bergh, a Jewish notary, humanitarian activist, and member of the Jewish Council. Rigorous research by four specialists from the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies led to a report refuting this position point by point. This article presents the report’s central argument and conclusion and proposes an overview of the current media and memory-related debate.

“Parasitically Occupying Bodies”: Exploring Toxifying Securitization in Anti-Trans and Genocidal Ideologies

What is the “internal logic” of extreme anti-minority ideologies? While phenomena such as dehumanization are widely recognized as playing an important role in legitimating mass violence, recent scholarship invites us to consider the impact of “toxification” and other securitizing and threat-framing discourses in motivating “defensive” action against minority groups. Using such a framework, this essay investigates anti-trans discourses that advocate for action against a supposed “trans epidemic”. It finds that notions of infiltration, corruption, and intimate danger – associated with “toxifying” genocidal discourse – are likewise core to anti-trans ideological formations, with many distinctive elements in common. Where the two differ, however, is in their links with material security politics – genocidal toxification readily aligns with more “traditional” national security politics, something that has not occurred with anti-trans discourse. The essay concludes by identifying the practical and theoretical lessons that trans and genocide studies have for each other, as well as a future research agenda.

History of Yazidi Genocides, Mass Atrocities, Forced Conversions and Persecutions in the Middle East

persecutions suffered by the Yazidis with the help of the following questions: How many Yazidi genocides have been documented? What were the reasons behind these genocides and persecutions? Whether or not all the mass atrocities suffered by the Yazidis should be termed genocide? This study is a part of my postdoctoral research, which is an effort to document the mass violence and genocides suffered by the Yazidis in the Mesopotamian region. Before the 2014 genocide, Yazidis were forgotten and left to the mercy of their Muslim neighbors. Their painful history was ignored, and it lacked proper documentation. Keeping in mind the forgotten history of the genocides suffered by the Yazidi community, peacefully living in Mount Sinjar and the Hakkari Mountains, this research focuses on documenting the instances of mass atrocities and genocides, the reasons behind such mass atrocities and the way forward. There is a common perception among the Yazidis and some scholars that the Yazidis suffered up to 74 genocides over their history; this research project offers a qualitative case study of the history of the genocides and mass atrocities suffered by the Yazidis. It is important to adopt a research methodology that provides enough data to reach sound conclusions. To collect data, literature review and interviews were employed and the theory of epistemic violence as well as hermeneutics was used to analyze this data. This analysis provides a deeper understanding and knowledge of Yazidi genocides, mass atrocities and persecutions as well as their causes. It is an extremely important research for the Yazidi community and genocide studies because no research has ever been conducted to document the total number of genocides, persecutions and mass murders suffered by the Yazidis.

Memory as resistance: A study on the literary importance of new forms of representation in confronting and commemorating the experiences of genocide

In light of a new generation of individuals discounting the genocides—the Holocaust being one of many—the need to remember the atrocities, the need to hand over the responsibility of the memory of the atrocities, has become increasingly pressing. The transfer of memories to a generation which has not experienced the trauma of genocide is vital to prevent the watering down of experience to a myth, and most importantly, to work towards the prevention of a repeat of the genocide. The first part of the paper discusses the original ways of approaching the field of genocide studies, the genre of Historical Realism being predominant. The next part of the paper focuses on selected texts— Ezhathu Kavithaigal, Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy, Art Spiegelman’s Maus etc. to respond to the criticisms against postmodern approaches and the deviation in the way genocides have been recorded. The field of genocide studies has, in recent years, been on the receiving end of new approaches to further the understanding of the events that have transpired. Texts emerging in the postmodern era are a welcome difference from the monolithic approach to this field of studies. New forms of art and literature have taken on the responsibility to transfer the memory and experience of genocides, becoming the channels of resistance against misrepresentation of trauma. The third and final part focuses on the components from the above-mentioned selected texts that enable dialogue between the reader and the text, commemorating past trauma and paving the way to human rights discussions.

Analyzing Participation in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda

Recent studies of genocide have yielded varying estimates of the number and characteristics of people who engaged in violence. We address these disparities in estimates for one well-studied case: the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. Using novel data from Rwanda’s post-genocide gacaca courts, we provide updated estimates regarding participants. Specifically, we find that between 847,233 and 888,307 people participated in the genocide, with 181,280 to 190,113 people found guilty of only violent offenses, 618,164 to 654,152 individuals found guilty of only property crimes, and 44,042 to 47,789 individuals found guilty of both property and violent crimes. In total, we estimate that between 229,069 and 234,155 individuals were found guilty of a violent offense, including those who committed violent offenses as well as both violent and property offenses. These results align with past research, representing an important convergence of evidence regarding participation in this genocide. We also calculate specific characteristics of participants, finding that nearly 90% of all participants were men and that the median age for all participants was 34. Although most participants committed a single crime, between 215,124 and 222,522 people were found guilty of multiple crimes. Approximately 6% of people accounted for 25% of the property crimes, while 11% of people accounted for 25% of the violent crimes. These findings provide foundational information about one of the deadliest episodes of mass violence in the 20th century.