Genocide in Our Time: The Year and a Half in Review

  

Alex Alvarez
Northern Arizona University

For anyone who is concerned about the issue of genocide, a look back at the first half of 2009 and all of 2008 is bound to produce as much frustration as it does hope. This past year and a half saw a number of both positive and negative developments in regards to the prevention and intervention of genocide, some of which may well have a lasting impact. The place to begin this review is with a situation that has seen very little change for the better and that is the 21st century’s first and most well known example of this crime, the Darfur.

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In the Darfur region of the Sudan the genocide that began in 2003 has continued unabated, albeit in modified form. The widespread violence and destruction of villages so commonplace during the early years of the genocide has become less common in favor of smaller scale atrocities and attacks on internally displaced persons (IDP) camps. This development is hardly surprising given that most non-Arab villages in the region have by now been destroyed and almost three million people have become internally displaced persons scattered in camps throughout this part of the Sudan or refugees in neighboring Chad. Because of this reality, much of the current genocidal actions of the Sudanese state have been centered on attacking and harassing the IDP camps which are often largely defenseless and highly vulnerable. Because of the dangerousness of this situation and the targeting of aid workers, many international aid organizations have scaled back their humanitarian operations or simply left, which means that not only are the IDP’s subject to violence and harassment from the national government and their paramilitary proxies, but they also face increasing difficulties in obtaining the bare necessities of life such as food, potable water, and medical supplies and assistance. Unfortunately, outside of the Sudan and apart from a few activists and scholars, attention and interest in the ongoing genocide have diminished dramatically. It seems as if the genocide is no longer such a pressing concern. Eric Reeves, a scholar who has continued to call attention to the on-going genocide in the Darfur writes that, “With dismaying predictability, the continuing catastrophe in Darfur commands less and less news attention, largely because it has settled into a grim “genocide by attrition,” defined not so much by massive atrocities – although these continue to occur – as by relentless, if undramatic, human suffering and destruction consequent upon the Khartoum regime’s deliberate exacerbating of insecurity confronting civilians and aid workers.” And so, the genocide and the suffering continue with diminishing attention and no effective intervention strategies on the part of the United Nations or the international community.

One notable exception to this lack of action in regards to the situation in Darfur was the recent indictment of the President of the Sudan, Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir. Coming to power in 1989 after leading a coup and usurping the power of the previous government, al-Bashir has been in power ever since. On July 14, 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, filed numerous charges against Omar al-Bashir that included ten charges of war crimes, three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity, and two charges of murder. Essentially, this indictment contends that al-Bashir is criminally responsible for planning, coordinating, and implementing a counter-insurgency campaign against the Sudanese Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement in the Darfur region of the Sudan and that part of this operation involved attacks on the civilian population of the area by the military, the police, and militia groups known as the Janjaweed.

These are not the first charges brought against Sudanese officials by the ICC. In 2007 Ahmad Muhammad Harun, a former government minister, and Ali Muhammad Ali Abd-Al-Rahman, the ostensible leader of the Janjaweed militia, were also indicted and issued with arrest warrants for their complicity in the violence in the Darfur. In response to al-Bashir’s indictment, on March 4, 2009 the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir. Of striking significance is that this is the first time that a sitting head of state has ever been so charged. While former heads of state, such as Slobodan Milosevic have been called before the bar of justice, the issuance of an arrest warrant for a head of state while still in office may well prove to be a significant milestone in the development and application of international human rights law. Interestingly, even though the arrest warrant lists al-Bashir as an indirect perpetrator or indirect co-perpetrator for various crimes, including intentionally directing attacks against civilian populations and civilians, pillage, murder, torture, and rape among other crimes, genocide was not included by the judges of the ICC, although one judge wrote a dissenting opinion arguing that al-Bashir could be charged with genocide. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the prosecutor, did in fact appeal to have the charges of genocide reinstated, but the pre-trial chamber ruled that there wasn’t enough evidence to support the notion that al-Bashir exhibited specific intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected group which in this particular case would be members of the Fur, Zaghawa, and Masalit tribes. Not surprisingly, the Sudanese government has rejected the legitimacy and appropriateness of the arrest warrant and al-Bashir has referred to the charges against him as lies. Given the unwillingness of the Sudanese government to serve the warrant, the only real effect at present is to prevent al-Bashir from traveling internationally [Ed. to some locations], as that would expose him to the risk of arrest. [Ed. note: See this GPN post for a list of the considerable travel Bashir has undertaken since the ICC conviction, where in each case he has been received with the honor due a head of state and not as an accused murderer.]

Elsewhere in Africa, genocidal related violence also continued to take its toll of victims during 2008 and 2009. In the Eastern Congo, for example, this kind of violence has been the dominant reality for many years. The contemporary conflict has its beginning in the 1994 Rwandan genocide when the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) led by Paul Kagame won the civil war and overthrew the genocidal Hutu regime that was responsible for the deaths of between 800,000 and 1000,000 of its own citizens. Consequently, about a million Hutu refugees streamed across the border into the neighboring country of what was then called Zaire and now the Congo. Among these were many soldiers from the ousted Hutu government, various local and national politicians, ordinary civilians, and even members of the infamous Interahamwe militia. Many of these refugees had been active participants in the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi and the camps they fled to soon became rife with violence as many of the former genocidaires began victimizing their fellow refugees. Some even began to organize raids back across the border into Rwandan territory. Eventually, the Rwandan army of the new government invaded in 1996 and set off fighting that has continued sporadically to the present day. This incessant fighting has destabilized this entire portion of Africa, killed millions (up to 5.4 million according to one educated guess), and internally displaced another estimated million. One significant and perverse feature of much of the violence has been the particular targeting of women for various forms of sexual assault. In fact, gender-based violence is so extreme and pervasive in this region that one United Nations officer commented that it is more dangerous to be a woman in the affected areas than it is to be a soldier, while a reporter for the New York Times labeled the eastern Congo as the rape capital of the world. In January of 2009, the Congo allowed portions of the Rwandan military to enter the country in a cooperative effort to eliminate the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an organization responsible for much of the violence in the Congo and which is largely composed of former genocidaires and refugees.

