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NOTE: This is the super, SUPER rough draft of the final paper. It's not done COMPLETELY yet.
Prevention of Genocide
In the 1940’s, the Nazi regime killed over six million people. The methods of murder were brutal and dehumanizing, including gas chambers, firing squads, and starvation. Roughly two thirds of the Jewish population in the regions under Nazi control was exterminated. (Goldhagen) This systematic mass murder was genocide, and in 1949, at the Geneva Convention, the United Nations developed a policy defining genocide and declaring it a crime that they were morally obligated to prevent and punish. They swore that the events of the holocaust would never repeat themselves in the future. However, these horrific events have occurred multiple times over the decades since the policy was adopted, all across the world—Cambodia, Bosnia, China, Guatemala, Sudan, the Congo, Ethiopia, and numerous other countries. (Genocide Watch n. pag.) The fact that these events keep occurring clearly shows that the policy adopted in 1949 is not preventing or stopping any genocides. The current policy of the United Nations on the prevention and means of ending genocide is ineffective and should be changed.
The Geneva Convention of 1949 defined genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Article two of the convention outlines what these acts include:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Geneva Convention)
These acts may include various specific crimes, including torture, sexual abuse or violence, mutilation, forced starvation, and severe overwork in labor camps. (Stanton, What is Genocide?, n. pag.) The policy states that any individual (whether they are private citizens or public officials) may be punished for committing any of the acts outlined in Article Two. The policy also states that it is a crime to plan or incite genocide, meaning that acts of genocide need not be committed, merely planned, for the conspirators to be punished. (Stanton, n. pag.)
This policy is very clear: the international community should not tolerate any acts of genocide. The policy clearly states what acts of genocide are and who may be punished for them; however, nowhere in the policy is a plan of action proposed, or even a guideline on what to do in case acts of genocides occur. The policy clearly mandates that the international community should take action in order to prevent or punish acts of genocide, but because no specific actions or requirements are stated, the UN is able to avoid taking action in a variety of ways: denying that sufficient information was present to acknowledge the acts, denying that it was indeed a genocide, or denying that the United Nations COULD have done anything to prevent the acts of genocide from occurring.
According to historian Daniel Goldhagen, a noted genocide researcher, “Nothing is inevitable about genocide... Leaders choose to initiate the killing, ordinary people make a conscious choice to participate, and those with the power to prevent or stop it choose to do nothing.”(Goldhagen) Genocide does not occur spontaneously. It takes years of careful planning, organizing, and conspiring before genocide can effectively occur. There are obvious warning signs before every genocide that would be nearly impossible for the UN to miss. However, the UN chooses to ignore the signs that are staring them in the face.
Dozens of genocides have occurred since the current policy was adopted. Millions of people have died, and the UN has done little or nothing to prevent these deaths. The excuses of the UN vary greatly, but there should be no excuse for genocide. Each of the genocides that have occurred could have been prevented if the UN had chosen to intervene in a timely manner.
In the 1970s in Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge government killed roughly 1.7 million people by methods of starvation, execution, overwork, and disease. (Leitsinger, n. pag) Guatemala witnessed a mass slaughter of nearly 200,000 indigenous Mayan men, women, and children in the 1980s. (Goldhagen) In the 1990s, Serbs killed thousands of Muslims in Bosnia over land disputes, forcing them from their homes and slaughtering them systematically.(Goldhagen) In 1994, the small African country of Rwanda was home to one of the most brutal genocides of the century. Over 800,000 people were killed with machetes and machine guns in just three months. (Goldhagen) Since 2005, over 250,000 people have been killed in the current genocide in Sudan, targeted by the Janjaweed militia. These are just a few of the genocides that have occurred in recent decades. As Goldhagen states, “All tolled in our time, there have been more than a hundred million innocent victims of genocide, more than all the combat deaths in all the wars fought during that time everywhere in the world.” (Goldhagen)
These events continue to occur because the people who start genocides continue to get away with their crimes. The UN does not have strict laws on what to do in the event of genocide or what to do to punish acts of genocide. The primary method of punishment involves putting the criminals in question on trial in international courts, which take an incredible amount of time and are virtually ineffective. One leader of the genocide in Cambodia in the 70s was only recently convicted in the international courts for his crimes in August of 2010. (Leitsinger n. pag.) The leader of the genocide in Guatemala in the 1980s is currently serving in the country’s Congress, never having faced any sort of chargers for his crimes. (Goldhagen) If the leaders of genocides know that they aren’t going to be effectively punished for their actions, the events will occur again and again. The UN needs to step up and say that these violations of human rights are unacceptable.
