On Wednesday, Feb. 8, in the University of Connecticut’s Dodd Center, Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs hosted a panel reflecting on the legacy of the United Nations Genocide Convention. Titled “75 Years of the Genocide Convention: A Promise Unfulfilled,” panelists tackled the question of whether the Genocide Convention’s promise to end the practice and hold its perpetrators accountable had been fulfilled.
Three experts in human rights and genocide studies were present on the panel, including Alice Nderitu, a U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Richard Wilson, a law and anthropology professor at UConn and a member of the Hate Crimes Advisory Council of Connecticut, and the Director of Dodd Human Rights Impact Programs and the force behind the event’s organization, James Waller.
The event was moderated by Sara Silverstein, an Assistant Professor in UConn’s Department of History and faculty member at the Gladstein Family Human Rights Institute.
Panelists expressed optimism about the legacy of the U.N. Genocide Convention and its continued role in genocide prevention worldwide.
“The things we encourage in genocide prevention: good governance, equitable distribution of resources, these are value-added things,” said Waller, noting that regardless of the effectiveness of these specific measures in preventing violence, they remain valuable measures in ensuring stability.
“[There have been] case studies where countries on the verge of mass violence or genocide have been pulled back from the edge of that cliff.”
Waller places the concept of “process” at the heart of genocide prevention strategies. Understanding and locating signs of the processes that lead to genocide allows for preventative measures to be taken early that can preemptively halt violence.
“The dehumanization, the restriction on civil rights, the restrictions on economic rights that happen in the beginning,” said Waller, “if we see all of those things through the lens of process, those are opportunities for us to step in and prevent something that can be considered genocidal.”
Signs of a pre-genocidal process are not hard to spot either, the panelists noted, and those amid one themselves are acutely aware of the disturbances around them.
“After the violence in Kenya, when we were going around interviewing people with the Human Rights Commission, they knew that violence was coming, but they could not tell when,” Nderitu recalled, “People can feel where there’s a disturbance… that’s the power of response.”
“[The genocides in] Rwanda and Bosnia were not hard to predict,” Wilson noted, “In Bosnia, the genocide in Srebrenica, the killing of 7,000 Muslim men came after… massive ethnic atrocities and religious-based violence.”
Following an active outbreak of violence, military intervention for humanitarian purposes is key to genocide prevention, Wilson argued, but it requires the buy-in of great powers. Roméo Dallaire, force commander of the Rwandan peacekeepers, estimated it would take only 5,000 troops from an international coalition to prevent the Rwandan Genocide, troops that then-U.S. President Bill Clinton was not willing to commit.
Panelists touched upon hate speech and harmful rhetoric as important factors in the lead-up to genocide, primarily in their capacity to dehumanize the “other” and justify extreme violence.
“Hate speech provides the momentum for stereotypes to become prejudices,” Nderitu said, “The mindset of ‘this person is not a human being, he is a cockroach’… we saw the intense education… we saw husbands killing wives.”
After the fact, Wilson noted, hate speech and genocide denial become a tool of political projects aiming to downplay the actions and revive the legacy of the genocidal faction.
“In Guatemala, General Ríos Montt was convicted for genocide,” said Wilson, “but there was a full-scale genocide denial campaign for the far-right and the military, continuing to this day.”
“I see genocide denial not only about denying the past but about building a very nasty, violent political project in the present.”
Amid an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Israel, submitted by the South African government, panelists addressed questions related to the definitions of genocide and concerns about the politicization of the term.
“Debates over genocide definitions have always been here since the beginning,” Nderitu said, “I think it’s healthy for this debate to continue.”
For an action to be considered genocide, clear intent and active plans of genocide from government or military authorities must be documented, intent Nderitu admits is “very difficult” to prove.
Wilson said he didn’t think the ICJ had evidence of specific intent in the case against Israel but encouraged the audience to read the report for themselves and make up their own minds.
“I think you’d be terribly discouraged by how the word has become weaponized, instrumentalized, politicalized,” said Waller, “We need to be careful with adhering to the legal definition of genocide, and if something is not genocide, that does not mean it’s fine. Genocide is not the only form of suffering, and it’s not the only form of the suffering of civilians.”
When Sudan was found not guilty of genocide during its 2003-05 War in Darfur, Waller recalls that there were celebrations on the streets of the capital despite the country being charged with a whole laundry list of other crimes.
“We’ve almost given genocide too much weight,” said Waller.