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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Too Little, Too Late: The Icc And The Politics Of Prosecutorial Procrastination In Georgia, Marco Bocchese May 2024

Too Little, Too Late: The Icc And The Politics Of Prosecutorial Procrastination In Georgia, Marco Bocchese

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In August 2008, just days after belligerent parties had reached a ceasefire agreement, the Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) announced the opening of a preliminary examination into the situation of Georgia. Yet, it was only in March 2022 that International Criminal Court (ICC) Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan applied for arrest warrants in relation to three individuals from Georgia’s breakaway region of South Ossetia. That said, how can such prolonged inaction be accounted for? How much blame does the OTP carry for it? And how did ICC-state relations develop over time? This paper conducts a within-case analysis of the situation of …


Horizontal Economic Inequality And Mass Atrocity Risk: A Large-Sample Empirical Inquiry, Charles H. Anderton, Roxane A. Anderton Feb 2024

Horizontal Economic Inequality And Mass Atrocity Risk: A Large-Sample Empirical Inquiry, Charles H. Anderton, Roxane A. Anderton

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Our research question is: Does inter-group horizontal economic inequality elevate state-perpetrated mass atrocity risk? Theoretical perspectives in genocide studies show how economic and other forms of discrimination against ethnic or religious groups can elevate the risk of government violence against them. Among the approximately five dozen large-sample empirical studies of mass atrocity risk, only a few consider the effects of economic discrimination. Moreover, no large-sample empirical studies, to the best of our knowledge, test hypotheses related to how inter-group horizontal economic inequalities (as distinct from vertical economic inequalities based on GINI coefficients or quantile income or wealth measures) affect mass …


“Genocide Of The Soviet People”: Putin’S Russia Waging Lawfare By Means Of History, 2018–2023, Anton Weiss-Wendt Feb 2024

“Genocide Of The Soviet People”: Putin’S Russia Waging Lawfare By Means Of History, 2018–2023, Anton Weiss-Wendt

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article exposes the political underpinnings of the term “genocide of the Soviet people,” introduced and actively promoted in Russia since 2019. By reclassifying mass crimes committed by the Nazis and their accomplices against the civilian population—specifically Slavic—as genocide, Russian courts effectively engage in adjudication of the history of the Second World War. In the process, genocide trials, ongoing in twenty-five Russian provinces and five occupied Ukrainian territories, present no new evidence or issue new indictments, thus fulfilling none of the objectives of a standard criminal investigation. The wording of the verdicts, and a comprehensive political project put in place …


The Social Determinants Of Health And Genocide: Towards A Public Health Integrated Framework Of Genocide And Mass Violence, Sian Persad, Cheng Xu Nov 2023

The Social Determinants Of Health And Genocide: Towards A Public Health Integrated Framework Of Genocide And Mass Violence, Sian Persad, Cheng Xu

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This paper makes a normative argument about transformations of public health as a necessary condition required in any transitional justice process. We seek to bridge the gap between the fields of genocide and public health to understand the recursive relationship between genocide and the social determinants of health. We show that structures and institutions established during genocide create enduring impacts on the public health outcomes of victim and survivor groups even after the ousting of the original perpetrators. Our comparative analysis of the Rwandan Genocide and the colonial genocide of Indigenous communities in Canada surveys the available public health literature …


Book Review: Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander To Hitler To The Corporation, Tim Bakken Nov 2023

Book Review: Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths: From Alexander To Hitler To The Corporation, Tim Bakken

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The book Kings, Conquerors, Psychopaths is a survey of a vast amount of human wrongdoing. It lays bare the motivations of aggressors who wish to subjugate nations or groups of people and corporate executives and government bureaucrats who make discretionary decisions that harm people. Along with cataloging mass killings by despots and soldiers, the book includes stories about Ponzi-schemers and the deaths of automobile drivers and passengers who were killed by vehicle defects known to the manufacturer. The book posits that “[p]owerful, elite forces are trying to force us backward toward a non-democratic state, one where power, wealth, and prerogative …


