INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS

ASSIGNMENT

WAR CRIME: GENOCIDE

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………….Pg.3

2. THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION……………………………………… Pg.4

3. GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA…………………………………………………...Pg.5

4. RWANDAN GENOCIDE…………………………………………………Pg.6

5. THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (ICC) …………………Pg.8

6. CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………..Pg.9

7. BIBLOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………Pg.10

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INTRODUCTION

The term “war crimes” refers to serious breaches of international humanitarian law committed
against civilians or enemy combatants during an international or domestic armed conflict, for
which the perpetrators may be held criminally liable on an individual basis. Such crimes are
derived primarily from the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and their Additional
Protocols I and II of 1977, and the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Their most recent
codification can be found in article 8 of the 1998 Rome Statute for the International Criminal
Court (ICC).

Genocide has been called the “crime of crimes” and the gravest violation of human rights it is
possible to commit. It was developed as an international crime in reaction to the Nazi Holocaust
and intended to provide for the prosecution of those who sought to destroy entire human
groups. The word “genocide” was coined by a Polish lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, in his book Axis
Rule in Occupied Europe (1944) to provide a legal concept for this unimaginable atrocity. The
word is a hybrid of the Greek word genos, meaning race, nation, or tribe, and the Latin
suffix cide, meaning killing. Although genocide is often spoken of in the same breath as war
crimes and crimes against humanity, it is not the same thing.

War crimes refer to violations of the law of armed conflict, while crimes against humanity, of
which genocide is often seen as a more serious subset, require a widespread or systematic attack
against a civilian population. Unlike war crimes, the crime of genocide does not have to take
place during an armed conflict (although it often does), and unlike crimes against humanity, it
may also be perpetrated against soldiers or prisoners of war from the targeted group (if it
happens to take place during an armed conflict). Additionally, crimes against humanity do not
have to be perpetrated against a specific human group, as is the case with genocide, but simply
against a civilian population. While the concept of genocide was developed after World War
II, it is unfortunately true that the mass killing of human groups is much older than the legal
expression; indeed, the first genocide of the 20th century is widely thought to have been the
German genocide of the Herero and Nama in German South West Africa (modern-day
Namibia) between 1904 and 1907.

The Genocide Convention of 1948 (officially the Convention on the Prevention and
Punishment of the Crime of Genocide) declared that “genocide, whether committed in time of

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peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they, the contracting parties,
undertake to prevent and to punish.

“Nevertheless, the real development of systematic international trials and punishment for the
crime of genocide waited for the end of the 20th century: the ad hoc tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda and the inclusion of the crime of genocide in the Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court.

THE GENOCIDE CONVENTION

In 1948, the United Nations approved its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment
of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG), which defined genocide as any of a number of acts
“committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group. “This included killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to
members of the group, inflicting conditions of life intended to bring about the group’s
demise, imposing measures intended to prevent births (i.e., forced sterilization) o r
forcibly removing the group’s children. Genocide’s “intent to destroy” separates it from
other crimes of humanity such as ethnic cleansing, which aims at forcibly expelling a
group from a geographic area (by killing, forced deportation and other methods).

Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(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

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The convention entered into force in 1951 and has since been ratified by more than 130
countries. Though the United States was one of the convention’s original signatories,
the U.S. Senate did not ratify it until 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed it
over strong opposition by those who felt it would limit U.S. sovereignty. Though the
CPPCG established an awareness that the evils of genocide existed, its actual
effectiveness in stopping such crimes remained to be seen: Not one country invoked the
convention during 1975 to 1979, when the Khmer Rouge regime killed some 1.7 million
people in Cambodia (a country that had ratified the CPPCG in 1950).

GENOCIDE IN BOSNIA (1992-1995)

The provinces of Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, and war quickly followed
between Serbia and these breakaway republics. Ethnic tensions were brought to the forefront,
and people who had lived peacefully for years as neighbours turned against each other and took
up arms. When Bosnia attempted to secede, Serbia – under Slobodan Milosevic’s leadership –
invaded with the claim that it was there to “free” fellow Serbian Orthodox Christians living in
Bosnia. Starting in April 1992, Serbia set out to “ethnically cleanse” Bosnian territory by
systematically removing all Bosnian Muslims, known as Bosniaks. Serbia, together with ethnic
Bosnian Serbs, attacked Bosniaks with former Yugoslavian military equipment and surrounded
Sarajevo, the capital city. Many Bosniaks were driven into concentration camps, where women
and girls were systematically gang-raped and other civilians were tortured, starved and
murdered.

