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Language plays a role in the genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar and continues to shape their experiences in displacement, yet their linguistic rights are rarely discussed in relation to their human rights and humanitarian concerns. International human rights standards offer important foundations for conceptualizing the "right to language" and identifying how linguistic rights can be violated both in situ and in displacement. The Rohingya case highlights how language policies are weaponized to oppress unwanted minorities; their outsider status is reinforced by the country's language education policy and they face additional rights challenges in displacement—including obstacles to effectively accessing humanitarian aid. Moving forward, norms associated with self-determination and language rights offer a conceptual foundation for shifting attitudes and altering negative perceptions of Rohingya identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary goal of this article is to analyze Belgium's universal jurisdiction law concerning humanitarian law violations and its relationship to global governance norms. When discussing the notion of universal jurisdiction, there are relatively few empirical situations that scholars can draw on to illuminate the debate. In general, there is a very theoretical orientation to the universal human rights debate. Belgium's 1993 universal jurisdiction law (expanded in 1999) brings a greater degree of empirical clarity to this debate. This law allowed Belgium to hear cases concerning violations of humanitarian law, including genocide and other crimes against humanity, which happened anywhere, without any connection to Belgium. In essence, this was an attempt at the protection of human rights on a universal basis and may be the way forward in the prevention of mass atrocities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International criminal tribunals established by the UN Security Council in the 1990s have been widely acclaimed as active participants in the modern system of dynamic criminal justice. One of their best known achievements is the prosecution of rape and sexual assaults. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) set an example for other tribunals to follow. By interpreting a variety of international laws, the community of international legal professionals has been able to shift the prevailing understanding of rape and sexual violence away from that of an 'unfortunate byproducts of war.' Not only has the epistemic community of legal professionals been able to end impunity for these crimes, but case-law of international tribunals has become a basis for subsequent trials at quasi-international tribunals. Decisions of the tribunals have been instrumental in drafting the Statute of the International Criminal Court and can be regarded as an example of the formation of new international norms by means of judicial decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our understanding of civilian casualties is not based solely on what is reported but also who reports these human rights abuses. Competing interests at the data collection stage have impeded the development of a more thorough understanding of civilian victimization during conflict. We find that current definitions of 'casualty' neglect nonphysical forms of victimization and that group-based definitions of 'civilian' can obscure the role of different individuals in conflict. We contend that the dominant definition of 'civilian casualty' should be expanded to include the full array of harm inflicted on individuals, including psychological harm and what we refer to as multiple casualties of conflict. Expanding our definition of civilian casualties to include different degrees and kinds of wartime victimization would improve both documentation and analysis. We propose several areas for improvement in terms of the documentation of civilian casualties as well as potential solutions to the problems we identify. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the design and teaching of "Genocide and Human Rights," an innovative, higher education course introduced in 2002 to provide training for a new generation of scholars and teachers. The course was developed and funded by a small non-profit organization, the Zoryan Institute, in Toronto, Canada. One purpose of the course is to teach about the Armenian genocide within a comparative genocide and human rights framework. Another goal is to fill a gap in the curriculum in response to increased student interest and research in genocide and human rights. The course serves as a valuable pedagogical model including its comparative framework, teaching by invited specialists, adjusting the curriculum to reflect student interest and new scholarship, and setting up and maintaining formal and informal scholarly networks. Features of critical pedagogy include classroom dialogue and critique and respect for differences in background and opinion. For example, interactions between students of Turkish and Armenian background provide an opportunity to explore issues of stereotypes, memory, denial and reconciliation. The course provides training for a new generation in research, publications, teaching and advocacy in fields related to genocide and human rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Retribution? Restitution? Reconciliation? 'Justice' comes in many forms as witnessed by the spike in war crimes tribunals, Truth & Reconciliation Commissions, hybrid tribunals and genocide trials. Which, if any form is appropriate should be influenced by the culture of the people affected. It took Cambodia over three decades to finally address the ghosts of its Khmer Rouge past with the creation of a hybrid Khmer Rouge Tribunal. But how meaningful is justice to the majority of survivors of the Khmer Rouge auto-genocide when only a handful of top officials are tried? Further, given the persistent abuse of political and economic rights in post-conflict Cambodia, we are skeptical that justice or reconciliation is presently possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is understandable that Iran’s December 2006 hosting of an international conference casting doubts on the historicity of the Holocaust would raise questions about treatments of the Shoah elsewhere in the Third World. In fact, indigenization the