Ewelina Ochab is a senior programme lawyer with the IBA’s Human Rights Institute and cofounder of the Coalition for Genocide Response. She authored the initiative and proposal to establish what became the UN International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief (22 August).
The following post is based on her remarks at the ICLRS 30th Annual International Law and Religion Symposium, 2 October 2023. It was published as part of the Talk About blog feature “Marking the 10th Anniversary of the Yazidi Genocide.”
Genocide does not just happen. It requires preparation. It requires planning. It requires steps to deny the human dignity of every individual before it translates into the denial of rights–turned–persecution and annihilation of the whole community.
Soldiers and armies do not just go to slaughter other people—and not with some of the most horrific atrocities we have seen in recent years. Before this is humanly and inhumanly possible, one has to deny the human dignity of every individual, present them as vermin, animals, less than human, to enable the atrocities. We have seen this in the case of the Holocaust. We have seen this in the case of the Rwandan genocide. We have seen this in the case of the Bosnian genocide. And we have seen this across all contemporary cases of genocide, including the Yazidi genocide launched by ISIS on 3 August 2014, a genocide that is ongoing even now, with more than 2600 Yazidi women and children still missing.
Admittedly, space exists between the denial of human dignity and genocide, but observers have found a very clear link across genocides, across the world, across decades: One cannot bring about genocide without the denial of human dignity of every person belonging to the targeted group. Once their human dignity is denied and they are no longer seen as humans, atrocity crimes will follow.
I raised this issue when I spoke at the ICLRS Annual International Law and Religion Symposium back in 2018, following some of the worst atrocities we had witnessed to date, as perpetrated against the Yazidis in Iraq, against the Rohingya in Myanmar, and against Christians in Nigeria. But it did not stop there.
Shortly thereafter, in late 2018, we started hearing about horrific atrocities against the Uyghurs in China. Since then, we have heard of atrocities committed against the Tigrayans in Ethiopia in 2020 and against the Hazara in Afghanistan, after the Taliban took over in August 2021; atrocities committed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022; and a new wave of atrocities in Darfur and in Nagorno-Karabah in 2023. In all these atrocities, which are ongoing, the perpetrators deny the very human dignity of every individual and translate that denial into targeted atrocities against the communities.
Sometimes, as we talk about atrocities perpetrated against whole communities, en masse, we forget about the individual and how the atrocities affect them. The focus on human dignity can help us balance our awareness of both macro and micro effects and ensure we do not forget the individual suffering among the mass atrocities, even if, as in the case of genocide, the crime is indeed against the community.
Similarly, as we work on human rights, we must always ask ourselves about the impact on the human dignity of the individuals involved. There can be no success of the project of human rights if it is detached from the focus on human dignity or if it loses track of the impact on human dignity.
In 2018, as the ICLRS and an organizing committee were working on the Punta del Este Declaration on Human Dignity for Everyone Everywhere, we were approaching the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 70th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Six years later, the situation globally is not improving—quite to the contrary.
As the 75th anniversary of both documents approached in 2023, ICLRS Director Brett Scharffs, former European Commission Special Envoy Ján Figeľ, Mark Hill KC, and I began discussing how to revive the focus on human dignity with proactive approaches. The result has been conferences and initiatives focused on bringing recognition and protection of human dignity to the fore, at an international level. One of those initiatives is a proposal that the United Nations designate a UN Human Dignity Day, to serve as a counterpart to its Human Rights Day and to sensitize us to considerations around human dignity and the impact of our actions or inactions on human dignity.
In relation to atrocity crimes, most of the work done is reactive rather than proactive. We respond to atrocities as they are perpetrated (and once individuals are stripped of their human dignity, which in turn permits the atrocities). This is true whether we talk about international bodies or state responses. We act because bodies were seen on the street, not because we saw propaganda that targeted the human dignity of individuals and that might precipitate mass atrocities. We act because millions of people were being displaced, not because they were denied due citizenship and were persecuted as a result. However, this is not the way forward.
We must invest more in proactive approaches.
Proactive approaches are rare. However, proactive approaches are the only way to prevent atrocities and stop the suffering of people around the world. In relation to atrocity crimes, such proactive approaches would mean having nationalmechanisms for monitoring early warning signs and risk factors and crafting strategies for responding to such signs and risk factors.
In relation to human dignity, such proactive approaches would mean, among others, designating time to focus on human dignity and how our actions or inactions affect it. This is how the project to establish a UN Human Dignity Day was born. The United Nations is often too focused on reactive responses to human rights violations and pays too little attention to proactive approaches. What is needed is a day in the year when we focus on human dignity, every year, without waiting for something bad to happen.
While some critics may argue that we do not need another UN-designated day, most of those speak from a place of safety, a place of privilege. Many people do not have this privilege—the privilege of safety, the privilege of having human rights guaranteed and respected—markers of the recognition and protection of human dignity that should not be a privilege of a few but a guarantee for all.