The Convention’s definition of genocide may have only originated in 1948, but the act of genocide itself is as old as humanity itself. Since the 20th Century began, genocide has touched nearly every continent, with over 200 million people having lost their lives. It is only by recognizing and understanding these events that we can hope to prevent the resurgence of such divisive ideologies.
Namibia
The first genocide of the 20th Century is widely considered to be the Herero Genocide in South-Western Africa (now Namibia), where 65,00 members of the Herero tribe were killed by German colonialists between 1904-1907. In response to a Herero uprising, German troops systematically slaughtered members of the tribe, either by shooting or enforced slow death in the desert from starvation.
Armenia
The Armenian Genocide refers to the systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire by the Young Turks, during and after the First World War. Although historians and scholars dispute the exact figures and details, it is generally held that some 1.5 million people perished between 1915-1923.
The Ukranian Holodomar
The Holodomor, or Hunger plague, was a famine engineered by Stalin’s Soviet Union as part of a series of actions designed to destroy the Ukrainian nation. The exact number of deaths is hard to determine, due to a lack of records; however it is estimated that up to 7,000,000 people died between 1932-1933.
The Nanking Massacre
The Nanking Massacre, also known as the Rape of Nanking, was a mass murder and war rape that occurred during the six-week period following the Japanese capture of the Chinese city of Nanjing, during the Sino-Japanese war. During this period between 250-300,000 Chinese civilians and disarmed soldiers were murdered, and 20,000–80,000 women were raped by soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army.
The Holocaust
The Holocaust was the systematic state-sponsored murder of approximately 6 million Jews by the Nazi regime in Germany during World War Two. During the war, ghettos, transit camps, forced labor camps and concentration camps were created by the Germans and their collaborators to imprison Jews, Gypsies, and other victims of racial and ethnic hatred.
Cambodia
Despite the ratification of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, genocide continued to happen, with over 2 million Cambodians losing their lives in the killing-fields of the Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979. This took place through the combined result of political executions, starvation and forced labour, intended to transform Cambodia into a completely communist society.
Bosnia
The Bosnian genocide took place in 1992-1995 when, in the chaos caused by the break of Yugoslavia, Serbian nationalists began a genocidal campaign against the Bosnian Muslims, killing some 200,000. This culminated in the massacre in Srebrenica, a UN enclave, in July 1995 where the infamous Vojska Republike Srpske, led by Ratko Mladic, massacred 8,000 Bosnian men.
Rwanda
In 1994, in the tiny central African country of Rwanda, a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus lost their lives at the hands of the Interahamwe, the extremist Hutu militia. For 100 days, there was non stop slaughter that the rest of the world did little to prevent.
Sudan
In 2003, began the conflict in Darfur, Sudan, where the government- sponsored militia, the Arab Janjaweed, laid waste to the region and killed between 250,000 to 400,000 people, mostly from the Fur, Zaghawa and Masalit ethnic groups. Although the mass-murder and widespread destruction of African villages that was seen in Darfur from 2003-2005 has come to an end, approximately 2.7 million people remain displaced, both in and outside Sudan’s boarders, too afraid to return to their homes.
Recently, Aegis has broadened the focus of its Darfur work to concentrate on prospects for peace and stability across the whole of Sudan. Recent clashes in South Sudan have caused serious concern that the shaky peace brought about by the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) could collapse. The CPA ended 20 years of civil war between North and South Sudan, a conflict in which up to 2 million people died. If it were to fail now, the consequences would be disastrous.