Another positive legal development that took place in the summer of 2008 was the apprehension of the former leader of Bosnian Serbs, Radovan Karadžić, who was finally taken into custody in Belgrade after many years of being on the run. A former psychiatrist and poet, Karadžić formed a Serbian political movement in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1989 known as the Serbian Democratic Party in order to try and prevent Bosnia from seceding from Yugoslavia. Ultimately, when Bosnia did in fact declare independence in 1992, Karadžić and his party took over the portion of the country in which Serbs predominated and declared it to be the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, later renamed the Republika Srpska. From 1992 to 1996 Karadžić served as the nascent Republic’s first president. Aided and abetted by Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, the Serbs of the newly formed Republic under Karadžić’s leadership engaged in a campaign of violence and terror that soon became known as ethnic cleansing. Subsequent to the atrocities, Karadžić was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for crimes against humanity, war crimes, breaches of the Geneva Convention, and the illegal transfer of civilians because of their religious or national identity. Essentially, the indictment contends that he was responsible, as the primary military and political leader of the Republika Srpska, for the siege of Sarajevo, taking U.N. troops hostage, many massacres including the infamous one that occurred after the fall of Srebrenica and which the ICTY is defining as a genocide, internally displacing many hundreds of thousands, as well as the imprisonment of thousands of others in concentration camps throughout the territory they controlled. Eluding the authorities for years, Karadžić had grown a long beard and ponytail and had been living openly in the Serbian capital of Belgrade under the alias of Dr. Dragan David Dabić, a supposed expert in alternative medicine, bio-energy, and macrobiotic foods and diet. After his arrest on the 18th of July in 2008, Karadžić was remanded into the custody of the ICTY on July 30 where he is in the pre-trial stages of his prosecution.

One last noteworthy event that took place during the time period under review was the release of the report of the Genocide Prevention Task Force. Chaired by former U.S. Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, and former U.S. Secretary of Defense, William Cohen. The task force was convened by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the American Academy of Diplomacy, and the United States Institute of Peace. The purpose of this exercise was to try and develop a framework to help guide the U.S. government in dealing more effectively with potential and actual genocides and mass atrocities. The report highlights the need for strong leadership on the part of the President, Congress, and the American people in responding to budding crisis situations that may lead to genocides. The report also emphasizes the importance of early warning systems in order to identify impending hotspots of genocidal activity with enough advance notice to develop effective intervention strategies, especially preventive diplomatic initiatives that may help dissuade genocidally inclined leaders and regimes. The report also stresses the importance of military options when preventative strategies have failed and the importance of the international community in developing multilateral efforts to prevent and intervene. Given the preoccupation of the current administration and Congress with the economic meltdown and its consequences, nothing much has yet come of the report, and it remains to be seen whether this blueprint will have any lasting impact in terms of how the U.S. government confronts the reality of genocide around the globe.

In essence, then, most of the progress in fighting genocide in recent years has usually taken place in the legal arena. While the arrest and prosecution of genocidaires is an important aspect of any genocide intervention regime, it must be pointed out that these are almost always post-genocide. They only occur after the violence and killing have been perpetrated. Clearly, much more progress needs to occur around the issue of early identification and prevention. Unfortunately, 2008 and 2009 did not see any real progress on this front.

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Dr. Alex Alvarez (alex.alvarez@nau.edu) earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of New Hampshire in 1991 and is a Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. From 2001 until 2003 he was the founding Director of the Martin-Springer Institute for Teaching the Holocaust, Tolerance, and Humanitarian Values. His main areas of study are in the areas of collective and interpersonal violence, including homicide and genocide. His first book, Governments, Citizens, and Genocide was published by Indiana University Press in 2001 and was a nominee for the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences book of the year award in 2002, as well as a Raphael Lemkin book award nominee from the International Association of Genocide Scholars in 2003. His other books include Murder American Style (2002), Violence: the Enduring Problem (2008), and Genocidal Crimes (2009). He has also served as an editor for the journal Violence and Victims, was a founding co-editor of the journal Genocide Studies and Prevention, was a co-editor of the H-Genocide List Serve, and is an editorial board member for the journals War Crimes, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity: An International Journal, and Idea: A Journal of Social Issues. He has been invited to present his research in various countries such as Austria, Bosnia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Dr. Alvarez also gives presentations and workshops on various issues such as violence, genocide, and bullying.

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State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide in Ahmadinejad’s Iran: The Responsibility to Prevent

  

Irwin Cotler
Member of Canadian Parliament
Law Professor (on leave) at McGill University

The enduring lesson of the Holocaust and that of the genocides that followed is that they occurred not simply because of the machinery of death, but because of state-sanctioned incitement. Today, the epicentre of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. In it, one finds a toxic convergence of advocacy of the most horrific of crimes embedded in the most virulent of hatreds. The threat is dramatized by parading in the streets of Teheran a Shihab-3 missile draped in the words “Israel must be wiped off the map” while assembled thousands are exhorted to chants of “Death to Israel.” The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, makes it clear that the annihilation of Israel is the basic premise upon which the State operates. The incitement to genocide thus committed is not only the prelude to a preventable tragedy; it is a crime in itself under international law.

In other cases of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide – the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Balkans, Darfur – the genocides have already occurred. Only with respect to Ahmadinejad’s Iran can we still act so as to prevent the genocide foretold from occurring. State Parties to the Genocide Convention have not only a right but a responsibility to prevent genocide and to punish direct and public incitement to genocide. As a former Minister of Justice in Canada who was involved in the prosecution of Rwandan incitement, I can state that the precursors of incitement in the Iranian case are more threatening than were those in the Rwandan one. It is astonishing that this criminal incitement has yet to be addressed, and that the immediate and practical steps available under international law are yet to be taken.

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Genocide is the most insidious and destructive threat known to humankind. It is the ultimate crime against humanity—the unspeakable crime whose name one should shudder to mention; a horrific and unspeakable act whereby state-sanctioned incitement transforms hatred into catastrophe. The enduring lesson of the Holocaust and that of the genocides that followed is that they occurred not simply because of the machinery of death, but because of the state-sanctioned incitement to hatred. As international tribunals have recognized, the Holocaust did not begin in the gas chambers; it began with words. These are the chilling facts of history. This enduring lesson finds contemporary application in the state-sanctioned incitement to genocide whose epicenter is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s Iran. Indeed, today, in Ahmadinejad’s Iran, one finds the toxic convergence of the advocacy of the most horrific of crimes embedded in the most virulent of hatreds. It is dramatized by the parading in the streets of Teheran of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the words “Israel must be wiped off the map” while the assembled thousands are exhorted to chants of “Death to Israel.” In all other cases of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide – the Holocaust, Rwanda, the Balkans, Darfur – the genocides have already occurred. Only with respect to Ahmadinejad’s Iran can we still act so as to prevent the genocide foretold from occurring.

