Implications of Groundbreaking World Court Ruling Analyzed in Current Genocide Studies and Prevention Journal

Two of the foremost experts on international law concerning genocide analyzed the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) February 2007 ruling on Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro in Volume 2, Number 2 of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal.
 
Dr. William A. Schabas, Chair in Human Rights Law and Director of the Irish Centre for Human Rights at the National University of Ireland and Dr. David Scheffer, Professor of Law and Director of the Center for International Human Rights, Northwestern University and formerly United States Ambassador for War Crimes, both contributed important articles evaluating the ramification of the ICJ’s ruling.
 
The ICJ is the highest international authority dealing with inter-state justice and is mandated to oversee the United Nations Convention on Genocide (1948).  In February 2007, it concluded its consideration of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s claims that Serbia and Montenegro had committed genocide during the 1994-6 Balkan War. While the court found that genocide had not taken place, except during the Srebrenica Massacre and even then it found Serbia not responsible, the court did establish significant precedents for dealing with genocide.
 
Dr. Schabas argued that the ruling made a major pronouncement on the duty to prevent genocide to parties of the 1948 UNCG, establishing that this obligation requires states to take action, to the extent that they may be able to exercise some influence, when genocide is threatened outside their own territory. This is significant because it allows states to act in countries where genocide looms before the genocide actually takes place.
 
Dr. Scheffer highlighted that the ICJ ruling found that a state, and not only an individuals, can be found responsible for genocide. This is an improvement on the previous understanding that only individuals could be held accountable, a reading that allowed many perpetrators to be protected by collective responsibility.
 
Together these precedents provide powerful deterrents to potentially genocidal regimes. Not only are third party states empowered to act preemptively to stop genocide, but perpetrator states themselves can be found responsible, and thus the perceived benefits of genocide may not be enjoyed by a regime that commits this atrocious crime. Furthermore, states can be found liable for not acting to prevent genocide or for been complicit in the crime. The ruling thus increases the risks facing a genocidal regime and decreases the obstacles facing an international intervention.
 
“With this latest issue, GSP continues the tradition of making significant contributions to the field of genocide studies,” reflected Chair of the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (A Division of the Zoryan Institute), Prof. Roger W. Smith. “To date it has published five comprehensive issues, thirty-three groundbreaking articles, several in-depth book reviews, and stimulating editorials, all contributed by dozens of scholars from nine different countries.” He concluded that “equally important to the mission of the journal is that it is being read widely and in many circles inside and outside academia. Together, these achievements mean that an international dialogue is being fostered between specialists, policy-makers, and the public on the nature of genocide, its wider ramifications and on methods for its prevention.”
 
In addition to the articles dealing with the ICJ’s ruling, the new issue also includes articles by Alfred de Zayas, addressing the Istanbul Pogrom of 1955, where 100,000 Greeks were “ethnically cleansed” from Istanbul, and Elizabeth More, exploring the 2006 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda finding concerning the 1994 genocide, both bring the relevance of their subjects to the current genocide in Darfur.  The issue also includes, in review essays, Dr. Joseph A. Kéchichian’s deconstruction of Dr. Guenter Lewy’s denial of the Armenian Genocide and Dr. Paul Bartrop’s assessment of recent literature on the genocide of North American aboriginals, as well as several book reviews.
 
Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal was co-founded by the International Association of Genocide Scholars and the International Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies (A Division of the Zoryan Institute). The journal’s mission is to understand the phenomenon of genocide, create an awareness of it as an ongoing scourge, and promote the necessity of preventing it, for both pragmatic and moral reasons. It is the official journal of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and is published three times a year by the University of Toronto Press. For more information, contact the IIGHRS (Zoryan Institute), admin@genocidestudies.org, Tel: 416-250-9807