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Review Of The Book Denial Of Genocides In The Twenty-First Century, John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Review of the book Denial of Genocides in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Bedross Der Matossian.

Rebraiding Frayed Sweetgrass For Niijaansinaanik: Understanding Canadian Indigenous Child Welfare Issues As International Atrocity Crimes, Alyssa Couchie

Michigan Journal of International Law

The unearthing of the remains of Indigenous children on the sites of former Indian Residential Schools (“IRS”) in Canada has focused greater attention on anti-Indigenous atrocity violence in the country. While such increased attention, combined with recent efforts at redressing associated harms, represents a step forward in terms of recognizing and addressing the harms caused to Indigenous peoples through the settler-colonial process in Canada, this note expresses concern that the dominant framings of anti-Indigenous atrocity violence remain myopically focused on an overly narrow subset of harms and forms of violence, especially those committed at IRSs. It does so by utilizing …

Never Again? The United Nations And Genocide: A Doomed Mission?, Maria Terrinoni

Capstone Showcase

Despite their commitment to international peace and security and to the concept of “never again,” the United Nations has failed to end the many genocides of the late 20th century. In this thesis, I use the genocides in Rwanda (1994) and in the Yugoslav Wars (1991-1999) as case studies to understand the UN’s response to genocide and to attempt to understand why the UN cannot effectively respond to and end genocide. I discover that issues such as the limitations of the Genocide Convention, the importance of state sovereignty, and overall institutional failures of the United Nation make any attempt to …

Johnson V. M'Intosh: Christianity, Genocide, And The Dispossession Of Indigenous Peoples, Cynthia J. Boshell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Using hermeneutical methodology, this paper examines some of the legal fictions that form the foundation of Federal Indian Law. The text of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh opinion is evaluated through the lens of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to determine the extent to which the Supreme Court incorporated genocidal principles into United States common law. The genealogy of M’Intosh is examined to identify influences that are not fully apparent on the face of the case. International jurisprudential interpretations of the legal definition of genocide are summarized and used as …

Making The Case For Genocide, The Forced Sterilization Of Indigenous Peoples Of Peru, Ñusta P. Carranza Ko

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Peru’s national health program Programa de Salud Reproductiva y Planificación Familiar (PSRPF) aimed to uphold women’s reproductive rights and address the scarcity in maternity related services. Despite these objectives, during PSRPF’s implementation the respect for women’s rights were undermined with the forced sterilization of women predominantly of indigenous, poor, and rural backgrounds. This study considers the forced sterilization of indigenous women as a genocide. Making the case for genocide has not been done previously with this particular case. Using the normative markers of the Genocide Convention, this study categorically sets forced sterilization victims from the state-led-policy as victims of genocide, …

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act's Evolving Genocide Exception, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

The Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA) was passed by Congress as a comprehensive statute to cover all instances when foreign states are to be immune from suit in the courts of the United States, as well as when foreign state immunity is to be limited. Judicial interpretation of one of the FSIA’s exceptions to immunity has undergone significant evolution over the years with respect to foreign state property expropriations committed in violation of international law. U.S. courts initially construed this FSIA exception by denying immunity only if the defendant state had expropriated property of a citizen of a nation other …

Nineteen Minutes Of Horror: Insights From The Scorpions Execution Video, Iva Vukušić

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

After the fall of Srebrenica in summer of 1995, the Scorpions unit, dispatched to support the Bosnian Serb Army as it took over the enclave, shot six men in Trnovo. The men, three of whom were underage, were some of thousands of Bosnian Muslims that fell into the hands of Bosnian Serb troops, and that were executed in the days and weeks following July 11th. A member of the unit filmed the execution. Fragments of the video were first shown during the Slobodan Milosevic trial, and multiple times in the years after, in the courtrooms in The Hague and Belgrade. …

Civil War Or Genocide? The United Nations Commission Of Experts’ Misunderstanding Of The Third Balkan War Of The 1990s, Matthew G. Morley

Grand Valley Journal of History

When the country of Yugoslavia disintegrated into war, the United Nations created a research commission, the Yugoslav Commission of Experts, to document war crimes. This commission, led by Cherif M. Bassiouni, depicted the conflict as a perpetual problem with historical roots and also as having victims on both sides, which presented a legal-definitional paradox to the Security Council, requiring litigation of principles, categorization of conflicts, and discussion of further involvement - if applicable. This paper traces the essentialist understandings of the Commission of Experts and the International Human Rights Law Institute – two groups that otherwise had good intentions to …