Genocidal Incitement in Ahmadinejad’s Iran: The Evidence

We have been witnessing for some time a state-sanctioned incitement to genocide whose epicenter is Ahmadinejad’s Iran. I take care to distinguish Ahmadinejad’s Iran from the peoples of Iran who are themselves increasingly the target of the Iranian regime's massive repression of human rights—a fact underscoring the principle that countries that violate the rights of their own citizens will surely violate those of neighbouring countries. Ahmadinejad’s Iran is increasingly resorting to incendiary and demonizing language, including epidemiological metaphors reminiscent of Nazi incitement. Moreover, calls by the most senior figures in the Iranian leadership for the destruction of Israel are also frighteningly reminiscent of calls for the Rwandan extermination of Tutsis by the Hutu leadership. The crucial difference is that the Hutus were equipped with machetes, while Iran, in defiance of the world community, continues its pursuit of the most destructive of weaponry: nuclear arms. Iran has already succeeded in developing and testing a long-range missile delivery system for that purpose, recalling former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani’s infamous declaration that “the employment of even one atomic bomb inside Israel will wipe it off the face of the earth.” The hate propaganda and incitement emerging from Ahmadinejad’s Iran lamentably follows a pattern established in past genocides, as victims are delegitimized, dehumanized and demonized before their intended extermination. Indeed, hate speech fitting each of these categories is both public and pervasive in Ahmadinejad’s Iran.

Genocide is a crime almost unfathomable in its cruelty and its scale. It is impossible to perpetrate against victims that appear, to the genocidaires, as worthy of any respect. As genocide scholar Helen Fein notes, potential victims must be seen in the minds of the genocidaires as beyond “the boundaries of the universe of obligation.” The first step, therefore, is to classify the “other” – the targeted State and its people – as illegitimate and unworthy of that universe of obligation. The delegitimization of Jews and Israel in Ahmadinejad’s Iran finds expression in the rhetoric treating Israel as a foreign and alien entity that has no rightful place in the Middle East. It is exemplified by the comments of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (“What are you? A forged government and a false nation. They gathered wicked people from all over the world and made something called the Israeli nation.”) and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who, in front of the United Nations General Assembly, labeled Israel a “criminal” and “forged” regime of “murderers” created on “other people’s land by displacing, detaining, and killing the true owners of that land.”).

Dehumanization

Against this context of the singling-out and delegitimization of the alien “other” Israel, the next genocidal precursor is the dehumanization of Israelis and Jews through the use of epidemiological metaphors reminiscent of the dehumanization of the Jews during the Holocaust and the dehumanization of Tutsi during the genocide in Rwanda. In the genocide-fostering process, biological euphemisms are not just rhetorical tools; they seek to preclude the intended victims from even being considered human to begin with. Thus, just as Jews were labeled as “vermin” by the Nazis and the Tutsi were labeled as “cockroaches” in Rwanda, so too have Israelis and Jews been dehumanized and labeled in Iran as: a “filthy germ” and “savage beast;”

• a “cancerous tumour;”

  
  

• a “stain of disgrace” on the “garment of the world of Islam;”

  
  

• a “stinking corpse;”

  
  

• a “cancerous bacterium;”

  
  

• stuck in a “cesspool created by itself and its supporters;”

  
  

• “like cattle—nay, more misguided;”

  
  

• a “rotten, dried tree;” and

  
  

• an “unclean regime.”

Demonization

Related to the dehumanization process is the demonizing process. Under this paradigm, the would-be victims of genocide are portrayed as inspirations of the devil. Dehumanization coupled with demonization accomplishes the dual purpose of making the would-be victim appear not only to be less than human (if not sub-human), but also to appear more threatening, thereby providing a warrant for genocide. Demonized, Israelis and Jews are portrayed in Ahmadinejad’s Iran as “the true manifestation of Satan.” They are “bloodthirsty barbarians” with “no boundaries, limits, or taboos when it comes to killing human beings,” who are fighting a “war against humanity.” Age-old conspiracy theories – according to which a secretive cabal of Jews brings horror and tragedy to the world – are resurrected. Before the international community at the United Nations, President Ahmadinejad declared that “the dignity, integrity and rights of the American and European people are being played with by a small but deceitful number of people called Zionists… [who] have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the US in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner.” Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has taken this demonizing conspiracy theory even further by declaring that: [T]he occupation of Palestine [by the Jews] is part of a satanic design by the world domineering powers, perpetrated by the British in the past and being carried out today by the United States to weaken the solidarity of the Islamic world and to sow the seeds of disunity among us.

Ultimately, the strategy of demonization seamlessly leads to prophecy and incitement, and President Ahmadinejad declared: A Zionist organization with 2,000 [members] and with 7,000 or 8,000 activists have brought the world to a state of confusion. Let me tell them that if they themselves do not wrap up Zionism, the strong arm of the peoples will wipe these germs of corruption off the face of the earth.

From State-Sanctioned Hate to State-Sanctioned Incitement to Genocide

Empowered by the culture of hate it has planted with impunity, Ahmadinejad’s Iran feels no need to leave its genocidal intentions as an unspoken conclusion. To the contrary, the calls for Israel’s destruction by Iranian officials are explicit and without ambiguity. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has thus publicly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Despite international condemnation, when given the opportunity to retract his statement, President Ahmadinejad chose instead to add to their weight, remarking: “My words are the Iranian nation’s words.” In his call for annihilation, President Ahmadinejad referenced the former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. On June 2, 2008, speaking at the shrine where the Ayatollah is buried, President Ahmadinejad repeated: [Ayatollah Khomeini’s] ideal is about to be materialized today... The Zionist regime is in a total dead end and, God willing, this desire will soon be realized and the epitome of perversion will disappear off the face of the world.

It is not only President Ahmadinejad who calls for the annihilation of Israel. The Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, makes it clear that this is the basic premise upon which the State operates, stating on different occasions that “[i]t is the mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to erase Israel from the map of the region,” “[t]here is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state,” and “we are on a collision course with the occupiers of Palestine and the occupiers are the Zionist regime. This is the position of our regime, our revolution and our people.” Repeated calls for the destruction of Israel, and “prophecies” of its demise, all work to normalize the idea of genocide to the Iranian population. Articulated in the context of demonizing rhetoric implying a clash of civilizations, calls for the annihilation of the Jewish State begins to appear not only moral and justifiable, but natural as well. Chillingly, all this incitement appears to be sinking into the popular consciousness. President Ahmadinejad’s audience responds to his words instantly with chants of “Death to Israel.” And the media follows the Government’s lead in inciting genocide as well. For instance, Resalat, an Iranian newspaper, mirroring a Qods (Jerusalem) Day speech by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2006, wrote in an editorial: The nation of Muslims must prepare for the great war, so as to completely wipe out the Zionist regime, and remove this cancerous growth. Like the Imam [Ayatollah] Khomeini said: ‘Israel must collapse’.

