In the Footsteps of Raphael Lemkin

When Raphael Lemkin invented the word ‘‘genocide’’ in 1944, he explained that this is a ‘‘new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development.’’1 As Lemkin wrote these words, the paradigmatic genocide, the Holocaust, was raging in Europe. Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Tampa Library at Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact scholarcommons@usf.edu. Recommended Citation Bazyler, Michael J. (2007) "In the Footsteps of Raphael Lemkin," Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal: Vol. 2: Iss. 1: Article 7. Available at: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/gsp/vol2/iss1/7 In the Footsteps of Raphael Lemkin Michael J. Bazyler Professor of Law and ‘‘1939’’ Club Law Scholar in Holocaust and Human Rights Studies, Whittier Law School; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Pepperdine University School of Law (2007) When Raphael Lemkin invented the word ‘‘genocide’’ in 1944, he explained that this is a ‘‘new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development.’’ As Lemkin wrote these words, the paradigmatic genocide, the Holocaust, was raging in Europe. Since Lemkin was a lawyer, he put great weight on both national and international legal rules as one of the best tools to prevent and eventually eradicate this ‘‘old practice.’’ His response was to propose an international crime for which individuals committing such acts against a group of people—whom he labeled ‘‘a collectivity’’—could be punished, irrespective of national boundaries. In effect, Lemkin was proposing the now-accepted rule of universal jurisdiction, whereby individuals committing certain heinous crimes are considered hostis humani generis—enemies of all humankind—and can be prosecuted by any national or international court, regardless of where the crime was committed. It is the legalistic background of the inventor and the purpose for which the term was invented—to make certain group behavior an international crime recognized by the community of nations as illegal through a multilateral treaty—that put the term ‘‘genocide’’ solidly within a legal framework. The culmination of Lemkin’s work during his lifetime was the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNCG), adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1948 and entering into force in 1951. More than 130 states today are parties to the UNCG, in whose article 1 they solemnly ‘‘undertake to prevent and punish’’ genocide. How states are to do so is left unstated in the treaty. Though Lemkin died impoverished and in relative obscurity in 1959, his word has achieved a recognition beyond his dreams. ‘‘Genocide’’ has now become synonymous with extreme evil and, as noted by William Schabas, the ‘‘crime of crimes.’’ A Google search today yields more than 26 million entries for the term. Unfortunately, one of the major reasons for its widespread popularity is the failure of the UNCG to prevent repeated occurrences of this particular extreme evil. While the term ‘‘genocide’’ should by now be relegated to descriptions of historical events, most recently the Holocaust, it is instead still being used by those who followed Lemkin to describe current events. As explained by Gregory Stanton, When the Genocide Convention was passed by the United Nations in 1948, the world said, ‘‘Never again.’’ But the history of the twentieth century instead proved that ‘‘never again’’ became ‘‘again and again.’’ The promise the United Nations made was broken, as again and again, genocides and other forms of mass murder killed 170 million people, more than all the international wars of the twentieth century combined. As I write this commentary, a genocide is raging in the Darfur region of Sudan while the international community, in ‘‘Keystone Kops’’ fashion, haplessly tries to figure out how to respond to the events. Despite massive demonstrations, Michael J. Bazyler, ‘‘In the Footsteps of Raphael Lemkin.’’ Genocide Studies and Prevention 2, 1 (April 2007): 51–56. 2007 Genocide Studies and Prevention. letter-writing campaigns to politicians, public appeals, and extensive coverage by the media, the genocide in Darfur continues unabated. As Jerry Fowler recently explained in a more elegant manner, Darfur adds another sad chapter of irony in the convention’s history, given the dramatic incongruity between the sense of urgency that one might expect a plausible case of ongoing genocide to engender and the relatively lackadaisical international political response that has in fact unfolded. The failure of the international community to stop the Rwandan genocide of 1994, during which approximately one million victims were murdered over a period of 100 days, provides another sad and sorry example of the ‘‘again and again’’ phenomenon. As we approach the half-century mark of Lemkin’s death, it is a great blot on both international law and international diplomacy that we have failed miserably to make his dream into reality and relegate genocide to the trash bin of history. Not that we haven’t tried. Numerous proposals, some put into practice, have been offered over the last fifty years to make the work of genocide prevention more effective. The topic has also been the subject of numerous books, articles, policy papers, and speeches. In the 1970s, Israel Charny and Chanan Rapaport devised the Genocide Early Warning System (GEWS), an analytic process by which to recognize preludes to genocide so that effective action can be taken before events on the ground escalate into full-blown genocide. GEWS is based on the fact that genocides, including the Holocaust, are never spontaneous events; rather, they occur incrementally, in predictable steps. In the 1990s, Gregory Stanton addressed the same issue and gave us an important tool by likewise identifying the signposts on the road to genocide. Stanton explains that ‘‘genocide is a process that develops in eight stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The later stages must be preceded by the earlier stages, though earlier stages continue to operate throughout the process.’’ At the policy level, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan took a stab at the task in 2004 by creating the position of Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide and appointing Juan Mendez, law professor, human rights advocate, and former political prisoner from Argentina, to the post. Events in Darfur demonstrate, at least to date, that the addition of such a special adviser for genocide prevention at the UN has had little effect in the real world. In 1997, the Clinton administration in the United States had created a new post in the US State Department, the US Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues, with a similar mandate to focus on genocide and other large-scale violations of international criminal law. The creation of this post has likewise had, at most, a negligible effect on the task of genocide prevention and the current holder of the position, John Clint Williamson, seems to play a minor role in the State Department. Prior to Williamson’s appointment in April 2006, the post was vacant for six months. David Scheffer, the first ambassador for war crimes issues and currently a law professor at Northwestern University, now offers another proposal to make genocide prevention more effective. Scheffer correctly points out that the legal definition of genocide, as found in the UNCG, has acted to constrain genocide prevention, since it offers both the United Nations and individual nations a ready-made legal excuse not to take action. It allows them to claim that the acts being committed, while horrible, have not yet risen Genocide Studies and Prevention 2:1 April 2007