Calling Genocide by Its Rightful Name: Lemkin's Word, Darfur, and the UN Report
2006; University of Chicago Law School; Volume: 7; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1529-0816
Autores Tópico(s)Health and Conflict Studies
ResumoI. INTRODUCTION: THE DISAPPEARING GENOCIDE IN DARFUR Every student of foreign language learns friends-words in new language that look like words in your own but mean something different. In French, experience means experiment, experience. In German Konkurrenz means competition, while the English concurrence means agreement-in antitrust terms, the opposite of competition. Legal language, too, contains false friends-technical legal terms that closely resemble words in ordinary language but mean something different. Twenty-five years ago, as young philosophy teacher with legal training, I taught my first case ever in law school classroom. It contained the word consideration, and I proceeded on the natural assumption that good consideration means an important thing to think about rather than a thing of value given to form contract. The results were predictably comic. But the result can be tragic as well. On January 25, 2005, the International of Inquiry on Darfur Commission or Commission) presented its report Darfur Report or Report) to Secretary-General Kofi Annan.1 The Commission, chaired by the eminent international jurist Antonio Cassese, did meticulous job of investigating possible international crimes in Darfur. Newspaper headlines summarized the Cassese Commission's findings few days later: U.N. Finds Crimes, Genocide in Darfur,2 U.N. Panel Finds No Genocide in Oarfur but Urges Tribunals,3 Murder-But No Genocide,4 Darfur 'Criminal But Genocide,'5 and Sudan's Darfur Crimes Genocide, Says U.N. Report.6 Nearly identical headlines appeared in the Chicago Tribune,7 the Queensland Courier Mail,8 the St. Petersburg Times,9 the Irish Times,10 and the Financial Times.11 Most revealing are headlines from the Herald Sun in Melbourne (Horrors Short of Genocide),12 the Glasgow Herald (UN 'Clears Sudan of Genocide' in Darfur),13 and London's Daily Telegraph (UN Confusion as Sudan Conflict is No Longer 'Genocide').14 Plainly, short of means not as bad as genocide. Clears Sudan of means exoneration-and, coming just two days after headlines declaring that Sudanese officials denied bombing village in Darfur, headline-scanners could be excused for believing that the report had disproven atrocity reports in Darfur. And UN confusion as the Darfur catastrophe is no longer 'genocide' shows the baleful results. The longer knew what to do, because without the word genocide, the mandate for action disappears. Months earlier, United States Secretary of State Colin Powell had labeled the Darfur atrocities genocide.15 Many people remembered that the Clinton administration went through humiliating contortions to avoid the G-word out of fear of being required to do something genocide in Rwanda.16 Powell's forthright use of the forbidden word suggested to many that the Bush administration would be different-better and more honest. Not on my watch, were George W. Bush's famous words genocide inaction.17 Bolstering the hope that the United States would help halt the Darfur atrocities was the fact that Christian groups belonging to President Bush's core constituency were pushing for US action.18 These groups had been concerned Sudan for years because of the massacre of Christians in the North-South civil war-and now, for admirable reasons of principle, they were to back off simply because the victims were Muslims. In 2004, the US Congress passed resolution condemning the Darfur atrocities, and self-consciously labeled them genocide.19 It was less well-known that, contrary to the fears of the Clinton administration, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) imposes legal obligation to act.20 Nevertheless, existing political pressure on both the United Nations and the United States ultimately might have turned the tide. …
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