How can the UN allow these acts to occur? It’s as if the intention of the Geneva Convention of 1949—to prevent future massive loss of human life—has been forgotten over the years. In each case of genocide, the UN claims that it was not within their power to take action or even that it was not necessary for them to take action. They claim that they had a lack of information on the situation or that the situation itself was not genocide. This is a popular method of denying that genocide is occurring: claiming that the murders are not acts of genocide but “ethnic cleansing”. However, genocide and “etnhic cleansing” are not “mutually exclusive events.” (Stanton, 12 Ways, n. pag.) This was claimed by the Guatemalan government, the Sudanese government, and the Rwandan government. (Goldhagen) The governments of the countries in question always attempt to deny that any of the acts of genocide occurred. Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, states that,
Denial... always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes. (Stanton n. pag.)
The UN should not allow the denial of a genocide to occur. However, the policy on the prevention of genocide is set up so that if the country denies that the events are that of a genocide, there is no legal compulsion to act. This is clearly in need of revision. “We must call genocide by its name.” (Goldhagen),
Many times, the UN claims that they did not have accurate information on the events occurring in these countries. This was the claim made in the case of the Rwandan genocide. However, the UN had a force stationed in Kigali, Rwanda at the time that was reporting on the events. (Dallaire, 180) As events in Rwanda became steadily worse, the UN removed all but a small “peacekeeping” force from the country. (Goldhagen) As the minister of Justice of Rwanda, Tharcisse Karugarama stated, "[The UN] left them there in cold blood." (Goldhagen) This was the opposite of the correct response. However, because the UN is not required by the policy to actually solve any problems associated with genocide, they did nothing to help the thousands of people dying every day.
Clearly the current policy needs to change. It has so far failed to live up to its original purpose. A new policy should be enforced. How should the UN deal with genocide in an efficient, effective manner? To find a solution, it is first necessary to understand how a genocide occurs to understand what steps should be taken to prevent it from continuing.
Gregory Stanton outlines the stages of genocide. The first stage is separating the groups that are targeted in the genocide—distinguishing “them” from “us.”(Stanton, n. pag.) The group that the government or leading group seeks to eliminate is made to look dangerous or threatening. In the 1980’s, Guatemala witnessed a mass slaughter of the indigenous Mayans. These native people were called "threats" to the country. (Goldhagen) They begin a process of dehumanization, calling the members of a group by the name of an animal or insect. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda was spawned by the hatred of the Tutsi people by the Hutus. On radio broadcasts, the Tutsis were called “cockroaches” and dehumanized to the point that Hutus believed themselves to be vastly superior. (Stanton, n. pag.) The motivator for the genocide is fear, which comes of being ignorant. The members of the “superior” group are told certain things about a different group by their own government or by those in charge, and do not know the truth. The members of the targeted group are forced to wear distinguishing marks, such as the yellow stars for the Jews in the Holocaust, or the blue scarves that the people of Eastern Cambodia were forced to wear during the Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. (Stanton, n. pag.)
If interference occurs at this stage, full scale genocide could be prevented; Diplomatic response should be swift. Pressure should be put on the government of the country in question to stop the “hate speech” immediately and promote a sense of unity. “[The] promotion of a common language in countries like Tanzania has…promoted transcendent national identity.” (Stanton, n. pag)The radio stations or newspapers that are publishing the material that is causing disunity should be forced to shut down. To further promote unity, identifying symbols can be outlawed, such as the swastikas of the Nazi regime. (Stanton n. pag.) The countries of the UN should be intolerant of any types of hate speech. If the international community does nothing at this initial stage, it will evolve into a polarization of the country. The different groups will be prohibited from interacting with each other.
If no interference occurs in the early stages, the inevitable result is that members of the targeted group will begin to be rounded up and sent to concentration camps. (Stanton, n. pag.) Once they have been forced from their homes, the killings begin. Ordinary citizens become killers. Millions die. It is of the utmost importance that the UN interferes IMMEDIATELY at this point. The only response that would be sufficient should the situation reach this deadly stage is immediate military intervention. Delayed intervention could result in the loss of thousands of lives, as seen in Bosnia, where the UN delayed interfering for YEARS before NATO forces bombed the country and stopped the genocide in three DAYS. (Goldhagen) If the response to Bosnia had been swift, thousands of people could have been saved. Not only should the UN respond with military intervention, they should remove any country which commits acts of genocide from the United Nations. The foreign bank accounts of the leaders of the genocide should be frozen, all international travel by said leaders should be restricted, and an trade ban should be placed on the country. If put in place before the killings begin, during the preparation, these measures could easily prevent a genocide from occurring.
The intention of the Geneva Convention of 1949 was clear: genocide should not be allowed to occur while it is within the means of the UN to prevent it. However, the policy set in place by that convention has not been effective in the prevention of genocide, as shown by the numerous instances of genocide that have occurred in the decades since the Convention. The policy must change and must put tighter regulation and procedure in place. Only can we truly hope to eliminate genocide.
 Luna M Croire · Fri Feb 25, 2011 @ 03:51am · 0 Comments |
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