Aotearoa New Zealand, The Forcible Transfer Of Tamariki And Rangatahi Māori, And The Royal Commission On Abuse In Care, David B. Macdonald Jul 2023

Aotearoa New Zealand, The Forcible Transfer Of Tamariki And Rangatahi Māori, And The Royal Commission On Abuse In Care, David B. Macdonald

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article investigates to what extent the forcible transfer of tamariki and rangatahi Māori (Indigenous children and youth) in Aotearoa New Zealand can be considered genocide. First, I begin by exploring contemporary genocide theory as it relates to dolus eventualis in settler colonial contexts, before engaging with precedents for recognizing Indigenous genocides established by truth commissions in Canada (2015; 2019) and Australia (1997). I then explore the history around Indigenous child removal in Aotearoa from the onset of colonization to the present day, attentive to ways in which the UN Convention can apply to the forced removal of Māori children. …


Why China Cares About Canada’S Indigenous Residential Schools: From Whataboutism To Internal Denial, Xiyuan (Marvin) Xia Jul 2023

Why China Cares About Canada’S Indigenous Residential Schools: From Whataboutism To Internal Denial, Xiyuan (Marvin) Xia

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines how the Chinese government and its propaganda departments use genocide-related discourses to fulfil different political purposes at home and abroad. By criticizing Western colonialist regimes’ assimilation policies, especially Canada’s Indigenous residential schools, the Chinese diplomats apply the rhetoric of whataboutism to dodge the international community’s questions about China’s systematic persecution of Uyghur Muslims. Domestically, China’s state media intensively cover Canada’s residential school system and the colonial genocide against Indigenous people, trying to distract the audience from the state atrocities in Xinjiang and mislead the public to distrust Canada and other countries’ motives for accusing China of committing …


Institutional Legacies And The Decision To Commit Genocide, Stacey M. Mitchell Jun 2023

Institutional Legacies And The Decision To Commit Genocide, Stacey M. Mitchell

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Despite their striking similarities, which include population demographics, size, and a legacy of inter-group conflict, the collapse of democratization in Rwanda and Burundi in the early 1990s led to genocide in Rwanda and a different type of violence in Burundi. This study suggests that to better comprehend why risk factors lead to genocide in some cases and not others, focus must be placed on how these factors are perceived by those in power of the state experiencing them. This study introduces a model that uses Comparative Historical Analysis (CHA), process tracing, and the inclusion of a decision model built on …


Negationist Denialism In The "Comfort Women" Issue In Japan, Tetsushi Ogata May 2023

Negationist Denialism In The "Comfort Women" Issue In Japan, Tetsushi Ogata

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article deals with the pervasive and entrenched nature of Japanese denialism on wartime memories, mainly focusing on the “comfort women” issue. It argues that a lens of “negationism” is more beneficial to address entrenched denialism. The net effect of denialism has been to perpetuate binary identity constructs, the deniers and the denied, one side re-engineering social relations to dominate and continue dominating the other. Conventional approaches to counter such denialism have relied heavily on truth-seeking and justice-dispensing mechanisms, but they are inept at addressing negationist denialism. The article explores a post-atrocity model of narrative and identity to go beyond …


Pillage As The Political Economy Of The Kurdish Anfal Genocide, Kaziwa Salih Apr 2023

Pillage As The Political Economy Of The Kurdish Anfal Genocide, Kaziwa Salih

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Scholars are critical of how economists overlook “the questions of genocide,” and of how legislatures have not paid adequate attention to the subject of looting, except in the case of the Armenian genocide. This article, informed by interdisciplinary perspectives, uses government documents, data, and semi-structured interviews to discuss the overlooked triangle of looting, economics, and the Anfal genocide of the Kurds in Iraq. The study refuses to limit itself only to the eight stages of the Anfal genocide that started in 1988, and instead offers data on its preliminary phases which occurred earlier in the 1980s. It then discusses the …


