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Home > Open Access Journals > JSS > Vol. 11 > No. 4 (2019)

 

Author Biography

Zachary A. Karazsia is a Ph.D. candidate and fellow at Florida International University. His research addresses why and how vulnerable populations undergo socio-political marginalization and violence. In his work, he uses a range of primary sources, interviews, archival material, civilian and military records, and social scientific literature to show how specific state-society conditions enable perpetrators to ostracize, dehumanize, or murder so-called “asocial” groups en masse. His research falls within Comparative Genocide and Political Violence Studies writ large. In addition to these topic areas, his work regularly involves field and secondary research on Sub-Saharan Africa (mainly, Central and East Africa). In an interdisciplinary fashion, his research informs political and sociological theories on mass violence, contentious politics, human security, and conflict and security studies.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.11.4.1676

Subject Area Keywords

Ethnic conflict, Global trends and risks, Human rights, Human security, International courts, International law, Political violence

Abstract

This article addresses the under-theorized dual-mandate of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention was drafted in the wake of the Holocaust and other Nazi genocidal atrocities committed during World War II. The primary mission of the Genocide Convention was to establish a uniform definition of this scourge, and insert its prevention and punishment into the list of obligations states hold within the current international legal regime. Based on the past 70 years, it is clear that the international community has overwhelmingly failed to uphold the Genocide Convention’s prevention mandate. The Convention and its signatories have been more successful in punishing perpetrators posthaste (e.g., the 1940s Nuremburg and Tokyo trials; the 1990s tribunals in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda; and the International Criminal Court). Eyeing the failure of the international community in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the Canadian government created the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty that created the doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P). The article argues that R2P has filled part of the gaps in the Genocide Convention and allowed states to take affirmative actions to prevent genocide in the modern era (e.g., Libya 2011).

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