This December marks 70 years since the ratification of the Genocide Convention, an anniversary that reminds us of the failed promise of "Never Again." 

To mark this important milestone, GJC released a groundbreaking legal analysis of the gender-based crimes of genocide. The report outlines how the continued failure to acknowledge the role gender plays in genocidal violence has undercut the development of an effective legal framework to prevent and punish genocide. 

The international community must learn from the shortcomings of seven decades of genocide prosecutions and failed prevention efforts. With accountability proceedings on the horizon for the Yazidis and Rohingya, the gendered crimes of genocide must not be ignored.

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GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan and international law barrister Sareta Ashraph wrote an op-ed in Just Security on the importance of recognizing the role that gender plays in genocide.

One of the women who did manage to escape was Nadia Murad. Nadia, along with the rest of her village of Kocho, was trapped by ISIL until August 15, 2014. Then, ISIL executed most of the village’s men and older boys, and forcibly transferred women and children deeper into ISIL-controlled territory. After enduring three months in captivity as a sex slave, Nadia, who was 21 at the time, escaped through her own bravery and with the help of a Muslim family. Now, she campaigns to bring attention and justice for the Yazidi genocide, and the sexual violence committed as an essential part of ISIL’s annihilative violence. This week, she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for her work.

Her acceptance speech came one day after the 70^th anniversary of the U.N. General Assembly’s adoption of the Genocide Convention, which first codified the crime of genocide. The Convention’s understanding of the crime of genocide owes much to Raphael Lemkin, whose work, reflections, and advocacy spurred the international community and the then-fledgling United Nations to action. The Convention sets out binding legal obligations on States to not commit, and to prevent, suppress and punish genocide. These obligations did not protect Nadia and other Yazidis captured by ISIL in August 2014. ISIL’s genocide against the Yazidis was largely not prevented by the international community, and no prosecutions for genocide have yet occurred. This is not unique, as recent reports about attacks on Myanmar’s Rohingya community indicate. Despite the Convention’s venerated status, there has been relatively low compliance with the legal obligations it entails.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – December 7, 2018

[New York] – Today, the Global Justice Center (GJC) released the first comprehensive legal analysis of the gender-based crimes of genocide. Over the past four years, the world has witnessed at least two genocidal campaigns—against the Yazidis in Iraq and against the Rohingya in Myanmar. Widespread sexual and gender-based violence was central to both, as in the genocides in Darfur, Rwanda, Srebrenica, and Guatemala. The new report, Beyond Killing, details the role that gender plays in the commission of genocide and the role it must therefore play in efforts to prevent and punish it.

For too long, the understanding of genocide has centered on killing, a genocidal act that most often impacts men. Women and girls are more likely to survive the initial wave of killings—facing enslavement, beatings, starvation, degradation, and other acts that form constitutive acts of genocide. Survivors of these abuses are not just witnesses to the genocide: they are its intended targets and require accountability and reparations. When the gendered, non-killing crimes of genocide go unrecognized, women and girls, in particular, are denied justice for the abuses they have suffered.

From Dec.6, 2018 13:00 until 15:00

At World Forum, Africa Room, The Hague, Netherlands

The Global Justice Center is proud to participate in this side event for the 17th Session of the Assembly of States Parties to the International Criminal Court hosted by the American Bar Association (ABA) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).

The roundtable discussion will focus on current and upcoming challenges faced by the International Criminal Court, and the ways in which the Court’s recent work has confronted and responded to pressing global challenges. Experts will discuss issues posed by recent criticism of the Court from those implicated in its examinations and investigations, the increasingly diverse range of examinations and investigations undertaken through the Court and other global criminal justice processes, and opportunities for accountability posed by the Court’s recent cases and decisions, including in Afghanistan and Myanmar.

Speakers:

• Katherine Gallagher, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights
• Amb Stephen Rapp, Visting Fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and former US Ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice
• Michael Greco, former President of the ABA, and current Chair of the ABA's ICC Project
• Akila Radhakrishnan, President of the Global Justice Center
• Kate Vigneswaran, Senior Legal Advisor at the International Commission of Jurists

Moderator:

• Christopher (“Kip”) Hale, Atrocity Crimes Attorney and Term Member, Council on Foreign Relations