Holocaust—the manifold ways in which serious scholars, activists, and writers from Asia, Africa, and Latin America have come to incorporate the Holocaust in their intellectual work—has been positive overall. Within the framework of intellectual globalization, much of the Third World intelligentsia has come to include this most Western of human rights violations within the framework of their own cultures and histories. Although some of the indigenization of the Holocaust is political and instrumental, the deviant variant expressed at the Tehran Holocaust conference is atypical. Governmental respect for the memory of victims of genocide should be considered as an emerging human right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring genocide is an effort to treat the Holocaust within the framework of the history of ideas, specifically, how an event of enormous magnitude in terms of life and death issues as such embodied within a political system called National Socialism has an intellectual afterlife of some consequence. The article attempts to develop a four-stage post-Holocaust accounting of events that took place between 1933 and 1945. The first stage is biographical and autobiographical, followed by a second stage of ethnographies of survivors and victimizers. The third stage is dominated by historians and social scientific efforts to examine the “logic” of mass murder. The fourth and current stage is microanalysis, in which sharp and clear distinctions are made between differential treatment of victims in a variety of regions, states, nations, and even concentration camps. It should be understood that these four stages do not negate one another but co-exist in the lasting if uneasy effort to understand the Holocaust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1904 and 1908, German colonialists in German South West Africa (GSWA, known today as Namibia) committed genocide and other international crimes against two indigenous groups, the Herero and the Nama. From the late 1990s, the Herero have sought reparations from the German government and several German corporations for what occurred more than a hundred years ago. This article examines and contextualizes the issues concerning reparations for historical human rights claims. It describes and analyzes the events in GSWA at the time. It further explores whether international humanitarian law and international human rights law today permit reparatations to be obtained. The article therefore examines the origins of international criminal law, as well as international human rights and humanitarian law, to determine whether what occurred then were violations of the law already in force. Finally, the article examines and evaluates the Herero reparations cases, as well as the potential impact of the cases on the wider reparations movement that sees an increasing number of claims for events that occurred during colonial times. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses, within the context of analytical theory, some of the implications when rape is subsumed within the international crime of genocide and concludes that this type of enquiry is essential for creating a clearer framework to address and understand this violation. From the analysis undertaken, two critical questions become apparent: a) Does compatibility exist when rape is subsumed within the category of a group violation (genocide), if rape is constructed as a violation of an individual’s sexual autonomy? i b) Is the link between rape and genocide necessarily problematic within this notion of autonomy for the individual victim of rape? The process unfolds within an analytical theoretical approach that touches upon the current concept of human rights with its focus on the individual. Although the key element is the individual, the concept of human rights also creates a space, albeit limited and at times controversial, for the group. As such, this paper identifies some of the theoretical implications that emerge once rape is subsumed within the international crime of genocide, which is defined as a violation committed against particular groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More than sixty years after the seminal Nuremberg trials, different forms of transitional justice mechanisms abound around the world. Above all, the International Criminal Court started recently the hearings in its very first case. Reading the document containing the charges against Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, a militia leader accused of horrendous war crimes committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the question of why to punish perpetrators of atrocity crimes seems almost ludicrous. However, concerns that international prosecutions inadvertently prolong or even exacerbate conflicts do require a response. Most proponents of international criminal tribunals argue that prosecutions have a deterrent effect. This article reviews the deterrence argument, highlights its inherent complexities, and proposes a refined approach to meet both the realities of atrocity crimes and international prosecutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is argued that the stories of the survivors of the Srebrenica massacre in 1995 have been neglected by the memorial culture of Bosnia and by the various national reports that investigated how the massacre could have taken place. The author argues that a satisfactory history of the genocide has to include the voices of the survivors, in this case, the women. These are stories of trauma that are hard to listen to. She compares listening to them to the difficulty historians experience in listening to the stories of other genocides like the Shoah/Holocaust, they are stories based on silence about what cannot be told. The argument relies on the oral history literature on listening to trauma as personal and subjective accounts of survival. They are not straightforward referential narratives. One narrative, the narrative of Sabaheta who lost her child and husband, is central to the piece. She is one of the women interviewed by the author. The interview expresses sorrow about loss and rage about the international community; these stories are interwoven. The narrative also describes through the eyes of the victim what she felt happened. The author is Dutch, so is part of the one nation – more than any other – that is accused of “doing nothing.” It was