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Children, Armed Conflict, And Genocide: Applying The Law Of Genocide To The Recruitment And Use Of Children In Armed Conflict, Jeffery R. Ray

Jeffery R Ray

This paper shows that the use of child soldiers in armed conflict has the potential to be considered as genocide. A brief background of genocide is presented prior to the analysis. Part I, of the analysis, will discuss three issues: First, the modern understanding of genocide and the substantive areas of law that govern it; Second, the definition of ‘child’ within the international arena as it relates to child soldering; Third, a discussion to determine if children can constitute a ‘group’ in the context of the law of genocide. Part II provides a discussion elaborating on Part I then analyzing …

How Puppet Masters Create Genocide: A Study In The State-Sponsored Killings In Rwanda And Cambodia, Joel H. Feigenbaum

University of Miami National Security & Armed Conflict Law Review

This paper calls on the United States to assess where its true interests lie in evaluating genocide and mass killings. Through an examination of the social and political factors which were paramount in bringing about the atrocities in Cambodia in the late 1970s and Rwanda in the mid-1990s, the U.S. is urged to take heed of the tried-and-true methods used by ruthless regimes throughout history in bringing about the destruction of their own citizenry. Consideration of the psychological imperatives necessary for ordinary men or women to depart from the standard boundaries of civilized society and butcher their neighbors and countrymen …

The Icc Prosecutor V. President Medema: Simulated Proceedings Before The International Criminal Court , Pieter H. F. Bekker, David Stoelting

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

On July 18, 2000, as part of the Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association, an all star cast of American and English lawyers gathered in the Common Room of the Law Society of England and Wales in London to simulate oral argument before the International Criminal Court ("ICC"). The fictitious proceedings involved a head of state, President Luis Medema, charged with genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The prosecutors and defense counsel engaged in lively oral argument before the Trial Chamber in the context of three critical issues: (1) jurisdiction of the ICC over citizens of non-state parties; …

The Gacaca Experiment: Rwanda's Restorative Dispute Resolution Response To The 1994 Genocide, Jessica Raper

Pepperdine Dispute Resolution Law Journal

Since its rise to power in July of 1994, the Rwandan government has been committed to prosecuting all those accused of genocide. To prosecute the approximately 130,000 defendants, Rwanda has adopted a program called gacaca, based on Rwanda's traditional customary dispute resolution system. The gacaca law provides a reconciliation component that allows defendants to trade confessions of past genocide crimes for indemnification, as well as a prosecution component that holds the most serious offenders accountable in a Western style prosecution in a formal court of law. One of the main goals of gacaca is to end the so-called "culture …

The International Criminal Tribunal For Rwanda, Robert D. Sloane

Faculty Scholarship

This essay appears as the ninth chapter of The Rules, Practice, and Jurisprudence of International Courts and Tribunals (Chiara Giorgetti ed., Brill, 2012). It covers the origin, establishment, organization, jurisdiction, and procedures of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). It then explains and analyzes a selection of the ICTR’s significant contributions to international criminal jurisprudence, covering, in particular, the Akayesu; Kayishema & Ruzindana; Nahimana, Barayagwiza & Ngeze (“The Media Case”); and Baglishema cases. The issues therefore include, among others, specific intent in the definition of genocide, rape as a modality of genocide, jurisdiction to prosecute violations of Additional Protocol …

Katyn Forest Massacre: Of Genocide, State Lies, And Secrecy, Milena Sterio

Law Faculty Articles and Essays

The Soviet secret police murdered thousands of Poles near the Katyn Forest, just outside the Russian city of Smolensk, in the early spring of 1940. The Soviets targeted members of the Polish intelligentsia-military officers, doctors, engineers, police officers, and teachers-which Stalin, the Soviet leader, sought to eradicate preventively. At the start of World War II, the Soviet Union viewed Poland as attractive territory, to be conquered and potentially annexed after the war. The Katyn massacre was not discovered until 1943, by the Germans, who instantly blamed the Soviets. The latter, however, blamed the Germans, and the Western Allies begrudgingly accepted …