Round Table (Part 2): Reflections & Questions, Sarah Federman Oct 2022

Round Table (Part 2): Reflections & Questions, Sarah Federman

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Round Table (Part 5): What’S Raphaël Lemkin Got To Do With Genocide Studies?, Douglas Irvin-Erickson Oct 2022

Round Table (Part 5): What’S Raphaël Lemkin Got To Do With Genocide Studies?, Douglas Irvin-Erickson

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Full Issue 16.1 Jul 2022

Full Issue 16.1

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Mass Violence, Environmental Harm, And The Limits Of Transitional Justice, Rachel Killean, Lauren Dempster Jul 2022

Mass Violence, Environmental Harm, And The Limits Of Transitional Justice, Rachel Killean, Lauren Dempster

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The relationship between the environment and mass violence is complex and multi-faceted. The effects of environmental degradation can destabilize societies and cause conflict. Attacks on the environment can harm targeted groups, and both mass violence and subsequent transitions can have harmful environmental legacies. Given this backdrop, it is notable that the field of transitional justice has paid relatively little attention to the intersections between mass violence and environmental degradation. This article interrogates this inattention and explores the limitations and possibilities of transitional justice as a means of addressing the environmental harms associated with mass violence. The article makes four key …


Book Review: Postgenocide: Interdisciplinary Reflections On The Effects Of Genocide, Aldo Zammit Borda Jul 2022

Book Review: Postgenocide: Interdisciplinary Reflections On The Effects Of Genocide, Aldo Zammit Borda

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Climate Disasters, Mass Violence, And Human Mobility In South Sudan: Through A Gender Lens, Marisa O. Ensor Jul 2022

Climate Disasters, Mass Violence, And Human Mobility In South Sudan: Through A Gender Lens, Marisa O. Ensor

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines the links between gender, mass violence, climate change, and displacement in South Sudan. I argue for risk-informed gender-sensitive strategies that incorporate local capacities and sources of resilience. When civil war engulfed South Sudan again in 2013, egregious human rights violations, including sexual and gender-based violence, were perpetrated with near complete impunity. As the national army was divided along Dinka-Nuer ethnic lines, soldiers from each faction turned against each other in a deadly pattern of revenge and counter-revenge attacks that soon spread across the national territory. Inter-communal conflicts also intensified, often centering on competition over land for pasture, …


Book Review: Armed Conflict, Women And Climate Change, Shelly Clay-Robison Jul 2022

Book Review: Armed Conflict, Women And Climate Change, Shelly Clay-Robison

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Collective Healing To Address Legacies Of Transatlantic Slavery: Opportunities And Challenges, Scherto R. Gill, Garrett Thomson Dec 2021

Collective Healing To Address Legacies Of Transatlantic Slavery: Opportunities And Challenges, Scherto R. Gill, Garrett Thomson

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In this article, we show how pathways to justice and reconciliation pertaining to the transatlantic slavery should begin with collective healing processes. To illustrate this conclusion, we first employ a four-fold conceptual framework for understanding collective healing that consists in: (1) acknowledging historical dehumanizing acts; (2) addressing the harmful effects of dehumanisation; (3) embracing relational rapprochement; and (4) co-imagining and co-creating conditions for systemic justice. Based on this framework, we then examine existing collective healing practices in different contexts that are aimed at addressing legacies of transatlantic slavery. In doing so, we further identify challenges and pose critical questions concerning …


Guest Editorial: Mass Atrocity And Collective Healing: New Possibilities For Regenerating Communities, Scherto R. Gill Dec 2021

Guest Editorial: Mass Atrocity And Collective Healing: New Possibilities For Regenerating Communities, Scherto R. Gill