the Dutch army that was supposed to protect the civilian population of Srebrenica. The government of The Netherlands has halted any negotiation on financial support for the research as “the project does not help to overcome trauma.” She argues that giving a voice to the victim is a necessary step toward closure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The crisis in Darfur (Sudan), which sparked in February 2003, only caught the United Nations' attention in Spring 2004. Questions emerged as to whether the conflict between the rebels and the government was simply insurgency warfare or, in fact, concealed a genocide carried out by the Arab, Muslim-led government against the Animist and Christian-African population. The issue became so divisive that the Security Council requested the creation of an investigation team, the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, which amongst other tasks had to examine whether genocide had taken place. This article analyzes the facts as well as the legal reasoning that guided the International Commission of Inquiry in drawing the conclusion that a governmental policy to commit genocide had not been formed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers why institutionalized commemoration of the Holocaust in the United Kingdom developed in the 1990s. It finds that the answer may have less to do with Jewish lobbies, or the influence of a "Holocaust Industry" and much more to do with state political objectives in the ebb of the Cold War. It argues that by repackaging and ritualizing the Holocaust into a "sacred" event in which Western states themselves were absolved of responsibility but also sought to come to Jewish rescue, it became an invaluable prop with which to promulgate Western values while at the same time acting as a moral alibi for interventions against anti-Western regimes. By focusing on the example of specifically British relations with Iraq, it is demonstrated that the moral high ground which Western states have attempted to milk from a Holocaust association is meretricious cant. Appalling and inhuman acts of genocide changed the course of history in the twentieth century. Millions of people perished or had their lives hideously damaged. This is an opportunity for us to recognize and act upon the lessons of the past. Our aim in the twenty-first century must be to work towards a tolerant and diverse society which is based upon the notions of universal dignity and equal rights and responsibilities for all citizens. The Holocaust Memorial Day is a symbol of this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the judicial systems of African countries have been increasingly ineffective, as demonstrated in cases as varied as the genocide in Rwanda and the land seizures in Zimbabwe. It is not only in cases involving individual rights and the state that the legal system is barely existent. The situation is just as bad, if not worse, in the administration of criminal justice. Whether it is the police, the prisons, or the courts, under both military and democratic governments, we are confronted with evidence of the impotence of the judiciary. This article examines the relationship between the executive and judicial branches of government in Nigeria. It also makes recommendations to improve the responsiveness and effectiveness of African judiciaries in checking executive power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the peoples who have inhabited, since time immemorial, the lands within the external borders of the U.S., remediation of genocide, land theft, and ethnocide is a pressing issue. However, monetary reparations would frustrate the reacquisition of the American Indian capacity to self-determine on ancestral lands. Because the injustice at the core of U.S. history is neither broadly acknowledged nor deeply understood, Part I provides historical foundation and sketches the factual predicate to the American Indian claim for redress. Part II presents and evaluates theories of justice with respect to this claim. Part III counters the shortcomings of these theories with a theory, Justice as Indigenism, that propounds a program of land restoration and legislative reform that will accord the full measure of relief to American Indians consistent with the requirements of justice for all peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article identifies and considers the existence of a manifest, though often overlooked, paradox contained within the doctrine of human rights. The principal justifications for human rights are based upon the identification of variously conceived human characteristics, or attributes of human agency. Nevertheless, human rights have all too often been required to protect some human beings from being seriously harmed by other human beings. The justification for human rights envisages a single, universal community of human beings, whereas the actual application of human rights typically testifies to the existence of two, very distinct communities: victims and perpetrators. The single greatest impetus for the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the desire to prevent the re-occurrence of genocide. The modern human rights regime emerged out of mountains of human corpses. One would like to claim that the impetus for human rights became less urgent after the horrors of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, genocide has persisted and gross violations of human rights remain a feature of the geo-political landscape. Our need for protective human rights remains as urgent today as it did fifty years ago. This article accounts for this paradox and answers the question: Why is it that the ultimate justification and application of the doctrine of human rights is frustrated by members of the very species upon which the doctrine is based? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addresses the issue of the ineffective character of the United Nations (UN), its lack of the political will to intervene, and the fact that genocide has been assigned a lower priority than traditional state interests. Fundamental legal obligation of states in the international system based upon the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Principle and the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide; Political obligation of the states specifically regarding genocide; Impact of genocide on economic activities.

