At the same time, I also liaise within the UN system on prevention initiatives and capacity building where required, as well as provide technical assistance to Member States and regional organizations on genocide prevention initiatives.
So, in other words, I do everything that I possibly can when I have the information, to prevent genocide from happening.
Hate speech
The United Nations Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech represents the commitment of the UN to address and counter hate speech globally. It introduces a working definition of hate speech as “any kind of communication in speech, writing or behavior, that attacks or uses pejorative or discriminatory language with reference to a person or a group on the basis of who they are, based on their religion, ethnicity, nationality, race, color, descent, gender or other forms”. This is not a legal definition but aims at facilitating policy and programming in and outside the United Nations.
The UN Strategy and Plan of Action on Hate Speech includes 13 specific commitments for the UN to address and counter hate speech in an holistic way (including by: tackling the root causes – which may include intolerance and hatred along identity lines; keeping hate speech from escalating, online and offline, into incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence; protecting the victims; and enhancing partnership with relevant actors) and in line with international human right standards, in particular with freedom of opinion and expression.
As Focal Point for the implementation of the Strategy, my Office provides support to UN entities and Member States to develop context-specific hate speech strategies. There is recognition that hate speech has always been a precursor to genocide – from Rwanda to Bosnia Herzegovina, to the Holocaust. In Rwanda, it was the dehumanization of the Tutsi as cockroaches, during the Holocaust it was the dehumanization of Jews as a cancer that needed to be removed. This is why it is so important that people must be reminded of what hate speech can do.
The UN strategy addresses these conditions of hate speech, through a situation analysis of among others, political and social developments and outlines relevant legal frameworks.
How do you certify a situation as genocide?
I’m often asked whether I can certify a situation as a genocide. My answer is that I do not investigate, conduct human rights monitoring, or legally qualify situations either ongoing or from the past as genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity.
What I do is to make assessments as to whether there is a risk of genocide occurring in a particular situation, with the objective of preventing or halting those crimes in case they are suspected to be already occurring.
So what constitutes a genocide in today’s world?
Genocide is drawn from the framing of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The word “genocide” was coined by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer who lobbied for this Convention to be in place. The Convention was adopted in 1948. And as we speak, right now, more than 150 countries are party to this Convention.
The Convention defines what constitutes a genocide and confirms that genocide, whether committed in times of peace or in times of war, is a crime under international law.
In the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means 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.
What are the possible risk factors?
In terms of possible causes, the risk factors that I spoke about earlier that we analyze include behavior, circumstances or elements that create an environment conducive to the commission of genocide. For instance, risk factors for genocide includes inter-group tensions; patterns of discrimination against some groups; or signs of an intent to destroy in whole or in part, a protected group. This can be broken down to discriminatory, segregation, exclusionary practices towards any ethnic, national, racial or religious group, or even legislation against that group.
Risk factors also include for example, a denial of the existence of any group. A history of atrocity crimes, by which I mean genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, committed with impunity against some groups is also a risk factor.
Other risk factors include tensions in terms of access to resources from the State, socio-economic disparities, participation in decision making processes, or when you notice that there are tensions around some types of groups such as political, social, or cultural, that could then develop on national, ethnic, racial or religious lines. An absence of national mechanisms or initiatives to deal with identity-based conflict, may mean you have a society that has risk factors of genocide.
The red flags for genocide would be ethnically, nationally, racially, or religiously motivated attacks or profiling of some people, because this really does constitute a dangerous trajectory that heightens the risk of genocide. And when you notice that populations are not protected equally, then that’s a red flag. When you notice human rights violations, breakdown of legal systems or violation of international humanitarian law, or when you see specific targeting of groups, then you know, that these are red flags.
Are there examples of that happening currently?
I would say that there are several situations of concern around minorities, indigenous people and people of African descent being targeted in some contexts.
We have very specific ethnic clashes. And of course, we are frequently speaking to Member States, engaging UN mechanisms and working in this context to create buffers and to enhance prevention.
What numbers are we talking about for it to qualify as genocide?
It doesn’t matter. It’s really not about numbers. When we get into numbers, then we begin to complicate issues because for example, in Bosnia Herzegovina, over 8,000 people were killed. In Rwanda, a million people were killed within three months, and in the Holocaust, six million people lost their lives. If you go to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, as you walk out there is a plaque at the door with an inscription: “Often, people think about genocide in terms of numbers”. People are waiting to hear one million people have died. What they don’t realize is that it’s six people dying here, three there, 20 others tomorrow, the day after another five and so on. All these numbers add up, such that one day, you will have the one million people you’re looking for on your hands. So long as those conditions, which can lead to genocide exist, we should be very careful. Those initial three or 12 deaths could just be the beginning of a genocide.
It has been 76 years of the UN, why haven’t we seen the end to these atrocities and genocide? What are the challenges in fighting this vice?
We often forget that efforts to prevent genocide only go back to the creation of the UN, when even the word ‘genocide’ was created and then became law as part of the 1948 Convention. The world came together after World War II and the devastation of the Holocaust, with a common commitment to protect future generations from the risk of genocide and came up with that convention.
What we forget oftentimes is that there hasn’t always been interest in preventing genocides. Wars were common – World War I, World War II, there was also the 100 years’ war in Europe, there were also wars in Asia, Africa – there have been wars since time immemorial, with communities trying to decimate each other. It wasn’t until the end of World II that the world said enough! We’re going to work on ending this.
It is therefore a challenge to stop something in 76 years that has been going on for centuries – since the beginning of the world.
What are the challenges?
The challenge is that we still don’t have a critical mass of people willing to build bridges, to build relationships, willing to say that we’re not going to have war anymore.
Also, we have very poor methods of ensuring that the willing buyer-willing seller business of weapons is either managed or brought to a stop.
How can we get out of these challenges?
We need more and not less engagement. This means working with community-based organisations, civil society, Member States, and regional organizations and international organizations.
Are there any hot spots currently?
Many years of mediating armed conflict, sometimes in very dangerous places before I joined the UN, have taught me that hot spots are issues, not geographical spaces. I would say that if you know any geographical space that has ethnic violence, human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, looting of property, mass executions, arbitrary arrests, killings, rape, displacement of populations, destruction of property, hate speech, stigmatization, ethnic profiling, and the absence of the rule of law – then that is a hotspot.
This year marks 28 years since the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, where nearly a million people were killed in less than three months. What lessons can countries learn from this experience? And what can be done to prevent this from happening in the future?
We must have a culture of independent and impartial investigations into allegations of violations and abuses of human rights. We need to do better to ensure accountability for serious violations committed so as not to perpetuate that environment that exposes the civilian populations to a…