Why, not how many: What 6 months of research taught me about proving genocide
The word "genocide" appears in headlines every day, but under international law it has remained one of the hardest crimes to actually prove since 1948. The common misconception around the word genocide is that it simply means that it is a "large massacre," but it is a multi-layered legal definition.
This is because the word usually only emerges after the worst events in history, and therefore it is associated with how many people were killed instead of why they were killed. Whether an event legally qualifies as a genocide must take into account more than the number of deaths. The acts must also target a specific demographic, and the intent to destroy that group must be proven.
Because both sides of my family survived the Armenian Genocide, these concepts were discussed for as long as I can remember. Recently, I decided to dive deeper into the meaning of the word genocide, from a legal perspective.
For six months, I channeled that background into a research paper that examined 80 years of international criminal law under the mentorship of Chapman University Prof. Andrew Matschiner. Entitled "The Weight of a Word: Analyzing the Legal Standards and Historical Lessons of Genocide," the paper has been submitted for consideration at an academic journal.
Studying multiple treaties, statutes and definitions taught me that the word "genocide" isn't something to be thrown around, it has to meet specific requirements, making my family's case even more meaningful and tragic. Indeed, historians and legal scholars overwhelmingly conclude that the genocide, which saw my surviving family members scattered around the world as they escaped death, meets every one of those requirements.
My research focused on international law's biggest bottleneck: dolus specialis (specific intent). Under the 1948 UN Convention, an act only qualifies as genocide if it is committed with intent to destroy one of just four protected groups (national, ethnic, racial, or religious).
But courts have set a higher bar and judges at UN tribunals and the International Court of Justice have ruled that genocidal intent can only be inferred if it is the only reasonable explanation for what happened.
The main issue with this standard is that it can give perpetrators an easy way out, claiming their actions were military strategy in fighting war, or self-defence.
The Holocaust killed 6 million people, the Armenian Genocide up to 1.5 million, and the Rwandan Genocide roughly 800,000 to 1 million. Yet legal scholars remain split on how the crime should be defined.
Rutgers Prof. of Anthropology Alexander Hinton argues the official definition of genocide is too narrow and excludes victims, while Duke University law professor emerita Madeline Morris argues that putting genocide on a pedestal devalues other massive war crimes. I side with Hinton. Making it this difficult for an atrocity to qualify as genocide suggests tragedies of a similar scale are less important, though their loss is just as real.
The truth is, genocide doesn't start with action or weapons. It starts with language, propaganda and motivation such as the radio station in Rwanda, Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM), which fuelled the 100 days of killings of Tutsis during the Rwandan Genocide.
Indeed, modern AI-generated content and social media algorithms can make dehumanization and hate speech even harder to stop today.
Today, social media is a dangerous weapon for subtle propaganda as echo-chambers can shape people's beliefs, leading them to believe in extremist views because they feel "it's the only thing that's right."
With AI, this has become even harder to stop today, as anyone can create fake images, videos and news stories in a matter of seconds, furthering the spread of hate speech and amplifying dehumanization.
And since algorithms will push the content that will evoke the most reactions, that material reaches millions of people before anyone has a chance to take it down.
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