International Relations Commons^™

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 …

Explaining Suharto's Rise And Fall: International And Domestic Variables, Julia Batanghari

Undergraduate Honors Theses

For three decades (1968-1998), Indonesia was led by President Suharto, whose authoritarian military regime is remembered for its corruption and brutality. This paper offers an analysis of Suharto’s rule through the lens of two events: his 1965 purge of local ‘communists’ and the riots of May 1998. Drawing comparisons between the two, I delve into systemic causes by considering the influence of domestic and international variables. Exploring links between intergroup accommodation and democracy reveals that Suharto’s lack of ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious inclusivity paved the way not only for the anti-Chinese sentiment which pervaded Indonesian society during his presidency, but …

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

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

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 …

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, …

Human Rights? What A Good Idea! From Universal Jurisdiction To Crime Prevention, Daniel Feierstein

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Over the last decades, Genocide Studies has entered in a “comfort zone.” With fellowships and support from governments or NGOs, we have developed a very comfortable environment in which the knowledge we produce about genocide prevention is neither critical nor useful. We have become trapped by assumptions we have never checked against reality and many of us have chosen to work inside the circle of those assumptions: genocide and mass violence are horrible acts committed by horrible people; we cannot stand by and do nothing; we have the responsibility to protect civilian populations and that responsibility takes the form, as …

Between Hagiography And Wounded Attachment: Raphaël Lemkin And The Study Of Genocide, Benjamin Meiches, Jeff Benvenuto

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In this article, we outline the significance of the special issue on the scholarship of Raphaël Lemkin. We argue that genocide scholars tend to identify with one of three different types of Lemkin scholarship. Each of the articles for the special issue challenges these genres in an effort to extend the study of genocide in new directions. Moreover, we contend that this work suggests that genocide scholars should endeavor to extend the study of genocide beyond Lemkin's vision and writings.

The Black Freedom Movement And The Politics Of The Anti-Genocide Norm In The United States, 1951 - 1967, Daniel E. Solomon

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article explores the political uses of the anti-genocide norm by black freedom activists in the United States between 1951, when the Civil Rights Congress petitioned the United Nations with evidence of genocide against black Americans, and 1967, when the topic of genocide returned to mainstream public debate with the beginning of William Proxmire’s campaign for US ratification of the Convention. Using public speeches and pamphlets of the US black freedom movement, and private documentation by movement activists, this paper demonstrates how black activists used the nascent anti-genocide norm to (1) critique the relationship between the US government’s role in …

Contested Identity And Making Sense Of Atrocity: Understanding The Rohingya Crisis In Myanmar, Christopher Andrew Long

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Myanmar’s recent transition towards democracy has caused western leaders to become increasingly optimistic about the future of human rights within the country. However, since emerging on the international stage in 2012, the Rohingya crisis has drastically upset such expectations, leaving the international community in complete shock over the issue. Attempting to shed light on this human rights tragedy, international media coverage has produced an overly simplified depiction of the Rohingya crisis. In addition, very little academic literature exists seeking to explain the root causes of the issue. By utilizing interviews conducted at the University of Mandalay this paper attempts to …

Leonard Bagalwa, Leonard Bagalwa, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Leonard was forced to join the military at the age of 17 in his home country of the Congo. A Catholic priest smuggled me out of the country and I lived in refugee camps in several different countries until 2004 when he came to the United States.

In 2005, a couple came to Leonard when he was homeless in the Provo library. They found out that he needed help and offered to let me live with them. They ended up paying my tuition for my education and I went to college for five years.

Leonard uses his experiences to teach …

Samadi & Sabroo, Samadi, Sabroo, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Samadi was a member of the Kurdistan Freedom Party. He joined at the age of 17 andhas been a member for 22 years. This party sought an independent Kurdistan andfought with the invader countries. Samadi lived at the Oinofyat Refugee Camp inGreece at the time of this interview. His daughter was killed by ISIS in 2014 whiledefending Kurdistan. After her death, his family was threatened by the Salafi group.They left to save their lives. Samedi says that the Salafi group rapes and kills children in the name of religion. He says he is a fighter and he is not afraid …

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.

Guest Editors’ Introduction: Genocide Studies, Colonization, And Indigenous Peoples, David B. Macdonald, Tricia Logan

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Remembering Genocide, Tony Barta

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

The Impossibility To Protect? Media Narratives And The Responsibility To Protect, Kjell Føllingstad Anderson, Ingjerd Veiden Brakstad

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The media plays an important role in communicating mass atrocities to audiences across the globe. This article critically examines how journalists’ framing of mass atrocities may contribute to public discourse on the responsibility to protect principle, in particular the perceived obligation to intervene in cases of mass atrocities. It will draw from a broader conceptual framework on bystander responses to mass atrocities and utilise evidence from the analysis of newspaper accounts of the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides. It will argue that, in some cases, media narratives may actually erode political will and encourage passivity in response to mass atrocities.

Domestic And Foreign Policy In Ethnic Conflict: The True Reasons For The Rwandan And Burundian Genocides, William Andrew Ladnier

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

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.

Diplomacy Meets Conflict: Darfur, Sudan And The Limits Of International Diplomacy, Tinacho Chitongo

Global Studies Student Scholarship

Despite claims that the world is generally more developed and stable than previous times in man's history there are places on earth where war is still the name of the game. Tactics such as rape, murder, vandalism and ethnic cleansing are still prevalent. The paper studies the complex issues confronting Africa's largest country, Sudan. The country stands on a fragile ceasefire that ended a 2 decade civil war in 2002. The main focus is on the Darfur region which is in Western Sudan. Rebels there began fighting in 2003 and the region has been something of a conundrum of violence. …

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 …

Turks, Armenians, And Genocide: Is Genocide Foreign To Foreign Policy?, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes difficulties in forging foreign policy consensus on preventing, attenuating, or intervening to stop genocide.