Delegitimization

Genocidal Incitement in Ahmadinejad’s Iran: The Remedies

The failure to stop past genocides, as in the unspeakable, preventable genocide of Rwanda, caused the then-UN secretary general Kofi Annan to lament in 2004 on the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide: “We must never forget our collective failure to protect at least 800,000 defenseless men, women and children who perished in Rwanda 10 years ago. “Such crimes cannot be reversed. Such failures cannot be repaired. The dead cannot be brought back to life. So, what can we do?” The answer is for the international community to pay heed to the precursors of genocide in Ahmadinejad’s Iran, and to fulfill its responsibilities under international law. For what is so often ignored – or surprisingly is not even known – is that State Parties to the Genocide Convention have not only a right, but a responsibility to enforce the Convention—a landmark treaty that recently celebrated its 60th anniversary, and which obliges its signatories to act to prevent genocide, and to punish direct and public incitement to genocide. Indeed, as one involved as Minister of Justice in Canada in the prosecution of Rwandan incitement, I can state that the aggregate of precursors of incitement in the Iranian case are more threatening than were those in the Rwandan one. The remedies in international law are established and ready to be exercised. They include: The criminal incitement to genocide by President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders should be referred to the appropriate UN agencies. It is astonishing that this criminal incitement has yet to be addressed by the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, or any other body of the UN.

State Parties to the Genocide Convention should initiate an inter-state complaint against Iran before the International Court of Justice for its “direct and public incitement to genocide” in violation of the Genocide Convention, to which Iran is also a State Party.

Ahmadinejad and other designated Iranian leaders should be placed on a watchlist by concerned countries, preventing their entrance as “inadmissible persons.”

State Parties to the Genocide Convention should call upon the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to refer Ahmadinejad’s genocidal incitement to the UN Security Council as a matter threatening international peace and security, pursuant to Article 99 of the UN Charter. Such action is not a mere policy option; it is an international legal obligation. Voices against intolerance and impunity must work to initiate one or more of the above options. As the United Nations General Assembly was told last fall, “The rallying cry ‘Never again!’ can only be used so often before it loses credibility.” The time to act is now.

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The Honourable Irwin Cotler, P.C., O.C., is a Canadian Member of Parliament and Special Counsel on Human Rights and International Justice to the Liberal Party. The former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Cotler is a leading legal scholar and expert on human rights. He founded and chairs the All-Party Save Darfur Parliamentary Coalition, led the Canadian delegation to the Stockholm International Forum on the Prevention of Genocide, and co-founded the Inter-Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism.

Cotler is currently on leave from the Faculty of Law at McGill University, where he is a law professor and chair of InterAmicus, an international human rights advocacy centre. Cotler has also been called “Counsel for the Oppressed” for his work on behalf of prisoners of conscience such as Andrei Sakharov, Nathan Sharansky, and Professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim.

Cotler has been at the forefront of international efforts to hold Ahmadinejad’s Iran to account for state-sanctioned incitement to genocide and is among the over-50 internationally-renowned jurists, genocide experts and survivors endorsing “The Danger of a Genocidal, Rights-Violating and Nuclear Iran: The Responsibility to Prevent Petition.”

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Never Say Never Again?

  

Gregory S. Gordon
University of North Dakota

As this century's first decade draws to a close, genocide, the scourge of the previous century, is regrettably alive and well. Is this a temporary carry-over or will the balance of these hundred years be equally bloody? Our genocide snapshot of 2008 does not provide a definitive answer. The Genocide Convention's sixtieth anniversary year was full of sober reminders that its primary goal -- prevention of genocide -- has remained out of reach. Thousands of innocents were slaughtered in Darfur; hatemongers, such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kept up their calls for mass murder with impunity; and genocidal fugitives such as Ratko Mladic and Mengistu Haile Mariam were able to celebrate another year of evading justice. And what about the mass violence and death, in places such as Congo and Zimbabwe?

Given the realities, as we gaze into the future, it might seem overwhelming to promise that genocide will never happen again. But not all hope is lost. There are grounds for guarded optimism. The apprehension and punishment of certain ge'nocidaires and resolutions, reports and scholarly reminders of the world's revulsion, weariness and resolve to eradicate genocide suggest we may be headed in the right direction.

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Introduction

The Genocide Convention's sixtieth anniversary year was full of sober reminders that its primary goal – prevention of genocide – has remained out of reach. Thousands of innocents were slaughtered in Darfur; hatemongers, such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad kept up their calls for mass murder with impunity; and genocidal fugitives such as Ratko Mladic and Mengistu Haile Mariam were able to celebrate another year of evading justice. But not all hope was lost. Another one of the Convention's core goals – punishment – was at least partially realized. Genocide was prosecuted and roundly condemned and sanctioned in courts across the globe, including (at long last) Cambodia (even if the official charge may not have been "genocide"). And while some of the most notorious ge'nocidaires remained at large, others were apprehended (notably Radovan Karadzic), indicted and stood trial. So even if the events of 2008 may not have convinced anyone that the "never again" pledge was close to being redeemed, the international legal community could at least take some solace knowing that the fight against genocidal impunity was still being fought with great vigor and some success.

The year started off auspiciously. To honor the Genocide Convention's sixtieth birthday, the United Nations Human Rights Council in March unanimously adopted Resolution 7/25 entitled "Prevention of Genocide." The Resolution reaffirmed the significance of the Genocide Convention; called upon states that have not yet ratified the Convention to do so; re-emphasized state responsibility to prevent and protect its population from genocide; and recognized the role of the Secretary-General in dealing with early warning or prevention cases. In her first address to the Human Rights Council in September 2008, new High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay informed the Council that she would be acting upon its March request and that her office would plan a seminar on the prevention of genocide.

International Justice

It was at the end of the year, however, that the world received perhaps the most powerfully symbolic genocide legal news of 2008. On December 18th, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) convicted Rwandan genocide architect The'oneste Bagosora for his role in the 1994 massacres. As cabinet director of the Rwandan Defense Ministry, Colonel Bagosora stormed out of peace talks in Tanzania with Tutsi rebel group the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) vowing to return to Rwanda to "prepare for the apocalypse." The Tribunal had heard evidence that Bagosora was in charge of the troops and Interahamwe Hutu militia who butchered about 800,000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 100 days after President Juvenal Habyarimana's plane was shot down on April 6, 1994. In convicting him on charges of genocide (and other crimes), the Tribunal sentenced Bagosora to life in prison. As part of the same "Military I" trial, fellow former officers Colonel Anatole Nsengiyumva and Major Aloys Ntabakuze were also sentenced to life for genocide (and other crimes).

