“Genocide” has lost its shock value , and the Genocide Convention does not help.

9 April 2025 – Mukesh Kapila

First published 9 April at The Daily Maverick

“April is the cruellest month,” asserts T.S.Eliot in his masterpiece “The Waste Land”. The First World War poet was reflecting  that the spring promises new beginnings but also signals renewed fighting with attendant fresh pain and tears.

Is that why we commemorate Genocide Awareness Month in April which witnessed  the start of the 1915 Armenian, 1975 Cambodian,  and1994 Rwandan genocides, as well as  the 2023 re-ignition of the Darfur genocide?  The month also marks some cruel landmarks of the Nazi progrom against Jews that inspired Raphael Lemkin to coin the phrase ‘genocide’ by combining the Greek genos (race) and Latin cide (killing).

The consequent Genocide Convention, adopted by the young United Nations in 1948, promised ‘never again’ for this most heinous crime. But as mass atrocities have multiplied over following decades, have any genocides ever been prevented?

Thus, as we make sombre speeches and lay wreaths at memorials this month, it is worth pondering if the language of genocide is useful.  Or if it actually harms the curbing of inhumanities that are now normalised in war?

The question is important because genocide allegations are commonplace nowadays. They are weaponised by demagogic politicians to demonise adversaries who then make counter allegations, as with the respective supporters of Hamas and Israel.  Such mutual provocations drive conflicting sides farther apart making peace even more difficult to achieve.

‘Genocide!’ is also the cri de coeur of desperate people amidst wars such as in Sudan. These are usually ignored because global tensions are neutralising  collective diplomatic and military measures  to protect civilians in existentialist risk.  Therefore, repeated genocide-calling  without result diminishes the word’s shock value and significance.

That emboldens perpetrators whose sense of impunity is boosted by the sluggish Security Council, International Court of Justice or International Criminal Court that won’t  or can’t rule on genocide questions in ways that make a timely difference on the ground.

I discovered this myself as Head of the UN in Sudan when the first Darfur genocide unfolded  “on my watch” in 2003-4. By the time I could mobilise the world, the worst was already done.

Such problems stem from the deliberate crippling of the  Genocide Convention at birth. The Soviet Union did not want its ‘Holodomor’ atrocities in 1930s Ukraine, Europeans their colonialism and slavery, and Americans their mistreatment of indigenous people, classified as genocidal.

And so, history’s commonest abuse – politicide, the removal of political opponents –– was excluded. It’s  legacy is the unchecked rise of authoritarianism worldwide as democratic values erode.

Cultural erasure was also excluded from the original genocide definition so as not to embarrass the British for their 19^th century looting of the Greek Parthenon or the French for robbing Benin’s art. We see the modern version in Islamic State vandalism of  Syrian heritage or Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. The resulting  grief and anger spans generations and fuels repeated cycles of conflict.

Strategic considerations during negotiations over the Genocide Convention also protected abusive rulers by setting the bar for conviction impossibly high, through requiring proof, not just of genocidal practices but of genocidal intent. Conveniently, the Nazis had left a comprehensive paper trail for that.

But successor tyrants learnt quickly, and contemporary ones don’t oblige by recording their thinking. They rely on deniable verbal instructions and disappearing WhatsApps.

Perhaps that is why the ICC has indicted the leaders of Russia, Israel, Gaza, and Myanmar, not for genocide but for lesser crimes against humanity.

Is the suppression of Armenians in Ottoman times, Rohingya in Myanmar, Yazidis in Iraq, Uyghurs in China. Tigrayans in Ethiopia,  Balochis in Pakistan, and now Palestinians in Gaza, genocide? Was South African apartheid a form of genocide?

Pick your preferred answer from the determinations of partisan national parliaments or selective courts that have ruled on this. Or wait another century until the descendants of today’s perpetrators acknowledge historic wrongs, as Germany did in relation to the Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia.

Thus the crime that was originally called a blot on the “conscience of all mankind” is not quite so. Only 153 of 193 states have fully joined the Genocide Convention, and 30 states – including powerful ones –  have registered reservations.

The original scoping of genocide also required victims to be members of a “national, ethnic, racial, social, or religious group”. That was clear in Nazi times in relation to six million slaughtered Jews but three million others did not get equal recognition.  And yet, for the victims – whether Jewish or Romani, Poles, gay, disabled, and prisoners – the impact was the same: horrendous cruelty and mass murder.

More recently, realisation has grown that the Genocide Convention’s focus on ethnicity and identity as central to winning justice and accountability in genocide cases may have the perverse effect of reinforcing inter-group hatreds and further drive protagonists into irreconcilable corners. Is that a factor in endless warfare, as in Myanmar, Sudan, and Democratic Republic of Congo?

The Genocide Convention advanced humanity by reacting to the Holocaust’s unique shock. But jurisprudence also teaches that one case in one place and time – especially when so extreme – makes bad general law for everyone else and at all times.

Perhaps that is why the Genocide Convention continues to fail today’s realities by creating a false ‘genocide versus the rest’ comparison.  Especially, when we know from victim testimonies as in Heidi Kingstone’s 2024 book on “Personal Stories, Big Questions”, that it matters little if assorted cruelties qualify as genocidal or not. They hurt the same while prevention and healing solutions, and penalties for perpetrators are also similar.

So how does our common humanity move forward? Updating the Genocide Convention and fixing international mechanisms to remedy shortcomings around crime and punishment are unlikely under current geopolitical circumstances that disfavour setting new norms or strengthening multilateral co-operation.

Meanwhile, if the past is any guide to the future, we will continue to suffer brutal wars with, on average, two or three major mass atrocity situations per decade.

There are no easy remedies.  But we may do better through engaging in less polarising genocide rhetoric and making more effort to achieve the spirit of the Genocide Convention by avoiding paralysis from its extremely narrow wording with consequent restricted judicial interpretation.

The key is  humility by recognising that inflicting evil is an unavoidable part of the human condition. But so also is the instinct to do good. The battle between humanity’s two sides will never be decisively settled, and certainly not in courts of law.

But in the everyday battlefield of life in societies everywhere,  the scales can be tipped for the good side, even if only sometimes in some places.  That is  still worth striving for.