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The Threat of Genocide: Understanding and Preventing the “Crime of Crimes”

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The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity

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Abstract

This chapter provides a brief introduction to the concept of genocide. From its genesis in the 1940s amid the horrors of World War II, to recent “genocide debates” over the applicability of the word to the plight of the Rohingya people in Myanmar, few legal terms have received as much exposure and notoriety as the “G word” has. A central motivation behind the term’s creation was to sow fear in the hearts of would-be perpetrators of mass atrocities and thus help to prevent future attempts at annihilation of human groups. Seven decades later it may be said that while the power and intensity acquired by the term have exceeded most expectations, the goal of preventing the “crime of crime” from reoccurring remains a vision yet to be fulfilled. The chapter outlines key underlying causes for the perpetration of genocide, presents new insights about its distinctiveness from other mass atrocity crimes, and offers points for continued discussion, as part of the ongoing struggle for transforming the “never again” promise from a cliché to a reality.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Eyal Mayroz

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  1. Eyal Mayroz
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Correspondence to Eyal Mayroz .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

    Steven Ratuva

Section Editor information

  1. Faculdade de Filosofia e Ciências, Sao Paulo State University, Marília, Brazil

    Sérgio Luiz Cruz Aguilar

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Mayroz, E. (2019). The Threat of Genocide: Understanding and Preventing the “Crime of Crimes”. In: Ratuva, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Ethnicity. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2898-5_112

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