However Bagosora's co-defendant General Gratien Kabiligi was acquitted of genocide charges, having advanced a successful alibi defense and raised reasonable doubt regarding his alleged operational authority and targeting of civilians. The acquittal was an important reminder that international genocide trials are not mere rubber stamps of verdicts issued in the court of public opinion.

Also significant in 2008 was the arrest of Bosnian-Serb master ethnic-cleanser Radovan Karadzic. On the lam for nearly thirteen years (since the signing of the Dayton Accords in December 1995 that ended the civil war in the former Yugoslavia), Karadzic was finally captured in disguise near Belgrade on July 22, 2008. As the wartime president of the Bosnian-Serb rump state Republica Srpska, Karadzic is considered responsible for the infamous 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo, where tens of thousand of innocent civilians were killed or wounded by sniper fire and shelling. He is also accused of orchestrating the murder of at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995 – the worst case of genocide in Europe since World War II. For this and other crimes, he was charged in 1995 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) with two counts of genocide and is currently standing trial (on other atrocity charges as well). Karadzic was jointly indicted in 1995 along with the Bosnian Serb military leader, General Ratko Mladic, who supervised Serb atrocities in the field during the 1992-95 war and directly oversaw and commanded the genocidal Srebrenica massacre. Unfortunately, as of this writing, Mladic remains a fugitive.

The week before Karadzic's capture, Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir became the first head of state to be indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Among other charges, Bashir was indicted on three counts of genocide based on command of mass atrocity operations conducted against black African civilians in Sudan's western Darfur region. Since 2003, Sudanese government forces, with assistance from local Arab Janjaweed militias, have systematically killed close to a half million Darfuris and forced another 2.5 million to flee their homes. Bashir joined former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmed Haroun and Janjaweed leader Ali Kushayb (both charged only with crimes against humanity and war crimes) as the defendants in the ICC's Darfur prosecution, the result of a 2005 Security Council referral.

International courts brought other significant genocide news in 2008. The ICTR decision in the case of Rwandan singer Simon Bikindi is of note given incitement charges based on anti-Tutsi hate songs, such as Nanga Abahutu (“I Hate These Hutu”). Bikindi was acquitted of those charges because the Tribunal found he had written the songs before the genocide and was not responsible for their dissemination during the massacres. Nevertheless, the Tribunal found him guilty of incitement based on his traveling in an Interahamwe car from one town to another where killing was taking place. While in the car, Bikindi used a loudspeaker during his outbound trip to encourage militias to kill Tutsi. On the way back, he used the loudspeaker to ask them if they had killed the “snakes.”

On one hand, the opinion is disappointing because it failed to conduct a systematic analysis of the elements of incitement laid out in previous cases (most importantly whether the speech was sufficiently "direct" and whether it was permissible free speech or criminal advocacy – which requires examination of the text, context, purpose and relationship between speaker and subject). On the other hand, it impliedly introduced "temporality" and "instrumentality" requirements – i.e., the speech must be contemporaneous with its dissemination and should be disseminated by the speaker himself. This represents incorporation of important collateral speech-protection elements. The decision also makes clear that use of euphemisms (referring to Tutsis as "snakes") and indirect urging (asking questions) can constitute incitement.

Another ICTR genocide development of note in 2008 was the conviction of defendant Sime'on Nchamihigo – a Rwandan prosecutor in Cyangugu Prefecture at the time the Rwandan genocide began in 1994. Evidence at trial established that Nchamihigo helped plan massacres at a prefecture Security Council meeting and told Interahamwe militias to seek out and kill Cyangugu's Tutsi civilians. In sentencing him to life in prison, the Tribunal considered as very significant that he committed his genocidal crimes while serving as a prosecutor, a position of public trust in which he would be expected to uphold the rule of law.

The ICTR also convicted Protais Zigiranyirazo, the brother-in-law of former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana (therefore a member of “Akazu” – literally the “small house” – a term used to designate the presidential entourage) and considered responsible for the 1985 murder of Gorillas in the Mist anthropologist Dian Fossey. The Tribunal found Zigiranyirazo guilty of participating in a joint criminal enterprise with the common purpose of committing genocide and extermination of Tutsi in Gisenyi prefecture, as well as aiding and abetting genocide at a roadblock in Kigali. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Also in 2008, genocide was conspicuous by its absence in the first indictment issued by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), set up to try Khmer Rouge crimes committed between 1975 and 1979. Prison commandant Kaing Guek Eav, known as “Duch,” was charged, inter alia, with crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions in connection with crimes committed while he was chief of the notorious S-21 camp, also known as Toul Sleng, where thousands of Cambodians were unlawfully detained, tortured and executed during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror. That there was no charge of genocide is noteworthy, given the common perception that operation of the Khmer Rouge's "Killing Fields" constituted genocide. However, as noted by former ECCC Principal Defender Rupert Skilbeck: "There is a very strong legal argument to say that genocide is when you kill people because of their ethnicity, whereas the vast majority of the [Khmer Rouge] purges were not for ethnic reasons, but were for political reasons." Apparently, this influenced the ECCC's decision not to try Duch for the crime of genocide.

There was also international court news for 2008 related to genocide in the civil arena. On November 18, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) rejected Serbia's preliminary objections and found that it had jurisdiction, on the basis of Article IX of the Genocide Convention, to entertain the Case Concerning Croatia’s Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Croatia v. Serbia). The case was initially filed in 1999 and is based on allegations of Serb atrocities committed in connection with the 1991 Serbia-Croatia war. The ICJ's decision means that the Court will yet again have occasion to interpret the Genocide Convention.

The 2007 ICJ decision in the Case Concerning Application of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro) had applied a relatively narrow and strict construction of the definition of the crime of genocide. Under that interpretation, the Court found that genocide had not been committed in the 1992-1995 Serbia-Bosnia war, with the exception of the Srebrenica massacre of mid-July 1995. But the Court did not find Serbia responsible for the genocide – genocide was committed but there was no ge'nocidaire as it were.

The 2007 ICJ decision came in for harsh criticism in 2008 from two articles appearing in the Fordham International Law Journal. In Adjudicating Genocide: Is the International Court of Justice Capable of Judging State Criminal Responsibility? Professor Dermot Groome complained that the ICJ's methodology, as set out in its Statute, was designed to resolve interstate disputes and remains ill suited to explore issues of individual criminal culpability – which it was called on to do in the Bosnia v. Serbia case. In Proving State Responsibility for Genocide: The ICJ in Bosnia v. Serbia and the International Commission of Inquiry for Darfur, Ademola Abass, criticized the decision on the grounds that the ICJ used improper and inconsistent methodologies to determine that Serbia was not responsible for genocide (Ademola further faulted the International Commission of Inquiry for Darfur for similar reasons regarding its conclusion that Sudan was not committing genocide in Darfur).