Editors' Introduction, Melanie O'Brien, Joann Digeorgio-Lutz, Lior Zylberman, Christian Gudehus, Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Randle Defalco, Hilary Earl

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

“The World Must Know What Happened, And Never Forget,” Dwight David Eisenhower, Control Of Masturbation, Missiles, Weapons, And The Holocaust-How Control Of Difference In One Region Can Affect The Whole World, James T. Struck

James T Struck

The world must know what happened here and never forget was Eisenhower's gift to us on seeing the Nazi death camps. Such a policy of telling the world about something can be wonderful to let us understand the world better and horrible in bringing more parties into an action without need. Still, National Socialists stated that they imitated US disability and prison experimentation in Illinois. Telling the whole world about the Holocaust includes telling the whole world about US disability discrimination. Control of masturbation led to sterilization policies throughout the US and expanded into control of difference within National Socialist …

Guy Lancaster On Genocide: A Normative Account. By Larry May. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 283 Pp., Guy Lancaster

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Genocide: A Normative Account. By Larry May. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2010. 283 pp.

April Roundtable: Genocide And Us National Interests Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“How Genocide Became a National Security Threat” by Michael Abramowitz & Lawrence Woocher. Foreign Policy. February 26, 2010.

May Roundtable: Introduction

Human Rights & Human Welfare

An annotation of:

“The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency” by Mahmood Mamdani. London Review of Books. March 8, 2007.

Politics Of Naming And Politics Of Responsibility, Rhoda Howard-Hassmann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Mahmood Mamdani is right to complain that the American—and international—public is unaware of the political complexity of the Darfur conflict. He is also right to point out that selective or inconsistent uses of the terms “genocide,” “civil war,” and “insurgency” can mask covert, or even overt, political agendas. His comparison of Darfur to Iraq is telling. And he is right to point out that even with the best of humanitarian intentions, the presentation of a simplified version of Darfur, in which “Arabs” persecute “Africans,” can play into the “war on terror,” insofar as, in the minds of at least some …

The Return Of Moral Equivalence, J. Peter Pham

Human Rights & Human Welfare

During the latter stages of the Cold War, one school of ethical analysis, ultimately labeled as “moral equivalence” by the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, measured Western liberal democracies against utopian standards in a radical critique which redefined the political discourse, erasing distinctions between the Soviet Union and its satellites on the one hand and the United States and its allies on the other.

Missing The Point, Colin Thomas-Jensen

Human Rights & Human Welfare

“What would happen if we thought of Darfur as we do of Iraq, as a place with a history and politics—a messy politics of insurgency and counterinsurgency?” (§4). This is the most telling question posed by Professor Mahmood Mamdani in “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.” The implication is that the growing public demand for strong international action—military or otherwise—to halt the atrocities in Darfur is somehow unwarranted because people have failed to understand that the systematic crimes against humanity committed against civilians in Darfur (and indeed Iraq) are an inevitability of “the messy politics of insurgency and …

The Moral Vocabulary Of Violence, David L. G. Rice

Human Rights & Human Welfare

What is at stake in labeling a particular incidence of large-scale violence “genocide”? Mahmood Mamdani rightly argues that “genocide” is an insufficient description of the conflict in Darfur. I would suggest that the problematic nature of that terminology goes back to its inception after World War II. Activists have inherited the concept of “genocide” from a particular historical moment. Now, “ genocide” carries unique moral weight in the discourse of international politics. When violence against civilians has been widely accepted as a necessary outcome of the preservation of peace, activists find it necessary to imagine a worse evil than the …

Magdalena A. Zolkos On Rethinking The Holocaust By Yehuda Bauer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 335pp., Magdalena A. Zolkos

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. 335pp.

Competing Frameworks For Assessing Contemporary Holocaust-Era Claims, Vivian Grosswald Curran

Articles

There are many angles from which to perceive the contemporary holocaust-era claims. In 1997, Time magazine quoted Elie Wiesel as saying that, [i]f all the money in all the Swiss banks were turned over, it would not bring back the life of one Jewish child. But the money is a symbol. It is part of the story. If you suppress any part of the story, it comes back later, with force and violence.

Wiesel touches on two perspectives: first, what has been described as litigating the holocaust, with all that that implies about the law's questionable capacity to adjudicate issues …