Human Dignity and Proactive Approaches to the Prevention of Genocide

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.

(more…)

Continue Reading Human Dignity and Proactive Approaches to the Prevention of Genocide

On Spiritual Resources and Common Homes: A Look at Crimes in Ukraine in Conversation with Raphael Lemkin and Pope Francis

Greg Marcar is a research associate at the Centre for Theology and Public Issues at the University of Otago (New Zealand). He is also a co-editor, with Tania Pagotto and Joshua Roose, of Security, Religion, and the Rule of Law: International Perspectives (Routledge, forthcoming).

Genocide

Coined by the father of the 1950 Genocide Convention, Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900–59), the term genocide combines the Latin term cide (killing) with the Greek term genos (group). In deciding on this combination of terms, Lemkin rejected the suggestion that cide should be more straightforwardly combined with the Latin genus.[1] Lemkin’s rationale for this centered on his belief that the Greek term was broader in scope than its Latin equivalent,[2] as exemplified for Lemkin by the epistles of (Pseudo)Plato, identifying philosophers as a genos.[3] For Lemkin and his supporters at the UN, what makes a particular collectivity a human genos is its religious, philosophical, or cultural spirit. Consequently, genocide signifies an attempt not only to eradicate a genos’s physical existence but also to destroy its cultural-spiritual “life.”[4] Indeed, Lemkin elsewhere argues that “[t]he philosophy of the Genocide Convention” entails that human groups be protected “not only by reasons of human compassion but also to prevent draining the spiritual resources of [hu]mankind.”[5] Although not always understood as such, the concept of genocide expounded by Lemkin was inextricably connected to human spirit.

(more…)

Continue Reading On Spiritual Resources and Common Homes: A Look at Crimes in Ukraine in Conversation with Raphael Lemkin and Pope Francis

The Fight for Rights of Holocaust Survivors—Transforming a Breach of Basic International Humanitarian Law Rights into Individual Compensations Programs

Avraham Weber is an adjunct lecturer at Philipps–University Marburg and a visiting scholar at CUNY Brooklyn College. The post is dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Luxembourg Agreement.

Legalization of the Term Genocide and Individual Claims of Holocaust Survivors

December 1946 brought the United Nations Assembly General to vote on a unanimous resolution, embedding for the first time in history the legal term genocide. Not long after, in December 1948, the UN would adopt the treaty for prevention of genocide. Further important developments in international humanitarian law soon followed, mainly in the form of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted a day later, also in December 1948. This wave of declarations, and the move to create an open, individual rights–based discussion within international law, paved the way for continued recognition of individuals as the subject of international law. This is demonstrated in the First Protocol of the Geneva IV Convention and, of course, later in the Rome Statute, establishing the International Criminal Court.

(more…)

Continue Reading The Fight for Rights of Holocaust Survivors—Transforming a Breach of Basic International Humanitarian Law Rights into Individual Compensations Programs