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Raphaël Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the word "genocide" in the winter of 1942 and led a movement in the United Nations to outlaw the crime, setting his sights on reimagining human rights institutions and humanitarian law after World War II. After the UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, Lemkin slipped into obscurity, and within a few short years many of the same governments that had agreed to outlaw genocide and draft a Universal Declaration of Human Rights tried to undermine these principles. This intellectual biography of one of the twentieth century's most influential theorists and human rights figures sheds new light on the origins o...
Raphaël Lemkin was one of the twentieth century's most influential human rights figures, coining the word "genocide" in 1942 and working to embed the idea into international law. This book sheds new light on the concept of genocide, exploring the connection between Lemkin's philosophical writings, juridical works, and politics.
America may not be at war, but it is not at peace. Recent public and political rhetoric have revealed the escalation of a pervasive and dangerous “us versus them” ideology in the United States. This powerful book is motivated by the contributors’ recognition of continuing structural violence and injustice, which are linked to long-standing systems of racism, social marginalization, xenophobia, poverty, and inequality in all forms. Calls to restore America’s greatness are just the most recent iteration of dehumanizing language against minority communities. The violation of the civil and human rights of vulnerable groups presents a serious threat to American democracy. These deeply roo...
Why are some genocides prominently remembered while others are ignored, hidden, or denied? Consider the Turkish campaign denying the Armenian genocide, followed by the Armenian movement to recognize the violence. Similar movements are building to acknowledge other genocides that have long remained out of sight in the media, such as those against the Circassians, Greeks, Assyrians, the indigenous peoples in the Americas and Australia, and the violence that was the precursor to and the aftermath of the Holocaust. The contributors to this collection look at these cases and others from a variety of perspectives. These essays cover the extent to which our biases, our ways of knowing, our patterns...
"This book argues that the field of peace and conflict needs a stronger and more practical sense of its ethical obligations. By focusing on the ethical dilemmas in peace work it aims to reckon with recent questions among those involved in mediating conflict, from international peacekeepers to social justice activists. For example, it argues against posing false binaries between domestic and international issues and against viewing violence and conflict as the same. It holds up strategic nonviolence to critical scrutiny and shows that "do no harm" approaches may in fact do harm. The chapters cover the role of violence in conflict; conflict and violence prevention and resolution; humanitarianism; human rights advocacy; transitional justice; political reconciliation; and peace education and pedagogy, among other topics"--
The Genocide Convention was drafted by the United Nations in the late 1940s, as a response to the horrors of the Second World War. But was the Genocide Convention truly effective at achieving its humanitarian aims, or did it merely exacerbate the divisive rhetoric of Cold War geopolitics? A Rhetorical Crime shows how genocide morphed from a legal concept into a political discourse used in propaganda battles between the United States and the Soviet Union. Over the course of the Cold War era, nearly eighty countries were accused of genocide, and yet there were few real-time interventions to stop the atrocities committed by genocidal regimes like the Cambodian Khmer Rouge. Renowned genocide scholar Anton Weiss-Wendt employs a unique comparative approach, analyzing the statements of Soviet and American politicians, historians, and legal scholars in order to deduce why their moral posturing far exceeded their humanitarian action.
This volume explores how religious leaders can contribute to cultures of peace around the world. The essays are written by leading and emerging scholars and practitioners who have lived, taught, or worked in the areas of conflict about which they write. Connecting the theory and practice of religious peacebuilding to illuminate key challenges facing interreligious dialogue and interreligious peace work, the volume is explicitly interreligious, intercultural, and global in perspective. The chapters approach religion and peace from the vantage point of security studies, sociology, ethics, ecology, theology, and philosophy. A foreword by David Smock, the Vice President of Governance, Law and Society and Director of the Religion and Peacebuilding Center at the United States Institute of Peace, outlines the current state of the field.
This book explores concepts of Cultural genocide, its definitions, place in international law, the systems and methods that contribute to its manifestations, and its occurrences. Through a systematic approach and comprehensive analysis, international and interdisciplinary contributors from the fields of genocide studies, legal studies, criminology, sociology, archaeology, human rights, colonial studies, and anthropology examine the legal, structural, and political issues associated with cultural genocide. This includes a series of geographically representative case studies from the USA, Brazil, Australia, West Papua, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, and Canada. This volume is unique in its interdisciplinarity, regional coverage, and the various methods of cultural genocide represented, and will be of interest to scholars of genocide studies, cultural studies and human rights, international law, international relations, indigenous studies, anthropology, and history.
Since the 1980s the study of genocide has exploded, both historically and geographically, to encompass earlier epochs, other continents, and new cases. The concept of genocide has proved its worth, but that expansion has also compounded the tensions between a rigid legal concept and the manifold realities researchers have discovered. The legal and political benefits that accompany genocide status have also reduced complex discussions of historical events to a simplistic binary – is it genocide or not? – a situation often influenced by powerful political pressures. Genocide addresses these tensions and tests the limits of the concept in cases ranging from the role of sexual violence durin...
This edited collection develops a gendered lens for genocide prevention by uncovering socially constructed gender roles which are crucial for the onset, form and prevention of genocide and mass atrocities. This volume draws on contemporary feminist theory, concepts of masculinity, critical discussions of international law, and in-depth case studies to provide a better understanding of the function of gender at different stages of genocide and mass atrocity processes as well as a basis for more comprehensive strategies for genocide prevention.