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This Special Issue brings together five articles from different disciplines. It aims to contribute to the emergent critical voices in research about collective trauma and collective healing by introducing novel perspectives and inviting further debates on the relevant issues evoked. For this reason, the Special Issue focuses on collective healing through a number of prisms. First, it delves into the notions of wounding and trauma, with a view to advance a well-argued theoretical framework for understanding collective healing. Second, it identifies underlying ethical pillars for collective healing, especially the principles of equality and well-being that affirm human dignity founded on …


Ongoing Genocides And The Need For Healing: The Cases Of Native And African Americans, Benjamin P. Bowser, Carl O. Word, Kate Shaw Dec 2021

Ongoing Genocides And The Need For Healing: The Cases Of Native And African Americans, Benjamin P. Bowser, Carl O. Word, Kate Shaw

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The elimination of Native peoples and the enslavement of Africans in the U.S. more than qualify as acts of historical state sponsored genocide. A feature of both genocides is that they ended as institutional practices but have continued culturally and psychologically. The primary contemporary legacy of these genocides is racism which reinforces historical trauma and grief. Suggestions are made for how healing for Native and African Americans can begin despite ongoing racism. This includes psychological counseling for White Americans with beliefs in White supremacy. Suggestions are also made for how reconciliation can begin at the county-level between descendants of slave …


A Dance Of Shadows And Fires: Conceptual And Practical Challenges Of Intergenerational Healing After Mass Atrocity, Brandon Hamber, Ingrid Palmary Dec 2021

A Dance Of Shadows And Fires: Conceptual And Practical Challenges Of Intergenerational Healing After Mass Atrocity, Brandon Hamber, Ingrid Palmary

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The legacy of mass atrocity—including colonialism, slavery or specific manifestations such as apartheid—continue long after their demise. Applying a temporal intergenerational lens adds complications. We argue that mass atrocity creates for subsequent generations a deep psychological rupture akin to witnessing past atrocities. This creates a moral liability in the present. Healing is a process dependent on the authenticity (evident in discourse and action) with which we address contemporary problems. A further overriding task is to open social and political space for divergent voices. Acknowledgement of mass atrocity requires more than one-off events or institutional responses (the grand apology, the truth …


Book Review: Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare As A Crime Against Humanity And Nature, Jeremy Ritzer Dec 2021

Book Review: Scorched Earth: Environmental Warfare As A Crime Against Humanity And Nature, Jeremy Ritzer

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The subtitle of Emmanuel Kreike’s Scorched Earth foreshadows the goal of this impressive and comprehensive contribution to the field. His goal is to chip away at the Nature-Culture dichotomy that he argues drives, and limits, much of the analysis that is produced of historical, and modern, warfare. Kreike uses the concept of environcide, which he defines as “intentionally or unintentionally damaging, destroying, or rendering inaccessible environmental infrastructure”, and argues that the traditional assumptions about nature and culture in the study of warfare obscure the importance of the natural world in determining who lives and who dies. For the field of …


Book Review: Perpetrator Cinema—Confronting Genocide In Cambodian Documentary, Sabah Carrim Oct 2021

Book Review: Perpetrator Cinema—Confronting Genocide In Cambodian Documentary, Sabah Carrim

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Book Review: Last Train To Auschwitz The French National Railways And The Journey To Accountability, Timothy Plum Oct 2021

Book Review: Last Train To Auschwitz The French National Railways And The Journey To Accountability, Timothy Plum

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The book Last Train to Auschwitz: The French National Railways and the Journey to Accountability, written by Sarah Federman traces the SNCF’s journey toward accountability in France and the United States. Told from the Holocaust survivors’ perspective the volume illustrates the long-term effects of the railroad’s complicity with the Nazis on individuals, and transitional justice that leads to corporate accountability. In a time when corporations are increasingly granted the same rights as people, Federman’s detailed account demonstrates the obligations businesses to atone for aiding and abetting governments in committing atrocities.


