The Problem: Genocides and other Mass Atrocity Crimes

Throughout history, rulers and governments have committed mass killings and caused grave suffering to uncounted millions. Actors at all levels of hierarchy have been involved. Targets were their own subjects and citizens of other peoples and countries. Today, we refer to such acts of mass violence as mass atrocity crimes, a term coined by David Scheffer, formerly US Ambassador and aide to the Secretary of State Madeline Albright. The term encompasses genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. In genocide, individuals are killed or harmed because they are members of a group (national, religious, racial, or ethnic), while crimes against humanity are systematic and widespread attacks directed against civilian populations regardless of their group membership. War crimes are action carried out during the conduct of a war that breaches accepted international rules of war. International treaties provide legal definitions, especially the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 or the Rome Statute of 1998, the foundation of the International Criminal Court.

Some scholars use modified terms to evade the limitations for legal definitions. Political scientist R.J. Rummel, for example, writes about democide (murder of peoples by a government, including genocide), politicide (murder of groups because of their politics or for political purposes), and mass murder (indiscriminate killing). Rummel estimates the death toll at 169.202 million for the period 1900 to 1987 (not including victims of “legitimate” warfare). The number of victims of murder, manslaughter, and homicide in civil society during the same period amounts to only about ten percent of this death count (see the author’s Crime and Human Rights). In addition to killings, mass atrocity crimes typically involve mass rapes, destruction of livelihood, and displacements of entire populations.

Despite great variation concerning the methods of killings, the execution of mass atrocity crimes in times of peace versus war, and the number of victims, there are also commonalities. All involve collective action, complex social organization, often including formal organizations, with front-line, low-level actors who execute the dirty work, as well as high-level actors whose hands remain untainted by the blood for the shedding of which they bear ultimate responsibility. Many constitute organizational crimes.