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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.

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 …

New Documents Shed Light: Why Did Peacekeepers Withdraw During Rwanda’S 1994 Genocide?, Emily A. Willard

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Why did the international community decide to withdraw United Nations peacekeeping troops from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide? Analysis of newly released documents and results from an international conference with former U.N. and government officials sheds further light on our understanding of what took place leading up to and during the Rwandan genocide. This article focuses on two key moments: 1) the United States’ reluctance to support the peacekeeping mission from before its mandate began and prior to the killing of U.S. troops in Somalia in autumn 1993; and the United States’ central role pushing the United Nations Security Council …

Prelude To Genocide: Arusha, Rwanda, And The Failure Of Diplomacy, David Rawson

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

As the initial US observer, David Rawson participated in the 1993 Rwandan peace talks at Arusha, Tanzania. Later, he served as US ambassador to Rwanda during the last months of the doomed effort to make them hold. Despite the intervention of concerned states in establishing a peace process and the presence of an international mission, UNAMIR, the promise of the Arusha Peace Accords could not be realized. Instead, the downing of Rwandan president Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 rekindled the civil war and opened the door to genocide.

In Prelude to Genocide, Rawson draws on declassified documents and his own …

Book Review: Conflict In The Nuba Mountains: From Genocide-By-Attrition To The Contemporary Crisis In Sudan, Alan J. Kuperman

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

'You Are Who We Say You Are': The Politics Of Ethnicity In Post-Genocidal Rwanda And Bosnia-Herzegovina, Stephanie A. Sugars

Senior Independent Study Theses

The establishment of peace in post-genocidal states is vital, as the experience of extreme division and violence can scar a population, contributing to violence and inequality moving forward. Existing literature on post-conflict transition and governance argues that two main systems are typically used: consociationalism and assimilationism. While consociationalism argues for heterogeneity in the state and assimilationism for homogeneity, both of these systems use the institutionalization of identity as a step in post-conflict recovery, through such means as proscribing or privileging particular identities. This study posits that this is inherently flawed, as attempts to institutionalize identity ignore its contextually fluid or …

Genocide In The Classroom: How Transitional Societies Are Affected By The Quality Of Genocide Education, Leah Oppenheimer

Honors Scholar Theses

Recognized as a legal term since 1944, genocides have been an unfortunate occurrence since the beginning of world history. However, many countries have failed to properly educate students about genocides that have taken place in their own countries by either not providing accurate or consistent information about what took place or denying the genocide outright. Additionally, in many countries, relations between formerly warring ethnic groups have not improved, despite the often large amount of time that has passed since the end of the genocide. This study examines how history education, both accurate and inaccurate, has affected the current social situation …

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.

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.

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 …

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 …

A Bloody Tradition: Ethnic Cleansing In World War Ii Yugoslavia, Paul Bookbinder

New England Journal of Public Policy

When World War II began, a climate for mass violence already existed. The author examines the history of ethnic cleansing, cultural cleansing, mass murder, and genocide in Yugoslavia – Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Hertzegovena, and Kosovo – and finds that the historical atrocities are alive in active memory today. With a new awareness of the consequences of ethnic hatred, people can study their own histories cleansed of myth and nationalist delusions so that wars that unleash ethnic violence can be stopped before these excesses erupt.

Genocide: What Do We Want It To Be?, Alan A. Ryan Jr.

New England Journal of Public Policy

The definition of genocide in the Genocide Convention has been universally accepted, in the statutes of the ad hoc international tribunals and the International Criminal Court, but it conceals a host of ambiguities. Sociologists, political scientists, and others have not devised any legally adequate substitute. This article proposes a non-linear definition of genocide, that is, a definition that takes into account the presence or absence of several factors, rather than one that attempts to generalize the crime of genocide. It disregards the motives or objectives of the perpetrator, sheds the secondary phenomena that often accompany genocide (such as dehumanization of …

Cosmopolitan Law—And Cruelty— On Trial, Matthew S. Weinert

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Law against Genocide: Cosmopolitan Trials by David Hirsh. London: Cavendish/Glasshouse, 2003. 183pp.

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.