Pinpointing Patterns Of Violence: A Comparative Genocide Studies Approach To Violence Escalation In The Ukrainian Holodomor, Kristina Hook Oct 2021

Pinpointing Patterns Of Violence: A Comparative Genocide Studies Approach To Violence Escalation In The Ukrainian Holodomor, Kristina Hook

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article utilizes the case study of the 1930s Ukrainian Holodomor, an artificially induced famine under Joseph Stalin, to advance comparative genocide studies debates regarding the nature, onset, and prevention of large-scale violence. Fieldwide debates question how to 1) distinguish genocide from other forms of large-scale violence and 2) trace genocides as unfolding processes, rather than crescendoing events. To circumvent unproductive definitional arguments, methodologies that track large-scale violence according to numerically-based thresholds have substituted for dynamics-based analyses. Able to address aspects of the genocide puzzle, these methodologies struggle to incorporate cross-cultural contextual variation or elicit ripe moments for specific, real-time …


Dossier: The Stateless Rohingya—Practical Consequences Of Expulsion, Fiza Lee-Winter, Tonny Kirabira Oct 2021

Dossier: The Stateless Rohingya—Practical Consequences Of Expulsion, Fiza Lee-Winter, Tonny Kirabira

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The international community has been called upon to ramp up efforts to end statelessness and provided with a guiding framework of 10 Actions. This dossier presents the practical consequences of expulsion, both direct and indirect outcomes of collective violence, directed towards the Rohingyas. Touching upon the nexus between children's rights, human trafficking, and practical challenges associated on-the-ground, the dossier also discusses the imperative need for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states—collectively as a region—to take steps in fulfilling Action 7 of the Global Action Plan through the birth registration of Rohingya children as part of their existing efforts …


Book Review: Remembrance And Forgiveness: Global And Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Genocide And Mass Violence, Amina Hadžiomerović May 2021

Book Review: Remembrance And Forgiveness: Global And Interdisciplinary Perspectives On Genocide And Mass Violence, Amina Hadžiomerović

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The volume Remembrance and Forgiveness, edited by Ajlina Karamehić-Muratović and Laura Kromják, brings together a diversity of disciplines, authors, and cultural contexts to discuss the legacies of the post-Holocaust era genocides by focusing on the (de)mobilisation of memory in seeking truth, justice, and forgiveness. The book provides a compendious overview of the social, historical, and political contexts behind the insurgencies and gives a better sense of understanding of (the obstacles to) the healing process and reconciliation in the global frame.


Arts & Literature: The Many Faces Of Hope, Fiza Lee-Winter May 2021

Arts & Literature: The Many Faces Of Hope, Fiza Lee-Winter

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.


Dossier: Uyghur Women In China’S Genocide, Rukiye Turdush, Magnus Fiskesjö May 2021

Dossier: Uyghur Women In China’S Genocide, Rukiye Turdush, Magnus Fiskesjö

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In genocide, both women and men suffer. However, their suffering has always been different; with men mostly subjected to torture and killings, and women mostly subjected to torture and mutilation. These differences stem primarily from the perpetrators' ideology and intention to exterminate the targeted people. Many patriarchal societies link men with blood lineage and the group’s continuation, while women embody the group’s reproductivity and dignity. In the ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims in East Turkistan, the ideology of Chinese colonialism is a root cause. It motivates the targeting of women as the means through which to …


“We Planted Rice And Killed People:” Symbiogenetic Destruction In The Cambodian Genocide, Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, Sereyvothny Um May 2021

“We Planted Rice And Killed People:” Symbiogenetic Destruction In The Cambodian Genocide, Andrew Woolford, Wanda June, Sereyvothny Um

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In recent years, genocide scholars have given greater attention to the dangers posed by climate change for increasing the prevalence or intensity of genocide. Challenges related to forced migration, resource scarcity, famine, and other threats of the Anthropocene are identified as sources of present and future risk, especially for those committed to genocide prevention. We approach the connection between the natural and social aspects of genocide from a different angle. Our research emanates out of a North American Indigenous studies and new materialist rather than Euro-genocide studies framework, meaning we see the natural and the social (or cultural) as inseparable, …