Bureaucracy And The U.S. Response To Mass Atrocity, Gregory Brazeal

University of Miami National Security & Armed Conflict Law Review

The U.S. response to mass atrocity has followed a predictable pattern of disbelief, rationalization, evasion, and retrospective expressions of regret. The pattern is consistent enough that we should be skeptical of chalking up the United States’ failures solely to a shifting array of isolated historical contingencies, from post‐Vietnam fatigue in the case of the Khmer Rouge to the Clinton administration’s recoil against humanitarian interventions after Somalia. It is implausible to suggest that the United States would have acted to mitigate or end mass atrocities but for the specific historical contingencies that happen to accompany each outbreak of violence. This essay …

A Rights-Based Approach To Global Injustice, Brooke Ackerly

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Is reflection on global injustice part of the everyday lives of those who live in global privilege? Or does privilege let us wait to raise concerns about justice only when the media bring the graphic images of genocide and tragedy to our family rooms?

Bureaucracy And The U.S. Response To Mass Atrocity, Gregory Brazeal

Gregory Brazeal

The U.S. response to mass atrocity has followed a predictable pattern of disbelief, rationalization, evasion, and retrospective expressions of regret. The pattern is consistent enough that we should be skeptical of chalking up the United States’ failures solely to a shifting array of isolated historical contingencies, from post-Vietnam fatigue in the case of the Khmer Rouge to the Clinton administration’s recoil against humanitarian interventions after Somalia. It is implausible to suggest that the United States would have acted to mitigate or end mass atrocities but for the specific historical contingencies that happen to accompany each outbreak of violence. This essay …

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.

Genocide Myopia: How Reframing Mass Atrocity Could Backfire, Sonia Cardenas

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The United States has long viewed genocide and mass atrocity as tragic, moral problems divorced from national interests. This may be changing under the Obama administration, with genocide and mass atrocity being reframed as problems to be solved pragmatically. Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher celebrate this “unprecedented breakthrough” in Foreign Policy, urging President Obama to follow up with specific measures: strategic military planning, interagency coordination, firm leadership, and concrete action on Darfur. Despite the promise of overcoming inaction and focusing on prevention, the new vision of genocide and mass atrocity Abramowitz and Woocher depict remains myopic. It is narrowly focused …

A Break From The Old Routine...., Todd Landman

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Abramowitz and Woocher highlight a potentially significant shift in policy discourse in international relations with respect to humanitarianism and the prevention of genocide. For many years, the United States has suffered from the twin problems of the human rights “double standard” and “Catch-22.” On the one hand, particular countries have been seen as vital by the United States for intervention on humanitarian grounds even though many believed other geostrategic interests are at stake (e.g. Kosovo in 1999) and others have not (e.g. Rwanda in 1994). On the other hand, US intervention on humanitarian grounds can be criticized as heavy-handed or …

Do Drones Have A Silver Lining?, David Akerson

Human Rights & Human Welfare

Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher’s article, “How Genocide Became a National Security Threat,” flags an important milestone in American foreign policy, namely that mass atrocities might now be appropriately viewed as the national security threats that they are. The problem with translating this policy development into action is the next and not insignificant challenge. Aerial drones may be key to overcoming it.

On Genocide And The National Interest, James Pattison

Human Rights & Human Welfare

In the second presidential debate, Barack Obama said, in response to a question about the crisis in Darfur, that “when genocide is happening, when ethnic cleansing is happening somewhere around the world and we stand idly by, that diminishes us. And so I do believe that we have to consider it as part of our interests, our national interests, in intervening where possible.” In a similar vein, Michael Abramowitz and Lawrence Woocher highlight how genocide is increasingly being seen as a security threat by the White House.