In 1993, the U.N. Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for
the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, in the Netherlands; it was the first
international tribunal since Nuremberg and the first to have a mandate to prosecute the
crime of genocide. In its more than 20 years of operation, the ICTY indicted 161
individuals of crimes committed during the Balkan wars. Among the prominent leaders
indicted were the former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, the former Bosnian Serb
leader Radovan Karadzic and the former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko
Mladic. While Milosevic died in prison in 2006 before his lengthy trial concluded, the
ICTY convicted Karadzic of war crimes in 2016 and sentenced him to 40 years in prison.
And in 2017, in its final major prosecution, the ICTY found Mladic—known as the

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“Butcher of Bosnia” for his role in the wartime atrocities, including the massacre of
more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebenica in July 1995 —guilty of genocide
and other crimes against humanity, and sentenced him to life in prison.

RWANDAN GENOCIDE

The Rwandan genocide is one of the heaviest moments in human history. An airplane crash in
1994 carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi provided a spark for an organized
campaign of violence against the Tutsi and moderate Hutu civilians across the country.
Approximately 800,000 Tutsis and Hutu moderates were slaughtered in a carefully organized
program of genocide over 100 days, making history as the quickest killing spree the world has
ever seen. Civil war broke out in Rwanda in 1990, exacerbating existing tensions between the
Tutsi minority and Hutu majority.

During this period, local officials and government-sponsored radio stations called on
ordinary Rwandan civilians to murder their neighbours. Meanwhile, the RPF resumed
fighting, and civil war raged alongside the genocide. By early July, RPF forces had
gained control over most of country, including Kigali.

In response, more than 2 million people, nearly all Hutus, fled Rwanda, crowding into
refugee camps in the Congo (then called Zaire) and other neighbouring countries. After
its victory, the RPF established a coalition government similar to that agreed upon at
Arusha, with Pasteur Bizimungu, a Hutu, as president and Paul Kagame, a Tutsi, as vice
president and defence minister. Habyarimana’s NRMD party, which had played a key
role in organizing the genocide, was outlawed, and a new constitution adopted in 2003
eliminated reference to ethnicity. The new constitution was followed by Kagame’s
election to a 10-year term as Rwanda’s president and the country’s first-ever legislative
elections.

International Response in Rwandan Genocide

As in the case of atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia around the same time,
the international community largely remained on the sidelines during the Rwandan
genocide. A United Nations Security Council vote in April 1994 led to the withdrawal
of most of a U.N. peacekeeping operation (UNAMIR), created the previous fall to aid

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with governmental transition under the Arusha accord.As reports of the genocide
spread, the Security Council voted in mid-May to supply a more robust force, including
more than 5,000 troops. By the time that force arrived in full, however, the genocide
had been over for months. In a separate French intervention approved by the U.N.,
French troops entered Rwanda from Zaire in late June. In the face of the RPF’s rapid
advance, they limited their intervention to a “humanitarian zone” set up in southwestern
Rwanda, saving tens of thousands of Tutsi lives but also helping some of the genocide’s
plotters – allies of the French during the Habyarimana administration – to escape.

In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide, many prominent figures in the international
community lamented the outside world’s general obliviousness to the situation and its
failure to act in order to prevent the atrocities from taking place. As former U.N.
Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali told the PBS news program Frontline: “The
failure of Rwanda is 10 times greater than the failure of Yugoslavia. Because in
Yugoslavia the international community was interested, was involved. In Rwanda
nobody was interested.” Attempts were later made to rectify this passivity. After the
RFP victory, the UNAMIR operation was brought back up to strength; it remained in
Rwanda until March 1996, as one of the largest humanitarian relief efforts in history.

