Opinion>>Holocaust Memorial Day: Gender and genocide implications

First published: 2011-01-26

Sarah Maguire draws from her experience of work in Rwanda, Cambodia and Darfur. She explains the legal meaning of genocide and gives a snapshot of some of the gender issues involved and the issue of prevention.

Since 2005, January 27th has been commemorated as Holocaust Memorial Day - a time to remember the victims and survivors of the Nazi Holocaust and victims and survivors of other genocides and mass killings across the globe. On January 27th 1945 the Russian army liberated Auschwitz - Birkenau concentration and extermination camp where over one million women, men and children had been killed. Auschwitz-Birkenau has become the symbol for genocide and other mass killings and always evokes the sentiment "Never Again!"

The systematic killing of millions of European Jews along with thousands of communists, disabled people, gypsies and homosexuals was not the first time, however, that ethnic, national or religious groups had been singled out for extermination; nor would it be the last. Genocide or other, organised, mass killings have taken place in every continent at some point in the 20th and 21st centuries. Although each event is different, they share various characteristics. For instance, they are always orchestrated by powerful personalities - often in different countries from where they are executed - targeting the intellectuals of the society at an early stage of the plan and using propaganda and sexual violence as key strategies. They always both target civilians and use civilians in large numbers to execute the plan. From Armenia in 1915, through the Holocaust, Cambodia in the 1970s and Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s; to Darfur in the first decade of the 21st century, we have seen leaders incite their followers into a state of hatred against the 'Other'; be they Jews, Tutsis, Muslims, 'foreigners' or "traitors".

In 1951, thanks to the efforts of a Holocaust survivor, Raphael Lemkin, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into force. The Convention defines genocide as: any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Genocidal "acts" include preparation, conspiracy, incitement or attempt to commit genocide. The definition includes, therefore, the propaganda against Tutsis prior to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 which exhorted Hutus to kill "the cockroaches" and especially to kill the "mother cockroaches". Significantly, the definition does not require the perpetrators to have intended to kill or seriously harm the whole group - even a part would suffice. This means that, for instance, the Khmer Rouge members on trial now in Cambodia can be tried for genocide even though they were of the same ethnic group as those they systematically attacked.

In 2002, at the behest of developing countries, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established at The Hague. Genocide, along with crimes against humanity and war crimes as international crimes, can now be prosecuted by the ICC as well as by domestic courts with the appropriate law. Given that we now have clear and useful definitions of war crimes and crimes against humanity, there is a debate about why we still need the crime of genocide and how useful it is to have this 'ultimate' crime. On the one hand, it can be said that having the crime of genocide diminishes the force of "crimes against humanity". For instance, when the ICC did not indict Sudan's President, Omar el-Bashir, of genocide but did indict him of crimes against humanity there was some disappointment and a feeling that he had been exculpated of the worst crimes. Yet in order to meet the threshold for a crime against humanity there has to have been "widespread or systematic" instances of some of the most odious, egregious acts that can be committed by humans against each other: Systematic rape, widespread persecution, organized maiming, torture or other "inhuman acts" number amongst the crimes that the world community have agreed are "against humanity".

Operationally, the difference between crimes against humanity and war crimes and genocide is that the latter compels the international community to take action to prevent, suppress and punish these acts, whereas other international crimes do not prompt action as a matter of law. While the law remains unaltered, there is, however, increasing attention to the concept of the 'Responsibility to Protect' for crimes against humanity and war crimes as well as genocide.

Gender and genocide

The instant reaction to the words "gender and genocide" in one sentence is to think about the wholesale and systematic rape of women - be it in Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur or Europe. It is certainly true that rape is used as a strategy of genocide in various ways. For instance, in Bosnia women were raped then kept prisoner until they could no longer safely abort in an attempt to reconfigure the ethnicity of the population, whereas in Rwanda Tutsi women who were visibly pregnant had their abdomens slit open in order to 'kill the cockroach' within as well as to prevent any more Tutsis being born. Rape in war is a particularly significant strategy in that it sends a message to men that they are unable to perform their masculine roles of protecting 'their' women. It also destroys families and communities when men refuse to accept that the women were raped and abandon them, as currently happens all too often in DR Congo.

There is more to gender than rape, however. Not only do women and men experience conflict differently and have different strategies for dealing with the changes that conflict brings (e.g. women tend to step up and into extended roles whereas men are emasculated by having to take on traditional female roles); their shared experiences (displacement, loss of property and homes) has different implications for men and for women.

Genocide, with the intent to destroy a certain group, always involves the 'decapitation' of society - the removal of the intellectuals and the professional classes. Whether this is done in the name of ethnicity (against Jews or Tutsis) or ideology (as in Cambodia or Darfur), the reality is that men hold these positions and so they are the primary target for early genocidal acts. The other side of this reality is that, when leaders with genocidal intent recruit individual citizens to execute their strategy, they usually use primarily men. In Darfur and Armenia the respective leaders released prisoners to attack civilian communities, while in Rwanda and Bosnia the propaganda was directed largely at men to ensure that 'their' communities were protected from the scourge of the enemy within.

Prevention

In recent years, the UN and national governments have increased efforts for the prevention of genocide and other mass killings. The UN Secretary General's Special Adviser on Genocide has put in place a programme of work to enable early recognition of warning signs of unrest, conflict or other developments that may lead to genocide. The Special Adviser states that these may include: "Indigenous and transnational civil society groups, country and regional experts and human rights and humanitarian monitoring groups. Such groups may be among the first to detect an upsurge in the persecution or demonization of minorities, in patterns of sexual and gender-based violence, in the recruitment of child soldiers, in forced internal displacement or in the employment of hateful and dangerous speech to spur violence against targeted groups within a society ".

At SDDirect, we know that people do not take up weapons against their neighbour out of the blue. Genocide comes about because of profound issues of exclusion, discrimination and marginalisation, as well as historical factors. We also know that women, children and others from marginalised groups hold valuable information about the advent of armed conflict. We know that poor people are often amongst the first to be aware of propaganda - particularly where it is directed against elites (real or perceived). We also know that women, poor people and children are often the last to be heard; that their voices are silenced and that they are, too often, prevented from having access to decision-makers.

Through our work with and on behalf of women and men across the globe, with decision-makers and civil society organisations, we aim to contribute to the growing global capacity to recognise early warning signs of genocide and other mass killings, to enhance the voice of those who are likely to be the victims or even the misled perpetrators. We join the international call for action as part of the responsibility to protect civilians against crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide.

In the words of James M. Smith of the Aegis Trust "Genocide is not extreme war or conflict; it is extreme exclusion. It may start with name-calling, but may end with a group of people being excluded from a society to the point where they are destroyed."

Never again.

As always, SDDirect is interested in hearing your views. Please send your feedback to info@sddirect.org.uk