Domestic Jurisdictions

There were also important genocide legal developments in domestic jurisdictions. Staying within the former Yugoslavia, the Bosnian War Crimes Chamber issued its first genocide verdict in July 2008. Brano Dzinic, a special police force officer of the 2nd Special Police Sekovici Squad of the Republika Srpska, was convicted of genocide related to his unit's capturing Bosnian men trying to flee the Srebrenica massacres and then participating in the murder of the Bosnians himself.

In Rwanda, conventional courts were still trying so-called "Category I" genocide cases (those in which the defendant exercised a leadership role or engaged in particularly egregious conduct) but in 2008 the government shifted thousands of the most serious genocide cases from conventional courts to community-based gacaca courts. Created in 2001, gacaca courts are semi-traditional tribunals seeking to combine restorative and punitive justice in streamlined procedures meant to handle the millions of backlogged 1994 genocide cases. Statistical information made available by the Rwandan government indicates that as of September 2008, 1,127,706 genocide cases had passed through gacaca courts and among those only 4,679 remained untried. Despite this impressive volume, Human Rights Watch has reported gacaca problems related to faulty procedure, judicial corruption, and false accusations. And in an article appearing in the Creighton Law Review, Bare Justice: A Feminist Theory of Justice and Its Potential Application to Crimes of Sexual Violence in Post-Genocide Rwanda, Megan Carpenter found that a lack of sensitivity to cultural context makes gacaca courts an inappropriate forum for crimes of sexual violence and may result in an overall justice deficit for female victims.

In Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam, the country's former military dictator responsible for the infamous "Red Terror" massacres in the 1970s, was sentenced to death on genocide charges by the Ethiopian Supreme Court. The same sentence was issued to seventeen former officials of his government. The decision overturned sentences of life in prison. In December 2006, a federal high court had convicted Mengistu and his codefendants in absentia on 211 counts of genocide, homicide, illegal imprisonment and illegal property seizure. The genocide charges stem from the Red Terror in which more than a million people were tortured and killed by the brutal Marxist regime (also known as the "Derg"). Since he was removed from power in 1991, Mengistu has lived in comfortable exile as the guest of Zimbabwe's dictator Robert Mugabe.

Focusing on the Middle East, the death sentence of the infamous "Chemical Ali" (Ali Hassan al-Majid), the cousin of Saddam Hussein and former Iraqi Interior Minister, was approved by the Iraqi presidential council in February 2008. Al-Majid was convicted of genocide in 2007 for his leadership role in the "al-Anfal campaign," which used chemical weapons and other inhumane methods to slaughter thousands of Iraqi Kurds in the 1980s. (The execution has not been carried out of yet because the executions of two of his codefendants have not been approved.)

Genocide was also the subject of numerous extradition requests during 2008. In June, an English Magistrate's court ordered four men accused of taking part in the Rwandan genocide to be extradited to Rwanda to face charges (although that order was overturned by a higher court in 2009). But a French appeals court refused to extradite two Rwandan genocide suspects to their homeland, as did a German court. More than a dozen Rwandan ge'nocidaire extradition requests were pending in other European countries in 2008, including Finland, Norway, Italy, and the Netherlands.

Domestic courts in 2008 also dealt with genocide charges contemplated for trial in their own countries. A Spanish judge in February issued arrest warrants on genocide charges for 40 Rwandan Defense Force officers (former RPF) for offenses committed against Rwandan and Congolese citizens in retaliation for the 1994 genocide. The prosecution is based on universal jurisdiction, a doctrine which permits national courts to prosecute atrocity crimes committed outside its borders by anyone (including non-nationals).

In May, the attempt of federal prosecutors and private parties civiles in Belgium to have Rwandan atrocity suspect Ephrem Nkezabera prosecuted for genocide failed when the Brussels "Chambre des mises en accusation" decided to send the case to the Cour d'Assises on war crimes charges only. The Chamber based its decision on the principle of non-retroactivity of substantive criminal law.

In August 2008, Rwanda published a report charging French involvement in the genocide and announced possible prosecution of French citizens. But the previous month, a Dutch court dismissed that portion of a civil lawsuit filed by thousands of plaintiffs against the UN based on Dutch UN peacekeepers' failure to protect their relatives in the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. The Hague District Court held that the U.N.’s immunity means that it cannot be held liable in any country’s national court.

Finally, the U.S. House of Representatives attempted to pass Resolution 106, which would have declared as a genocide the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey during World War I. But because it would have placed considerable strain on U.S.-Turkish relations, as well as Turkish-Armenian relations, the Resolution sadly went down to defeat. Nevertheless, the creation of an interagency "Atrocities Prevention Committee," to analyze and respond to possible genocide threats, was proposed by President-elect Barack Obama. It remains to be seen, however, whether this proposal will come to fruition in 2009.

Genocide Allegations and Realities

2008 also reminded the world that the legal concept of "genocide" can be politicized, devalued or simply misapplied. In September, Bolivian president Evo Morales announced the arrest of a provincial governor and political opponent on "genocide" charges in connection with the deaths of several Morales supporters during political demonstrations the previous week. Similarly, Russia claimed that Georgia committed genocide based on its August 2008 attacks in South Ossetia against pro-Russian rebel factions. Research conducted by Human Rights Watch indicates that while Georgian forces may have violated international humanitarian law, they clearly did not commit the crime of genocide. And in Kenya, in the wake of post-election violence, President Mwai Kibaki accused opposition leader Raila Odinga’s party of “unleashing genocide.” Although the violence, which left more than 1,300 people dead and 350,000 displaced, could be perceived as ethnic and systematic in nature, it did not appear to involve the intent to eliminate (in whole or in part) an ethnic group so it likely fails to rise to the level of genocide.

Similarly, large-scale violence and death in Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo prompted allegations of genocide in 2008. But neither the murderous political oppression of Robert Mugabe nor the brutal territorial/resource battles among rebel groups and the government in eastern Congo seemingly implicates an intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.

In the meantime, the actual crime of genocide was still being perpetrated in 2008. The genocide in Darfur, in its sixth excruciating year, continued to result in the murder and displacement of thousands of non-Arab Darfuris by the Sudanese government and Arab Janjaweed militia. In fact, UN officials reported that between 2006 and 2008, 300,000 people died owing to the violence in Darfur and 2.5 million have been displaced. To those who would argue that the mass killing in Darfur is not genocide (because the Sudanese government lacks the necessary special intent), Jennifer Trahan in her 2008 article Why the Killing in Darfur is Genocide (Fordham International Law Journal), points to, inter alia, the enormous numbers of non-Arabs murdered, consistent patterns of discriminatory killing, ethnically charged utterances by the perpetrators during the crimes, and destruction of cultural property as evidence of the requisite genocidal intent.

