Arendt believed that “the idea of humanity” requires all nations to assume responsibility for major crimes of international, rather than purely domestic, concern. Her ideas about international criminal law grew from the Eichmann trial; they appear in Eichmann in Jerusalem and her correspondence with Karl Jaspers about the trial. This chapter provides essential background for her ideas by explaining the “lawyers’ law” concerning state sovereignty, sovereign immunity, crimes against humanity, and genocide. Arendt partly presupposes this background, but she also breaks with it in significant ways. Notably, Arendt breaks from the state-centered orthodoxy when she argues that its concepts don’t apply when a state itself becomes criminal. She also gives the term “crimes against humanity” a substantive meaning (crimes of international concern), which in her view includes genocide as a crime against humanity. In the lawyers’ law, these are distinct crimes with different definitions. The chapter explains what motives the lawyers’ law, to better understand Arendt’s alternatives.

This chapter provides a general overview of World War I, including the scale and character of the military campaigning; the depth of societal mobilization and the transformation of state–economy relations; the consequences for personhood and citizenship; the normalizing of mass killing and genocide; the war’s demographic catastrophe and the pervasiveness of violence and death. “Total war” is distinguished as a main theme for the early twentieth century, whether in the shape of popular experience or the impact of the interventionist capacities of states. Empire, colonialism, and the war’s globality are also marked.

Since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the Baha’i religious minority in Iran has been persecuted by the Iranian government, with varying degrees of intensity. In 2011, former UNAMIR Commander Romeo Dallaire recognised their vulnerability in a speech to the Canadian Senate. ‘The similarities with what I saw in Rwanda are absolutely unquestionable’, he opined, ‘we know the genocidal intent of the Iranian state.’ This chapter will examine the plight of the Baha’i between the Iranian Revolution in 1979 and 2024. During this period, the Baha'i community has experienced ongoing and at times severe risk of genocide. Yet various factors have contributed to preventing the ongoing vulnerability from escalating. This chapter examines persecution of the Iranian Baha’i minority, and the domestic and international response. It examines the interplay of risk and resilience factors that have shaped their experience. The chapter concludes by reflecting on what can be learned about resilience from this case study of the presence of long-term risk.

Anti-Haitian sentiment is so entrenched in the Dominican Republic that it has its own name: antihaitianismo. The long history of discrimination and persecution of Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent includes a massacre in 1937, which claimed around 18,000 lives. While such large-scale violence has not been repeated, Haitians and Haitian–Dominicans have experienced ongoing discrimination and human rights violations. Since the 1990s, there have been repeated mass deportations into Haiti, and in the 2010s, over 100,000 Haitian–Dominicans were stripped of their citizenship, rendering them stateless. By the early 2000s, many recognised the presence of risk factors for genocide in the Dominican Republic. Yet despite the risk, such violence did not occur. Moreover, since then multiple risk assessment models have documented decreasing risk. This chapter explores this constructive trajectory. It considers the risk factors and the factors that have promoted resilience over the period in question. Understanding how and why the violence of 1937 has not been repeated, and the gradual amelioration of risk in the Dominican Republic, can help us identify key factors that promote resilience to genocide.

There is a strong need for evidence-based approaches to inform the growing field of genocide prevention. The chapter introduces conceptual and methodological advances to aid research in this area. It highlights the value of a ‘Risk and Resilience Framework’, which gives equal credence to the role of risk factors and factors promoting resilience, in understanding vulnerability to genocide. The chapter then introduces the six case studies that make up the bulk of the book – case studies in which a demonstrable risk of genocide was not realised in the period under study. Following this, it presents the key findings of the volume. These comprise eleven cross-situational factors that have contributed to promoting resilience to genocide in the past, and therefore have proven potential to do so in the future. The functioning and influence of each factor is described, followed by a brief analysis of its efficacy as identified in the case studies. The introduction concludes with a section exploring how these factors can be operationalised to stabilise and reduce vulnerability to genocide in current at-risk societies.

There is a long history of persecution of the Yazidi minority in Iraq. Following the rise of ISIS in the early 2010s, however, their status as non-Muslims rendered them particularly vulnerable. According to ISIS’ interpretation of Islamic law, Yazidis were infidels. Men who refused to convert were to be killed, and women enslaved. Therefore, when ISIS launched a surprise attack on Sinjar, a region heavily populated by Yazidis, all those who could immediately fled. Tens of thousands of Yazidis became stranded and besieged on Mt Sinjar, in extremely hazardous conditions. At imminent risk of genocide, they desperately sought assistance. Within days, a multifaceted international response enabled the vast majority of them to survive and escape. A key focus of the chapter is the nature of that response. It considers what led to the provision of emergency humanitarian aid, to the US military strikes that prevented further ISIS attack, and to the opening of a route to safety. Through careful examination of these critical events, it identifies the factors that mitigated genocide. The chapter concludes by reflecting on what lessons can be learned from this case study of resilience.

The conclusion presents a powerful call to action. It considers the contribution of the volume to advancing knowledge of evidence-based approaches to genocide prevention. It discusses measurable actions that can be taken to contribute to genocide prevention, by a range of stakeholders. Through collective and concerted effort, we can all contribute to making ‘never again’ a reality.

