The Declaration of International Safety Meggie Roberts 10 April 2018 What is the difference between a genocide and a mass killing? The difference lies solely with the involvement of the United Nations. According to the Geneva Conventions, the United Nations may only get involved if something is deemed a genocide; anything short of a genocide is not deemed important enough for United Nations’ involvement. By definition, a genocide is the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation. A mass killing is the deliberate killing of a large number of people by a person or an organization. Why should these be considered different things? In order to keep everyone safe from becoming the victim of any form of a human rights violation, a group needs to be implemented within the reach of the United Nations that can remain completely internationally unbiased for the purpose of protecting people from events such as a mass killing or genocide no matter what the specifications are. In order to further understand this concept, it’s important to look at the past history or killings and genocides and look at what percentage of those had some involvement from other countries. Another thing to look at is the idea of what this group with the UN would be able to do within a country. The main persuasion behind this idea is the past history of killings of multitudes of people with no help from countries outside those being affected. Past History We Are CAS Meggie Roberts The Declaration of International Safety Throughout history, there have been countless genocides, mass killings, and other human rights violations. The parts that have the most bearing on this topic are the ones that resulted in the deaths of many, even though there have been innumerable human rights violations in history. Looking at genocides by death toll, the worst are The Holocaust, Holodomor, or the Ukrainian genocide, and the Cambodian Genocide. The Holocaust has estimates of around six to seventeen million people killed. The “purpose” of The Holocaust was to eradicate the Jewish race4. But Jewish people accounted for up to six million people3. Soviet Citizens account for about six million3. Soviet prisoners of war account for 3 million. Non-Jewish Polish civilians totaled almost two million. Thousands of others are included in these numbers. These people went from a normal day in Germany to facing an unwarranted and undeserved death. The Holocaust continued for six years. Through those six years there was no assistance to these prisoners of the Nazis. People frequently died of disease and perhaps would have survived with medical assistance. The Holodomor Genocide death toll ranges anywhere from two to fifteen million people1. The most disturbing part about this genocide is that officials say that it is impossible to say exactly or even close to how many people died2. This genocide was carried out by the use of a widespread famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic brought about by deliberate political actions1. This genocide only went on for a single year and in that time, millions of people were murdered. With some kind of intervention, the people making the deliberate political decisions that catalyzed the killings could have been stopped. The Cambodian Genocide resulted in the deaths of about two to three million people. This genocide caused the Cambodian population to be reduced by over twenty-five percent. The population went from near seven million to four million6. The genocide included multiple manners of death We Are CAS Meggie Roberts 2 The Declaration of International Safety including war, rebellion, man-made famine, genocide, politicide, and mass murder. This genocide went on for ten years. Throughout that time, the people in power, once again, could have stopped. There is no excuse for allowing deliberate killings to go on for ten years with no punishments. The following graph follows genocides from 1900 to 2005, showing that the current methods are not working to help stop genocides. The graph shows the deaths per 100,000 per year. Rummel has taken these numbers from estimates, but again, records are frequently inaccurate and may not account for the total number of deaths that may have occurred that were unrecorded. This chart tracks the number of active genocides and politicides around the world between 1955 and 2014. Taken from: The Political Instability Task Force. The past history of genocides shows how many died in very disturbingly efficient ways without so much as a record of their death. Already in Place We Are CAS Meggie Roberts 3 The Declaration of International Safety There are things in place that are supposed to prevent things like this from ever happening again. Unfortunately, history has learned nothing from the past and continues to make the same mistakes. After World War I, the Treaty of Versailles was signed by the Allied powers and was imposed upon Germany in order to demand reparations for the war. This was a peace treaty to try and prevent future happenings, like World War I. Obviously it did not work, as World War II occurred and was more fatal by far. After World War II, the Geneva Conventions were a series of agreements concerning the treatment of prisoners of war and of the sick, wounded, and dead in battle. The entire purpose and rhetoric of these agreements was because of The Holocaust. The Geneva Conventions were put into place to protect people; however, they do not immediately come into effect. They detail what a genocide is, however, they do not even begin to explain the difference between a genocide and any other form of violence. They are supposed to protect people from human rights violations, yet they do not define what is included in that, or what any other form of mistreatment is constituted as. Perhaps when they were created, people assumed that a genocide would be easy to identify as a genocide, but now it is not all that clear. In modern Ukraine, parties wish to define the Holodomor as an act of Genocide, however Russia fails to acknowledge that aspect, as do many historians2. This calls into question the idea that the Geneva Conventions may not even be applicable if the death of millions of people by purposeful actions does not constitute a genocide. Why would the Geneva Conventions not protect against a mass killing? There have been mass killings for political reasons, which is one of the big parts of what constitutes something as a genocide. These human rights violations are no longer black and white, and the longer this goes on, the more people die and the more human rights are violated. Along with the Geneva Conventions, documents We Are CAS Meggie Roberts 4 The Declaration of International Safety exist such as The Declaration of Rights of Man and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Within both of these exists a list of laws that remain unenforced to this day. Why are there laws that exist without the possibility of being enforced? The reason they are not enforced is because there is no group that has the right to carry out actions in the name of these laws. They are an international set of rules, which in a way would make whatever group enforcing them an almost world dictator in some sense. The Amendment There have been many things put into place that are supposed to protect people from human rights violations such as mass killing or genocide, yet these things are still occurring in the world constantly. Today, there are mass shootings and other horrid events taking place every day. In recent years, over 1.5 million people have been murdered in some form of mass killing5. This is why things need to be changed, but not in the way of getting rid of guns, as things like the Rwandan Genocide were carried out with other weapons like machetes. Solutions such as getting rid of guns are simply inefficient because there are infinite possibilities on how to carry out a mass murder, even without firepower. There are so many things already in place; they simply need to be amended. A group that would remain loyal to the laws outlined in the Geneva Conventions that could be militarized is the proposed amendment. Along with this group would come a list of things necessary to constitute their involvement. Among these would include all the things already required to deem something a genocide, along with a list of steps to prevent a mass killing, severe human rights violation, etc. In order to avoid being naïve to the fact that every human rights violation cannot be accounted for, it is important to realize that this We Are CAS Meggie Roberts 5 The Declaration of International Safety group would serve primarily in situations where a large group of people have the possibility of falling victim to a mass human rights violation. The main purpose is to have this group involved before the organization of the occupying power is complete. As shown in graph two, the number of deaths seem to increase as the occupying power gains strength, organization, and the submission of their victims, which happens the longer they hold power. If the proposed group within the United Nations was able to take action before the occupying power had time to become fully organized, it could mean millions of people’s salvation. This groups’ one and only job would be to observe any unrest anywhere in the world and keep track of it in order to track whether an agenda seemed to be in the process of being carried out.