Genocide Since the Holocaust

The post-war international order, established between 1945 and 1948, was substantially built on the conviction that the Holocaust must not be allowed to recur. The Genocide Convention of 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950, and the institutional infrastructure of the United Nations human rights system together constitute the legal and institutional framework that the Holocaust produced. The framework has not prevented the recurrence of genocide. The principal cases of genocide that have occurred since 1945 are addressed on this page: Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica, the Tutsi in Rwanda, the people of Darfur, the Yazidis in Iraq, and the Rohingya in Myanmar. Other cases of mass atrocity have occurred that are sometimes treated as genocide and sometimes as crimes against humanity; the legal distinction matters and is addressed below.

Cambodia, 1975 to 1979

The Cambodian genocide was conducted by the Khmer Rouge regime under Pol Pot between April 1975 and January 1979. The regime evacuated the cities, abolished money and private property, and pursued a policy of agricultural revolution that produced mass starvation, forced labour and systematic killing. Approximately 1.5 to 2 million people were killed out of a pre-war population of around 7.8 million. The targeted populations included ethnic minorities (Vietnamese, Chinese, Cham Muslims), religious minorities (Buddhist monks, Christians), educated professionals, members of the previous regime, and substantial parts of the wider Cambodian population identified as politically suspect. The killing was carried out at the Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, the Choeung Ek killing field outside the capital, and around 200 other documented killing sites. The regime was overthrown by Vietnamese intervention in January 1979. The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, established in 2003 with United Nations support, prosecuted the surviving senior leaders; three were convicted of genocide between 2014 and 2018.

Bosnia, 1992 to 1995

The Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 was the largest single act of mass killing in Europe since the Second World War. Around 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić over the course of around two weeks after the fall of the United Nations safe area at Srebrenica. The killings were conducted with substantial logistical organisation: the men and boys were separated from women and children, transported to multiple killing sites, executed by firing squad and buried in mass graves. The graves were subsequently disturbed and the remains scattered to multiple secondary sites in an effort to obstruct identification, which has substantially delayed the recovery and identification of the dead.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established by United Nations Security Council Resolution 827 in 1993, prosecuted the senior figures responsible. Radislav Krstić was convicted in 2001 of aiding and abetting genocide; Slobodan Milošević died in custody in 2006 before judgment; Ratko Mladić was convicted of genocide and other charges in 2017 and sentenced to life imprisonment; Radovan Karadžić was convicted in 2016 and sentenced to forty years. The International Court of Justice ruled in 2007 that the events at Srebrenica constituted genocide.

Rwanda, 1994

The Rwandan genocide of April to July 1994 was the fastest documented mass killing of the twentieth century. Approximately 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu were killed in approximately 100 days, principally by Hutu militia (the Interahamwe) and ordinary Hutu civilians using machetes and other agricultural tools. The killing was triggered by the assassination of Hutu President Habyarimana on 6 April 1994 but was substantially planned in advance: lists of Tutsi to be killed had been prepared, the Interahamwe had been trained and armed, the radio station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines had been broadcasting incitement for months. The Rwandan Patriotic Front, the Tutsi-led rebel force, ended the genocide in July 1994 by capturing Kigali.

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, established by the United Nations in November 1994, prosecuted the senior figures and produced the first convictions for genocide by an international court (Jean-Paul Akayesu, 1998). The Rwandan domestic gacaca courts, modified versions of traditional community courts, processed approximately 1.2 million cases of lower-level perpetrators between 2002 and 2012. The Kigali Genocide Memorial, established in 2004 by the Aegis Trust, is the principal physical commemoration.

Darfur, 2003 onwards

The Darfur conflict, which began in 2003, produced a campaign by Sudanese government forces and allied Janjaweed militia against the non-Arab Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa populations of western Sudan. The killings, displacement and systematic sexual violence have been described as genocide by the United States government (declared in 2004) and by some other governments and bodies; the United Nations Commission of Inquiry concluded in 2005 that the violence constituted crimes against humanity but not genocide. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in 2009 on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, with genocide charges added in 2010. The death toll is estimated at around 200,000 to 400,000, with around 2.5 million people displaced. The conflict has continued, with periods of intensification and partial pause, into the 2020s.

Iraq, 2014 onwards: the Yazidis

The Islamic State campaign against the Yazidi population of northern Iraq, which began in August 2014 with the seizure of Sinjar, has been recognised as genocide by the United Nations Human Rights Council, the European Parliament, the United Kingdom, the United States and many other bodies. Around 5,000 Yazidi men were killed in the initial weeks; thousands of women and girls were enslaved, raped and trafficked; approximately 350,000 Yazidis were displaced. The German criminal courts have prosecuted returning Islamic State fighters under universal jurisdiction since 2018; the first conviction for genocide of a Yazidi woman was secured in 2021.

Myanmar, 2017 onwards: the Rohingya

The Myanmar military’s campaign against the Rohingya Muslim population of Rakhine State, which intensified in August 2017, produced the displacement of around 740,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, with documented killings, sexual violence and the destruction of villages. The United Nations Human Rights Council fact-finding mission concluded in 2018 that the campaign showed “genocidal intent”. The International Court of Justice has been hearing a case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar under the Genocide Convention since 2019; the Court ruled in 2020 that Myanmar must take provisional measures to prevent further violence.

The pattern

The post-1945 international framework has produced substantial legal and institutional response to genocide that did not exist before 1948. The framework has not, however, prevented the recurrence of mass atrocity. The pattern has consistently been that the international community recognises the events as they unfold, debates whether they constitute genocide under the legal definition, and acts (or fails to act) on a delay that has often allowed the killing to be substantially complete by the time intervention occurs. The historians and legal scholars who have written on this question (Samantha Power, William Schabas, Philippe Sands among others) have been clear that the gap between the framework and its implementation is the central continuing weakness of the post-Holocaust international order.

See also

Sources

  • Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide, Basic Books, 2002
  • William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, Cambridge University Press, 2nd edition 2009
  • Philippe Sands, East West Street: On the Origins of “Genocide” and “Crimes against Humanity”, Knopf, 2016
  • Ben Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime: Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge 1975-79, Yale University Press, 1996
  • Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda, Picador, 1998
  • Eric Stover and Gilles Peress, The Graves: Srebrenica and Vukovar, Scalo, 1998
  • UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, https://www.icty.org
  • UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, https://unictr.irmct.org
  • International Criminal Court, https://www.icc-cpi.int