Beyond Killing: Gender, Genocide, And
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DECEMBER 2018 BEYOND KILLING: Gender, Genocide, & Obligations Under International Law ABOUT GLOBAL JUSTICE CENTER EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The Global Justice Center (GJC) is an international human rights organization dedicated to Gender permeates the crime of genocide. It is woven into the perpetrators’ planning and commission advancing gender equality through the rule of law. We combine advocacy with legal analysis, of coordinated acts that make up the continuum of genocidal violence. It is through these gendered working to expose and root out the patriarchy inscribed in so many international laws. annihilative acts that perpetrators maximize the crime’s destructive impact on protected groups. Our projects forge legal precedents in venues that have the greatest potential for global Female and male members of targeted groups, by the perpetrators’ own design, experience genocide impact, such as the United Nations Security Council, and in places with the most potential in distinct ways by reason of their gender. Men and older boys are targeted as a consequence of the for systemic change, like conflict and post-conflict situations and transitional democracies. gendered roles they are perceived to inhabit, including those as heads of households, leaders, religious We believe that enforcing treaties and international human rights laws can be a catalyst for authorities, protectors, guardians of the group’s identity, and patriarchs. Assaults on women and girls radical change, moving these hard-won rights from paper to practice. pay heed to their roles as mothers, wives, daughters, bearers of future life, keepers of community’s and For more information, please visit our website: www.globaljusticecenter.net family’s honor, and sources of labor within the home. An understanding of what it means to be male and female in a particular society thus saturates perpetrators’ conceptions of their victims, and of themselves. In particular, the violence directed at women and girls during genocide is fed by existing misogynistic attitudes in society, and the traumatic impacts are magnified by the financial, social, cultural inequalities ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS to which women and girls are subjected. This report is a publication of the Global Justice Center. It was authored by Sareta Ashraph, Genocide is often understood as a crime committed predominantly through organized mass killings—the with drafting and editing support from Akila Radhakrishnan and Grant Shubin, and layout majority of victims of which, both historically and today, tend to be male. Consequently, non-killing acts and design by Liz Olson. of genocide—more likely to be directed against female members of a protected group—are often cast out of the continuum of genocidal violence. Equally, in privileging the act of killing, other acts of violence This report was made possible in part by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. committed against men and boys—such as torture, rape, and enslavement—have also been obscured. The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author. The continuing failure to acknowledge the complexity of genocidal violence—and the distinct ways in which genocide is planned and committed against men and women, boys and girls, by reason of their gender—has undercut the development of an effective framework to mobilize the Genocide Convention’s DEDICATION legal obligations to prevent and punish genocide. It has limited political, diplomatic, and military authorities’ capacity to recognize where there is a serious risk of genocide occurring, and to identify and This report is dedicated to Janet Benshoof, who devoted her life to fighting for the equal suppress genocides that are in progress. This has particular consequences for female victims, who are protection of the law for women. often subjected to a wider range of violations that occur over a relatively longer span of time. Prosecutors have been more likely to charge genocide in situations where mass killings have occurred, while non-lethal genocidal acts—perpetrated disproportionately against female victims—are more likely to be indicted as crimes against humanity or war crimes, or not at all. These prosecutorial decisions, and the judgments that follow, eclipse substantial parts of the community of genocide victims, mirroring the attempted erasure that the perpetrators of genocide intended, and distorting the historical record borne out of the trials. In the decades that have elapsed since the signing of the 1948 Genocide Convention, the red thread of genocide has continued to course its way through human history, calling into question the international legal order. A failure to grapple with the intrinsic role that gender plays the crime of genocide has undercut the progressive framework for understanding and action offered by the Convention. One cannot prevent and punish what one does not recognize. A gendered analysis is essential to illuminate the multi-dimensional nature of this crime, and the gamut of its victims. In this way we recognize, remember, and protect all those whose lives have been, or may still be, ripped asunder by the scourge of genocide. Cover Photo: A Rohingya woman walks towards her shelter at Palong Khali refugee camp near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. REUTERS / Adnan Abidi TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................2 II. THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE ....................................................................................4 Genocide, as defined by Lemkin .................................................................................. 4 Genocide, as defined by the Convention ........................................................................ 6 Genocide, in customary international law .......................................................................7 III. GENDER AND GENOCIDAL ACTS ........................................................................ 10 Killing members of the group ...................................................................................... 12 Men and boys ....................................................................................................... 12 Women and girls ................................................................................................... 14 Fast deaths, slow deaths, and gender ...................................................................... 16 Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group ..................................... 17 Rape and Sexual Violence ...................................................................................... 18 Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment ..................... 21 Enslavement .........................................................................................................22 Forcible transfer ...................................................................................................23 Inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the group’s physical destruction ......... 23 Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group ......................................26 Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group ............................................29 IV. GENDER AND GENOCIDAL INTENT ..................................................................... 32 V. INTERNATIONAL LEGAL OBLIGATIONS ................................................................. 38 Gender and the Duty to Prevent ...................................................................................38 Duty to Prevent .....................................................................................................39 Early warnings signs and the existence of serious risk ............................................... 40 Duty to prevent ongoing genocides ..........................................................................42 (i) Reluctance to recognize ongoing genocides ......................................................43 (ii) The consequence of privileging the act of killing .............................................. 46 Broader interventions to prevent genocide ................................................................47 Gender and Duty to Punish ........................................................................................49 Territorial reach ....................................................................................................50 Punishing ‘genocide’ ..............................................................................................50 VI. GENOCIDE AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS ............................................. 56 Other international organizations ............................................................................59 VII. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................61 Annex A: Examples of genocides committed since 1915 ..................................................62 Annex B: The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide .......67 Yazidi women mark the second anniversary of the Yazidi genocide at a refugee camp Diyarbakir, Turkey. Global Justice Center: Human Rights through Rule of Law www.globaljusticecenter.netREUTERS 4/ Sertac Kayar Global Justice Center: Human Rights through Rule of Law www.globaljusticecenter.net 1 I. INTRODUCTION The pull towards recognizing genocide when it is committed through