And certain legal experts believe that in 2008 the crime of incitement to genocide was committed by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad against the people of Israel. They point out that, starting in 2005, when he called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," and continuing to the present, Ahmadinejad has regularly urged and prophesied the elimination of the Israeli people and has variously referred to them as animals, barbarians and mass murderers. 2008 was no different. In February, for example, he told the French newspaper Le Monde that “these false people, these fabricated people [the Israeli people] cannot continue to exist . . ." As Israel celebrated its sixtieth anniversary he railed that the festivities were an attempt to forestall its "annihilation." And at one point he described Israeli Jews to supporters at a rally as a “filthy bacteria,” a “wild beast,” and a “scarecrow.”

Writings on Genocide

In my 2008 article From Incitement to Indictment? Prosecuting Iran's President for Advocating Israel's Destruction and Piecing Together Incitement Law's Emerging Analytical Framework (Northwestern University's Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology), relying on principles announced in the ICTR incitement prosecutions, I argued that Ahmadinejad's statements, anchored as they are to other direct calls for the destruction of Israel and part of an entire body of inflammatory statements made in the context of nuclear weapons development, constitute the crime of direct and public incitement to commit genocide. However, given incitement law’s track record to date, with prosecutions occurring only post-genocide, I conceded that the odds of the crime being prosecuted (through a Security Council referral to the ICC) are long. As a result, I proposed that incitement law shift its focus from punishment to deterrence and that euphemisms employed to disguise incitement, such as “predictions” of destruction, when anchored to direct calls for violence, should be considered acts of direct incitement.

Other significant genocide incitement scholarship in 2008 included an outstanding article by Susan Benesch disagreeing with my Ahmadinejad article legal conclusions. In Vile Crime or Inalienable Right: Defining Incitement to Genocide (Virginia Journal of International Law), Benesch claimed that the Rwandan cases have resulted in an ill-defined offense and called for a new six-prong incitement test that would inquire, inter alia, whether the speaker has authority or influence over the audience and whether the audience has the capacity to commit genocide. But Audrey Golden's Wake Forest Law Review comment, Monkey Read, Monkey Do: Why the First Amendment Should Not Protect the Printed Speech of an International Genocide Inciter, contended that the American First Amendment, which she believes likely prevents any United States domestic prosecution of incitement, should be interpreted so as not to apply to members of a totalitarian society sponsoring genocide.

In contrast to the United States, in countries such as Canada and France, free speech values are tempered by laws that prevent promotion of hatred (including Holocaust denial). Two significant articles appearing in the Spring 2008 Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution addressed this issue (the product of a genocide denial symposium). In their articles A Constitutional “Right” to Deny and Promote Genocide? Preempting the Usurpation of Human Rights Discourse towards Incitement from a Canadian Perspective and Taking Denial Seriously: Genocide Denial and Freedom of Speech in the French Law, Karen Eltis and Sevane Garibian cited to Canadian and French law in arguing for restrictions on free speech in the case of at least certain types of genocide denial, based, among other things, on the responsibilities that accompany freedom of speech and the damage to democracy of genocide denial.

As part of the same Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology issue in which my Ahmadinejad article appeared (a symposium issue on international criminal law), Daniel Greenfield argued in The Crime of Complicity in Genocide: How the International Criminal Tribunals for Rwanda and Yugoslavia Got It Wrong, and Why It Matters that complicity in genocide (as distinct from “aiding and abetting” genocide) should be a stand-alone crime and this distinction would better serve the purpose of the Genocide Convention and the ad hoc tribunals. Greenfield's conclusion was echoed by Grant Dawson and Rachel Boynton in their Harvard Human Rights Journal article Reconciling Complicity in Genocide and Aiding and Abetting Genocide in the Jurisprudence of the United Nations Ad Hoc Tribunals.

In the meantime, Case Western Reserve University of Law organized a symposium titled "To Prevent and To Punish: A Conference Commemorating the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Genocide Convention," that yielded much excellent scholarship (which appeared in the school's Journal of International Law). Nuremberg prosecutors Henry King, Benjamin Ferencz and Whitney Harris, along with genocide expert William Schabas, contributed pieces on the development of the concept of genocide and the history of the Genocide Convention. Paul Williams, Meghan Stewart, and Juan Mendez wrote about prevention through humanitarian intervention, finding the need to implement early warning and action but noting, in light of various geopolitical forces, the failure to develop legal authority for such intervention. Related to this, Michael Kelly described the legal significance and intervention obligations of labeling a situation “genocide.” Christine Chung connected this topic to the ICC by pointing out that while the Court has fulfilled certain of its Genocide Convention obligations, it can do more to strengthen the political will of states to intervene.

Specific examples of genocide were also considered at the Case Western symposium. Robert Petit, Stuart Ford and Neha Jain evaluated whether religious genocide had occurred with respect to the situations in Tibet, Iraq and Gujarat, but found that these did not meet genocide's legal elements. Other scholars explored genocide within the context of specific court cases. John Quigley discussed the ICJ's Bosnia v. Yugoslavia decision, criticizing the World Court for failing to rely on ITCY precedent in determining whether Serbia was liable for the crime. Ra’id Juhi al-Saedi offered his unique insights as the former Chief Investigative Judge for the Iraqi High Tribunal on the investigative techniques used in that forum. And Mikhail Wladimiroff described the obstacles he had to overcome (including superior prosecution resources) as defense counsel in cases before the ICTY (Tadic) and ICTR (Musema).

American Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues Clint Williamson focused on the United States in echoing the concerns of the Case Western symposium participants regarding prevention and punishment of genocide. In U.S. Efforts to Combat Genocide and War Crimes (Tulane Journal of International and Comparative Law), Ambassador Williamson identified four areas in which the U.S. government needs to improve: monitoring potential atrocities, implementing preventative measures, responding immediately to ongoing atrocities, and planning for potential accountability mechanisms.

As if responding to this, the "Genocide Prevention Task Force," sponsored by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, the U.S. Institute for Peace, and the American Academy of Diplomacy, and co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and William Cohen, released its final report on December 8, 2008 – Preventing Genocide: A Blueprint for U.S. Policymakers. It argued that genocide is preventable (but requires leadership and political will) and made the case for why it threatens core American values and national interests. The report provided 34 recommendations, starting with the need for high-level attention, standing institutional mechanisms, and strong international partnerships to respond to potential genocidal situations when they arise. It laid out a comprehensive approach, recommending improved early warning mechanisms, early action to prevent crises, timely diplomatic responses to emerging crises, greater preparedness to employ military options, and action to strengthen global norms and institutions.