Discusses the changing political and moral norms regarding genocide in international law by reporting on the construction and teaching of courses in genocide studies. Developments in the late 1960s and 1970s that transformed the curriculum on genocide and human rights curriculum, particularly in U.S. and European institutions of higher education; Contribution of the processes of re-evaluation and rewriting history to the development of genocide studies; Implication of the denial by the Turkish government that the 1915 genocide happened for the curriculum.

Discusses the issues central to the fields of genocide brought about by the Kosovo crisis and the subsequent U.S. led-North Atlantic Treaty Organization air war against Yugoslavia in 1991. Fundamental questions raised from the Kosovo conflict; Overview of the troubled history of Kosovo in the late 1990s; Political and economic condition in Kosovo following the death of its communist leader Josip Broz Tito.

Examine the dilemma that is created when member states who vote to prevent United Nation (UN) action to intervene in genocidal situations also criticize the UN for its inaction. Role of the UN as the body that is mandated, under its own Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide and under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter; Responsibilities of the U.N. Security Council under Chapter VII of the Convention; Countries where genocide has been perpetrated since the establishment of the U.N. in 1948; Cause of the inaction of the U.N. to prevent genocide during the period of the Cold War.

Assesses whether the slaughter and other atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, under the legal or other definitions, amounted to genocide. Cause of the mass violence in Bosnia according to some commentators and in particular decision-makers; Economic and political factors reflected on the genocidal violence of the Bosnian war; Economic problems experienced by Yugoslavia following the death of its leader Jose Tito in 1980.

Explains how the wording of the 1948 Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide is too restrictive to cover genocidal killings committed since its adoption. Main interest in characterizing acts as genocide from the standpoint of international law; Action taken by the Convention over dispute relating to the Convention's interpretation, application or fulfillment as specified under article IX; Expansion of the judicial interpretation of crimes against humanity and war crimes.

Focuses on the anthropology of genocide. Definition of genocide; Exclusion of cultural genocide from the Genocide Convention of 1948; Characterization of colonial indigenous genocide.

Offers an overview of the legal and human rights situation in East Timor. Denial of the right of the people of East Timor to self-determination; Description of agreement regarding the autonomy for East Timor within the unitary Republic of Indonesia; Action taken by the United Nations Security Council to violence in East Timor which posed a threat to peace and security; Details of the transitional administration towards independence.

Examines the origins of the concept of genocide. Definition of the term genocide in the 1950 Addenda Section of the book 'Webster's New International Dictionary. Second Edition'; Views of professor Raphael Lemkin on genocide; Excerpts on genocide from the book 'Totally Unofficial,' by Lemkin.

Presents a commentary on the crimes of communism theme of the book `The Black Book of Communism,' by Stephane Courtois. Impact made by the book in France; Factor that made the book controversial in Europe; Assertions made by Courtois about genocide; Aim of the book.

Focuses on the link between civil wars and genocide. Role of media in the framing of wars; Definition of genocide under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; Instances in which genocide emerged during a civil war.

Focuses on the ethnic conflict in East Timor, Indonesia. Allegations of genocide in East Timor; Historical background of the crisis; Definitions and concept of genocide.

Focuses on the killing of Hungarian prisoners of war in Soviet Union. Definitions and initial events of genocide; Statistics on missing people from Hungary; Classification of Soviet captives.

Examines the genocide committed by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Creation of an international tribunal to judge the crimes of the Khmer Rouge leadership; Details on the Cambodian Genocide Program; Loyalists of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

Focuses on the humanitarian crisis and human rights abysm in Sudan. Effects of the civil war on the people; History of slavery in the country; Definitions of genocide.

Addresses the issue of the denial of known genocides. Psychological motivations of denial; Effects of denials of known genocides on victim-survivors, their families and the society in general; Involvement of well-known academians in the denial of the Armenian Genocide.

Focuses on the efforts of the human rights community to uplift the globalization of human rights and international standards in the 21st century. Role of the United Nations in support of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which started enforcement in 1948; Significance of the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Rwanda and Bosnia to the human rights issue; Solidarity in the human rights community.

Introduces a series of article about the complex of events that have produced genocidal violence, the conceptual transformations that have taken place understanding of what constitutes genocide and the evolving response and reaction of the international community to the political and moral dilemmas presented to it by genocidal violence.

Focuses on the April 2000 issue of `Human Rights Review,' which features articles on the subject of genocide and civil war. State-sponsored mass killing in the 1990s; Major impediments to the prevention of genocide; Distinction between genocide and civil war.