Theatre depicts the way the socio-climate of so it reads Theatre depicts the way the socio-climate of drought intenstified in Australia as settler farmers drought intensified in Australia as settler farmers cleared land to plant imported food crops and, in particular, rain-dependent wheat. Local ecologies were drastically changed by colonial occupation. Dryness and dust increased where there had previously been the biodiverse sources of food depicted in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander First Nations (First Nations) performance and drama. Different meanings for meanings for home and homeland exemplify the genocidal conflict between First Nations Country and settler farmsteads. Plays by, for example, Noongar writer Jack Davis and the pre-eminent Dorothy Hewett feature ecologies drastically altered by wheat farming in conjunction with oppressive race and gender relations. Drama about mining similarly shows a combination of ecological damage and social inequity. As Jill Orr performs in a vast monocrop of wheat and amidst gypsum mine waste, her bird-like action evokes in a vast monocrop field of wheat grief over an ecocidal loss of multispecies habitats.

Genocide is a contested concept with normative, legal, political, and empirical dimensions, each pulling in different directions. The chapter emphasizes that, in addition, a fundamental contradiction exists in the concept: The legal definition, anchored in an international treaty, dominates the social sciences, even though the legal definition is problematic for the specification of a particular type of violence. The concept is thus perpetually trapped between legal and empirical imperatives, rendering it unwieldy for the social science objective of isolating a particular type of phenomenon. The chapter rejects the solution of jettisoning the concept, instead proposing a set of solutions for how to retain the concept and separate it from its legal origins. The chapter concludes by arguing that such solutions are unlikely to carry the day, but that social scientists should still seek to develop a rigorous conceptualization of the term that allows for the identification of specific types of political violence. Finally, a postscript offers an interim assessment – from the perspective of this chapter – of the war in the Middle East that began on October 7, 2023.

Chapter 5 examines how white supremacy manifested itself in different forms across English-speaking societies from roughly 1800 to 1865. It reveals a fundamental tension between claims of white people as uniquely freedom-loving and their role as colonizers and enslavers. The chapter explores how even self-styled “enlightened” whites often justified slavery and oppression through paternalistic arguments about racial “degradation” rather than explicit racial hatred. It details various strategies for removing nonwhites from white spaces, including deportation schemes, forced relocation, and cultural elimination through boarding schools. It highlights how violence against indigenous peoples in the USA, Australia, and Canada often culminated in genocide, while colonial authorities blamed such violence on “degraded whites” to justify further oppression. Throughout this period, white supremacy demonstrated remarkable adaptability, shifting between seemingly benevolent paternalism and outright elimination of nonwhite populations. Though the US Civil War ultimately established Black citizenship rights, white supremacy persisted by finding new ways to maintain racial hierarchies.

A framing case study discusses child workers in Bolivia. Then the chapter provides an overview of international human rights law. The chapter first discusses the historical origins of the human rights movement and the multilateral and regional human rights systems. Then it outlines major physical integrity rights, including laws that prohibit genocide, ethnic cleansing, torture, and human trafficking. It next turns to major civil and political rights, including the right to free expression, assembly, and association, various religious protections, and criminal justice rights. Finally, it examines major economic, social, and cultural rights, including rules about labor, economic and social assistance, cultural rights, and the rights of marginalized groups, like women, children, and the disabled.

A framing case study describes the trial of Hissène Habré, the deposed leader of Chad who was prosecuted for multiple international crimes in Senegal. The chapter then discusses international criminal law. The chapter first discusses major principles of international criminal law and its evolution. It next discusses the key elements for establishing criminal guilt, including: the definition of core crimes; modes of responsibility and liability; and possible defences. Finally, the chapter surveys the major institutions that enforce international criminal law by discussing the operations of the International Criminal Court and the assertion of universal jurisdiction by domestic courts.

The chapter on the consequences of the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi brings many constructive contributions that have been made to improve the situation of those affected. Nevertheless, the consequences of this very short-lived genocide were immense. PTSD and trauma-related cultural syndromes were described as direct consequences, although the latter faced an impediment in prevailing against the dominance of the international (and Global North) vocabulary. Research attributed long-lasting societal problems, which were partially addressed by home-grown governmental programs. A very important topic discussed in the chapter is that of international aid organizations, which were also the producers of scientific contributions in most cases. These include contributions on interethnic trust and reconciliation. Some, especially local authors, refer to African values such as Ubuntu, which they argue should play a role in healing or reconciliation.

This chapter argues that Soviet crimes at times of war were both widespread and complex in their origin, goals, logic, and trajectory. It distinguishes and explains several forms of Soviet criminality during its defensive war against Germany in 1941–1945: crimes against humanity and war crimes, both perpetrated by agents of the state and often in accordance with explicitly formulated state policy; troop crimes, not guided by state policy but often understood to be in its fulfilment by the perpetrators; and a variety of violent and criminal behaviour emanating from small group bonding, both within the military and outside of it. The chapter explains their origins and charts the reasons why there was so much silence about the criminality of the Soviet war effort after victory.