Welcome to Spotlight.
I'm Liz Waid.
And I'm Luke Haley.
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You may have heard a Spotlight program on Raphael Lemkin.
He lived during World War II.
At this time, the Nazis killed millions of Jewish people in Europe.
This included many of Lemkin's family and friends.
Lemkin named this mass killing, genocide.
He used this word to mean killing a group of people because of their race, nationality, or religion.
Lemkin spent his life working with governments and the United Nations.
He wanted to make genocide illegal under international law.
In 1948 the United Nations recognized genocide as a crime in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.
Many countries signed this agreement to prevent and punish genocide.
Lemkin wanted the UN to recognize genocide as a crime.
He hoped this would prevent genocide from ever happening again.
But naming genocide did not stop the crime.
Some people claim that the UN Genocide Convention does not work.
They say that naming the crime of genocide does not stop people from doing it.
Today's spotlight is on the difficulties around preventing genocide.
The UN Genocide Convention presents a detailed definition of genocide.
It says that genocidal acts have the intent or purpose to destroy a national ethnic, racial or religious group.
This intent can be to destroy in whole or in part.
These acts can be punished under international law.
Michio Ozaki and Rina Dam share the acts that the convention considers genocidal causing serious harm to the bodies or minds of members of the group.
Causing bad conditions that attempt to destroy the group in whole or in part.
Attempting to prevent births within the group.
Moving children of the group to another group by force.
Not everyone agrees with this definition.
Some say that it is too wide and difficult to prove.
How can you tell if someone has the intent to destroy a whole group?
Genocidal acts often happen during times of war.
In a war, ethnic and religious groups often act against each other.
It can be difficult to prove the intent to destroy a whole group of people.
Also, people ask, what does in part mean?
What if an army general killed ten members of a particular ethnic group during a war?
Could he be charged with genocide?
People claim that too many situations could be called genocide.
Then the word loses its powerful meaning.
Elaine de Stakes is the former head of the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders.
He wrote a book on genocide in the 20th century.
He said, Genocide is a crime on a different level than all other crimes against humanity.
It involves the intent to completely destroy the chosen group.
Genocide is both the most serious and the greatest of the crimes against humanity.
People like Desteksi want to keep genocide as an extreme, unusual crime.
They want to make sure that an extreme crime can receive just punishment.
They claim that too many people can use the word genocide for many different crimes in war.
Then, they say, no one acts against it.
Not everyone agrees with this way of thinking.
Gregory Stanton is the president of the international organization Genocide Watch.
Stanton believes that using the word genocide more often will not make people punish it less seriously.
He writes, I can say that policy makers do not act because of a special word.
Even if a special word is named, if they do not want to act for other reasons, they will not.
Other people say that naming genocide has no purpose, because genocide still happens.
The country of Rwanda is a tragic example of this.
For many years there had been political disputes in Rwanda between the Hutu and the Tutsi tribes.
In April of 1994, Members of the Hutu tribes began killing Tutsis.
In 100 days, more than 800,000 Rwandans died.
No country acted to stop this mass killing.
The countries that signed the Genocide Convention did not do anything.
Although the Convention states that nations must punish genocide, it does not say they must prevent genocide.
Punishing genocide does happen.
In 1995, one year after the genocide in Rwanda, another genocide happened in Srebrenica during the Bosnian War.
During this war, three different ethnic groups were in conflict with each other.
The Serbs, Bosnians and Croats.
They were fighting over territory.
But in July, the Serbs captured the town of Srebrenica.
They forced 25,000 to 30,000 Bosnian women, children and older people to leave.
During this time, the Serbian military killed more than 8,000 Bosnian men and boys.
International courts have ruled this event as genocide.
These courts have charged more than 30 people on genocide charges in Srebrenica.
International courts have also made charges against individuals involved in the Rwandan genocide.
They have tried and punished almost 30 people.
But is this enough?
Is this what the UN Genocide Convention is for?
Punishing people after horrifying events happen?
The Genocide Convention was a chance for the world to name a horrible crime.
It was a chance to declare that the global community will stand against it and punish it.
But these moral positions also gave the world the responsibility to prevent genocide.
The United Nations recognizes that the international community does not always do this.
So in 2004, the UN created two special advisor jobs.
One is for the prevention of genocide.
The other is on the responsibility to protect against genocide.
These advisors work together.
They investigate, spread information, and call governments and organizations to act.
Adama Deing is the UN Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide.
In December of 2014, on the 66th anniversary of the UN Genocide Convention, Dien gave a speech in New York.
He expressed the same aims as Raphael Limkin and all people who dream of completely ending the crime of genocide.
He said, We remember the millions of men and women who have lost their lives to genocide.
We owe to them and to ourselves and to future generations to create a world free of genocide.
We are still far from that.
But we aim to make it happen.
We need to think about the importance of the Genocide Convention.
We need political leadership from member states.
We need courage to take steps that are not always easy.
The writer of this program was Jen Hawkins.
The producer was Michio Ozaki.
The voices you heard were from the United Kingdom and the United States.
All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight.
You can listen to this program again, and read it, on the internet.
This program is called, Preventing Genocide.
We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program.
Goodbye.