Rwandan Genocide Trials

In October 1994, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), located in
Tanzania, was established as an extension of the International Criminal Tribunal for the
former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague, the first international tribunal since
the Nuremburg Trials of 1945-46, and the first with the mandate to prosecute the crime
of genocide. In 1995, the ICTR began indicting and trying a number of higher-ranking
people for their role in the Rwandan genocide; the process was made more difficult
because the whereabouts of many suspects were unknown. The trials continued over the
next decade and a half, including the 2008 conviction of three former senior Rwandan
defence and military officials for organizing the genocide.

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THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (ICC)

On 17 July 1998, a conference of 160 States established the first treaty-based permanent
international criminal court to investigate, prosecute and try individuals accused of committing
the most serious crimes of concern to the international community, namely the crime of
genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and the crime of aggression, when national
courts are unwilling or unable to do so. Regarding the crime of aggression, parties to the Rome
Statute agreed that the Court’s jurisdiction would be subject to certain conditions, including
agreement on a definition of aggression. Not all of these conditions have been met. Therefore
the Court presently has effective jurisdiction over genocide, war crimes and crimes against
humanity.

The treaty adopted during that conference is known as the Rome Statute of the International
Criminal Court (Rome Statute). It entered into force on 1 July 2002 after ratification by 60
countries. Among other things it sets out the crimes falling within the jurisdiction of the
International Criminal Court (ICC), the rules of procedure, and the mechanisms for States to
cooperate with the ICC. The Court is located in The Hague in The Netherlands.

A large coalition of civil society organizations played a prominent role in the negotiation and
early entry into force of the Rome Statute.

There are currently 123 parties to the Rome Statute. The Assembly of States Parties, which
meets at least once a year, sets the general policies for the administration of the ICC and reviews
its activities.

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CONCLUSION

“Rwanda can be a paradise again, but it will take the love of the entire world…and that’s as
it should be, for what happened in Rwanda happened to us all – humanity was wounded by the
genocide.”
– Immacuée Ilibagiza, Rwandan author

They say that unless one learns from one's mistakes, history repeats itself. Genocide is a real
threat to ethnic groups in our world. We, as a caring society, need to fight against the
complacency of people who choose to ignore this horrifying cleansing act. You as a citizen of
the world need to be constantly aware of injustices that are going on, not just in foreign
countries, but in your own back yard.

Elie Wiesel said that "indifference can be tempting...It is so much easier to look away from
victims. It is so much easier to avoid such rude interruptions to our work, our dreams, and our
hopes. It is, after all, awkward, troublesome, to be involved in another person's pain and
despair."

The violence today in Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, Burma and elsewhere is a daily reminder of
the consequences when we fail to prevent atrocities. We lament the millions of deaths, point
fingers at those who stood by and pour out billions of dollars in humanitarian aid. It is always
too little, too late. But it doesn’t have to be like this. The Genocide and Atrocities Prevention
Act is a bipartisan effort to enhance the ability of the U.S. to prevent genocide and mass
atrocities. The Act will help identify early warning signs of genocide, fund early warning
programs, and increase the odds that when people are at risk of mass atrocities our leaders will
know and be ready to respond.

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 BIBLOGRAPHY

1. BOOKS:

 “Genocide: Modern Crimes Against Humanity,” by Brendan January

 “The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s,” by V.P. Ganon
 “The Fall of Yugoslavia,” by Misha Glenny
 “Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing,” by Norman Cigar

2. ARTICLES:

 Totten, Samuel, and Paul R. Bartrop, eds. The Genocide Studies Reader. New York:
Routledge, 2009.
 Schabas, William. Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes. 2d ed.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
 Quigley, John B. The Genocide Convention: An International Law Analysis. Aldershot,
UK: Ashgate, 2006.

3. WEBSITES

 https://www.history.com/topics/holocaust/what-is-genocide
 http://endgenocide.org/learn/past-genocides/the-rwandan-genocide/
 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/12/18/in-2017-
the-world-let-a-genocide-unfold/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1cc829932a83
 https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Countries/CD/FS-2_Crimes_Final.pdf
 http://endgenocide.org/an-ounce-of-prevention-how-we-can-stop-the-next-
genocide/

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