Prologue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
The history of the world is a history of hate and genocide. At one level, it is difficult to deny this reality. In the 1980s, anthropologists in Belgium found more than 30 wounded, battered, and perforated skulls, of men, women, and children, believed to be at least 7,000 years old. And while ethnic conflict and group hatred may not be the only motives for war, such enmity seems to play a large part in most armed conflicts around the world. Only 16 of the world's 193 countries currently remain untouched by war. At any given time, an average of 50 nations are engaged in armed conflict, with some employing children as young as 6 years of age in combat.
But the actual investigation, cataloguing, and defining of genocide is very recent. Following attorney/survivor Raphael Lemkin's (1900–1959) lead, Article 2 of the United Nation's Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as:
any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
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- Information
- The Psychology of GenocidePerpetrators, Bystanders, and Rescuers, pp. 9 - 15Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008