A Critical Guide To The Iraqi High Tribunal's Anfal Judgement: Genocide Against The Kurds, Jennifer Trahan

Michigan Journal of International Law

In the Anfal trial, the Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT or the Tribunal) in Baghdad convicted former Iraqi high officials of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Unlike its predecessor-the Dujail trial-the Anfal trial included the presentation of a high volume of documentary and eye-witness evidence. This evidence clearly revealed the existence of a genocidal campaign by the former Iraqi government and military that eliminated an estimated 182,000 Iraqi Kurds in 1988, as part of the eight-phased "Anfal campaign" (the Anfal). Relying on this and other evidence, judges in the Anfal Trial Chamber explained fairly persuasively how genocide, crimes against …

China’S Relationship With Sudan—And Human Rights Consequences, Tessa Li Powell

Human Rights & Human Welfare

China is the largest country in the world and has a rapidly expanding economy. Its streets are starting to crowd with cars instead of bicycles and there is an increasing demand for the luxuries of developed nations. The desire to keep up with major international players has pushed the Chinese government to overlook whatever human rights abuses may be occurring inside and outside of its borders. China has taken steps to support Sudan despite its use of child soldiers and the genocide in Darfur that has been occurring for years. By criticizing and withdrawing support from President al-Bashir, China could …

The Limits Of International Humanitarian Law, Melissa Eli

Human Rights & Human Welfare

The goal of international humanitarian law is to humanize war in an effort to minimize human suffering and the long-term negative consequences of war. However, despite the adoption by most countries of the Geneva Conventions and other relevant agreements, crimes of war occur in every conflict around the world on a regular basis. Additionally, as the form of warfare changes, so does the implementation and consequences of various war crimes. Genocide, systematic rape, and the use of child soldiers are three of the most significant war crimes facing sub-Saharan Africa today. Each has consequences so severe that specific international laws …

Symposium 2008: The United Nations Genocide Convention: A 60th Anniversary Commemoration: Keynote Address, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

Tribunal-Hopping With The Post-Conflict Justice Junkies, Elena Baylis

Articles

The field of post-conflict justice is characterized in no small part by international interventions into post-conflict settings. International interveners invest substantial resources toward the goals of post-conflict justice, including creating legal accountability for atrocities and rebuilding local and national justice systems that respect human rights and rule of law. The aims of post-conflict justice and the mechanisms by which the international community can contribute to post-conflict legal institutions and processes have been and continue to be studied intensively.

But while the institutions, processes, and goals of post-conflict justice have been carefully scrutinized, another aspect of international interventions into post-conflict justice …

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 …

Why Sudan? Ambiguous Identities Forge Persistent Conflict, Laura Nyantung Beny

Articles

The following essay is excerpted from the prospectus for Perspectives on Genocide and Genocidal Violence in the Sudan, edited by Law School Assistant Professor Laura N. Beny, Sondra Hale of UCLA, and Lako Tongun of Claremont Colleges, California. The book is under advance contract for publication by the University of Michigan Press. Its 14 chapters, written by prominent historians, anthropologists, social scientists, political leaders, and others, “tell overlapping stories about the social constructions of race, gender, culture, and religious and political loyalties, each of which underlies the longstanding conflict” in Sudan, according to Beny, whose essay in the book is …

Remarks On Intervention, Juan E. Mendez

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

No abstract provided.

The Obligation To Use Force To Stop Acts Of Genocide: An Overview Of Legal Precedents, Customary Norms, And State Responsibility, Joshua M. Kagan

San Diego International Law Journal

Though the Genocide Convention was created to "liberate mankind from [the] odious scourge" of genocide, the dreams of its drafters have still not come to fruition. The commission of genocide, widely considered the most appalling of all crimes, did not end with the signing and ratification of the Convention in 1948. Genocide continues in the world today. While its sentiments were noble and its aims commendable, the Genocide Convention as it is interpreted and applied today is insufficient to stop the commission of genocide in the world. In order to rid the world of this crime, a new interpretation of …

Peace Versus Justice, Richard J. Goldstone

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Calling Genocide By Its Rightful Name: Lemkin's Word, Darfur, And The Un Report, David Luban

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

When the United Nations commission investigating Darfur issued its report in January 2005, it concluded that the Darfur atrocities represented war crimes and crimes against humanity, but not genocide. This had the harmful effect of deflating efforts to mobilize political support to halt the Darfur atrocities. But the Commission's conclusion was based entirely on technicalities in the legal definitions of the international crimes, not on denial that extermination is going on in Darfur. In this paper, the author argues that the legal and popular meanings of genocide have diverged in harmful ways: where laymen understand that mass killings and rapes …

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.