Can you predict a genocide?
“Genocide” is a word that shows up a lot now, especially online. It appears as a nebulous term, at once all-encompassing and subject to the specific tactical whims of its user. We see the term brandished on protest signs and misspelled in Instagram debates, a political bargaining chip used alternately to garner support for human rights issues and to provoke confrontation. But what does “genocide” actually mean — and can you diagnose a genocide while it’s happening?
To answer this question, one first needs to define “genocide.” The word itself did not exist until 1944, when lawyer and Holocaust survivor Raphael Lemkin coined the term in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. In 1944, the Holocaust was in its end stages and the Armenian Genocide was three decades old. Genocides, as Lemkin recognized them, had been occurring for centuries: the War on Carthage (146 BC) is often noted as the first, though some scholars have identified genocides as far back as the beginnings of human settlement.
Lemkin developed the term amid the Holocaust, with the intention of drawing international attention to the human rights abuses occurring under Nazi rule. However, Lemkin’s definition did not become a legal term until three years after the end of World War II, in 1948, when it was codified under the second article of the United Nations’ Genocide Convention, adopted on December 9 of that year.
Genocide is defined by the United Nations as “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; © 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.”
According to the UN, a crime can only be considered a genocide if the intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part, can be proven. Intent is the most important part of the definition, but it’s often overlooked: For example, no one calls the entire First World War a genocide, even though high civilian casualties were suffered. Intent draws the distinction between genocide and warfare, and allows for the prosecution of war crimes as a unique offense.
The UN’s definition of genocide was codified in retrospect, drawing on the series of events that precluded and constituted the Holocaust. In 1987, Dr. Gregory Stanton, a professor of Genocide Studies and founder of Genocide Watch, developed a model that identifies genocide as a progression of concurrent events: Classification, Symbolization, Discrimination, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Persecution, Extermination, and Denial. Popular in both scholarly debate and Reddit threads, the Ten Stages have been used improperly — in my view — in attempts to predict genocides. This speculation tends towards misinformation at the lighter end and, more seriously, towards fear-mongering.
Modern scholars, journalists, and internet users attempt to draw attention to human-rights topics like the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Israel-Hamas war, and violence against transgender Americans by dubbing them genocides. This is dangerous. Though my family is of Ukrainian descent, I don’t reflexively call Russia’s invasion a genocide: there is not sufficient evidence that Russia intends to commit genocide in Ukraine, and the human rights issues there can be more accurately addressed as war crimes. Blanketing the discusion of the invasion with the term “genocide” obscures the facts and further distorts the definition of the word by using it as a catch-all term for a myriad of ongoing abuses.
If genocide can only be determined in retrospect, then progress cannot be achieved by crying genocide at the first hint of a human rights violation. A definition should not be necessary to merit attention nor aid. Prematurely calling actions “genocide” shifts the focus towards addressing the issue legally and theoretically, and away from taking real action to combat — and even prevent — specific abuses.
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