2008 also saw the publication of some important books on genocide. New editions of contemporary classics were released. Eminent French Africanist Ge'rard Prunier's Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide (Cornell University Press, Third Edition) demonstrated that for nearly all of its known history, Darfur had not been a binary society of African versus Arab. But events and Sudanese government policies in the 1980s changed this and a racial polarity was constructed where none had previously existed. This eventually led to tragic results in 2003 when the Sudanese government used its provincial "Arab" allies (now dubbed the "Janjaweed") to commit genocide against the "African" population.

Yale's Ben Kiernan, the leading authority on modern Cambodia, published the third edition of his work The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79 (Yale University Press), widely regarded as the definitive history of the Khmer Rouge's "Killing Fields."

Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts edited by Samuel Totten and William Parsons (Routledge, Third Edition), provided accounts from the leading experts on genocides throughout history, from the Herero and Armenian cases in the early twentieth century to Rwanda and Darfur at the end of last century and the beginning of this one. Similarly, 2008 saw the release of the third edition of Is the Holocaust Unique: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide edited by Alan S. Rosenbaum (Westview Press). This volume also presented essays from distinguished scholars analyzing various instances of mass atrocity (such as the mass murder of Gypsies, Armenians, Ukrainians and Native Americans) and juxtaposing them with the Holocaust.

And a new book with an overview of genocide studies appeared for the first time in 2008. Dan Stone's The Historiography of Genocide (Palgrave Macmillan) is a guide to the development of genocide studies and a valuable assessment of the historical literature pertaining to genocides.

Ge'rard Prunier also put out a new work in 2008, Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Oxford University Press), which chronicled the 1996–2002 war in the Democratic Republic of Congo and its relationship with the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. A companion volume pertaining to the Rwandan genocide, Scott Straus's The Order of Genocide: Race, Power, and War in Rwanda (Cornell University Press) concludes that conventional wisdom about the causes and course of the Rwandan genocide focuses largely on the actions of the ruling elite but gives short shrift to how and why elite decisions were transformed into widespread exterminatory violence. Straus remedies this deficit by focusing on the local organization of the massacres and profiles the perpetrators themselves in considering what compelled them to commit such unspeakable acts.

Two new Darfur genocide tomes were also published in 2008: Darfur and the Crime of Genocide (Cambridge University Press) by John Hagan & Wenona Rymond-Richmond (using eyewitness reports to document and analyze the ongoing atrocities and providing analysis regarding the international community's ineffectual response) and The Scramble for Africa: Darfur Intervention and the USA (Black Rose Books) by Kevin Funk & Steven Fake (assessing the conflict and how it fits into the foreign policy of the United States).

Books came out in 2008 about less publicized genocides as well. Quiet Genocide: Guatemala 1981-1983 (Transaction Publishers), by Etelle Higonnet, reviewed the legal and historical case that genocide occurred in Guatemala in the early 1980s. In Colonial Genocide and Reparations Claims in the 21st Century: The Socio-Legal Context of Claims Under International Law by the Herero Against Germany for Genocide in Namibia, 1904-1908 (Praeger Security International), Jeremy Sarkin described the 1904-08 massacre of the Herero in South West Africa, often cited as the first genocide of the twentieth century, and explored legal questions concerning reparations to the victims' descendants.

Finally, the man who first conceived of the legal concept of genocide and brought about its international codification, Raphael Lemkin, was featured in a 2008 biography: Raphael Lemkin and the Struggle for the Genocide Convention (Palgrave Macmillan). This is the first complete life of the Genocide Convention's prime mover based on his own papers. And a new edition of Lemkin's classic work Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd.) was also released in 2008. This is the book that coined the term "genocide" and defined it as a subject of international law. Its new edition begins with an excellent introduction by genocide scholar William Schabas that helps contextualize this watershed work.

Conclusion

As this century's first decade draws to a close, genocide, the scourge of the previous century, is regrettably alive and well. Is this a temporary carry-over or will the balance of these hundred years be equally bloody? Our genocide snapshot of 2008 does not provide a definitive answer.

There are grounds for guarded optimism. The apprehension and punishment of certain ge'nocidaires and resolutions, reports and scholarly reminders of the world's revulsion, weariness and resolve to eradicate genocide suggest we may be headed in the right direction.

But how do we square this with the murderous brutality inflicted on innocent civilians in Darfur? How do we reconcile the good omens with Iran's repeated calls for Israel's destruction? And what about the mass violence and death, in places such as Congo and Zimbabwe, that technically fails to qualify as genocide but plagues and haunts us nonetheless? Given the realities, as we gaze into the future, it might seem overwhelming to promise that genocide will never happen again. But if each of us makes a small contribution every day, the twenty-first century certainly has the capacity to eliminate this blight on humanity. Let us hope we make more progress in 2009-2010.

For her invaluable assistance related to this article, Professor Gordon would like to thank his terrific Research Assistant, Amber Hildebrandt.

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Professor Gregory S. Gordon is Director of the University of North Dakota (UND) Center for Human Rights & Genocide Studies and teaches at the UND School of Law. He earned his B.A. (summa cum laude) and J.D. at the University of California at Berkeley. Professor Gordon served with the ICTR Office of the Prosecutor, where he worked on the landmark "media" cases, the first international post-Nuremberg prosecutions of radio and print media executives for incitement to genocide. He subsequently served as a white-collar criminal prosecutor with the U.S. Department of Justice, Tax Division, a Special Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, a Liaison to the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, and as a Senior Trial Attorney with the Criminal Division's Office of Special Investigations, where he helped investigate and prosecute Nazi war criminals and modern human rights violators (focusing on Africa). During his time at DOJ, he was detailed to Sierra Leone to conduct a post-civil war justice assessment for DOJ's Office of Overseas Prosecutorial Development, Assistance, and Training. Professor Gordon has been featured on C-SPAN, Voice of America, NPR, BBC and Radio France Internationale as an expert on atrocity crimes and has presented on that subject at the U.S. Army J.A.G. School, the Harry S. Truman Presidential Museum and Library and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In addition to contributing to the Holocaust Museum's influential "Voices on Antisemitism" podcast series, he has had the honor of speaking to members of both the British and Canadian Parliaments and sharing the dais with former U.N. Ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Andrew Young. His scholarship, which has been published in leading international journals such as the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law and the Virginia Journal of International Law, has focused on both the substantive and procedural aspects of preventing and punishing genocide and other atrocity crimes.

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