“Genocide is the crime of destroying national, racial or religious groups.  The problem now arises as to whether it is a crime of only national importance, or a crime in which international society as such should be vitally interested. Many reasons speak for the second alternative.  It would be impractical to treat genocide as a national crime, since by its very nature it is committed by the state or by powerful groups which have the backing of the state.  A state would never prosecute a crime instigated or backed by itself.” – Raphael Lemkin, 1946

The term genocide did not exist until the mid-1940s, when Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who fled nazi-occupied Europe to the United States, invented the word that he hoped would change the world.  Lemkin urged that genocide – taken from the Greek root geno (race or tribe) and the Latin cide (killing) – be recognized as an international crime, which countries would be averse to permit or, even worse, commit.   

Lemkin, who lost 49 members of his family in the Holocaust, convinced United Nations representatives in 1948 to support the Genocide Convention, the U.N.’s first human rights treaty, which compelled signatories to “undertake to prevent and punish” genocide. 

But since Lemkin’s invention of the G word, several American Presidents, including Ronald Reagan, George Bush, Sr. and Bill Clinton, have refused to use it.  Bill Clinton even refused to characterize the Rwanda massacre as genocide, despite the fact that the fatal butchering of 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus represented one of the most intense and atrocious campaigns of mass murder in the 20th century.

Recently at the United Nations, President George W. Bush, in a striking departure from his predecessors’ stance, including that of his father, used the G word and recognized the “genocide” occurring in Darfur, Sudan.  Secretary of State Colin Powell also made history when he delivered a formal finding of genocide to Congress, something never done by a senior United States official.  “When we reviewed the evidence,” Powell remarked, “we concluded – I concluded – that genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the Janjaweed bear responsibility and that genocide may still be occurring.” 

The Genocide Convention, which prohibits attempts to exterminate “in whole or in part” national, ethnic or religious groups, was created to respond precisely to the type of crimes against humanity currently being perpetrated against Black Darfuris.

Sudan’s government and its mainly Arab Janjaweed militias are systematically murdering Darfur’s Black population, killing tens of thousands and gang raping women and girls. 

The underlying source of the conflict – a rivalry over land, water and other resources between Black farmers and Arab nomads – has been simmering for years, but erupted last year when groups representing Black Darfuris initiated an uprising against Sudan’s government.  The Sudanese government responded by arming the mostly Arab Janjaweed to quell the insurgency.  As part of their campaign, which was supported by bombing raids carried out by the Sudanese air force on Darfur villages, the Janjaweed murdered, raped and pillaged Black civilians.

In September, a 25-year old Black Darfuri woman painted a personal portrait of the horrors endured by Black Darfuris to Amnesty International USA.  She said that her village was attacked by Janjaweed “men on horses and camels” who surrounded the village at midday, and who were “accompanied by soldiers of the government.”  “Two hours later,” she said, “a plane and two helicopters flew over the village and shot rockets. The attackers came into the houses and shot my mother and grandfather, without any word. The attack lasted for two hours and everything was burnt down in the village.”

Tragically, since last year an estimated 70,000 Black Darfuris have died as a result of the rampant violence, hunger and disease.  More than 2 million Black Darfuris have been displaced, with some 200,000 fleeing to squalid refugee camps in neighboring Chad.  The United Nation’s World Health Organization reported that up to 10,000 Darfuris are dying each month in these refugee camps.  Many of the refugees recount the raping of women, torching of villages, and calculated destruction of food supplies and poisoning of water sources by the Janjaweed.

Notwithstanding the Bush Administration’s use of the G word, American aid to Darfur has been woefully anemic.  Powell’s testimony – that “no new action is dictated” by the genocide determination in Darfur - underscores this point.  Signatories to the Genocide Convention can satisfy their obligations by simply calling “upon competent organs of the United Nations” to act or by responding in any other way that “they consider appropriate.” 

Unfortunately, what signatories have considered “appropriate” has simply not addressed Darfur’s greatest need, which is the establishment of an international peace-keeping  coalition.  Though a few African countries, including Rwanda, Nigeria and Tanzania, have volunteered troops to aid Darfur, no major world powers have responded in kind.  Neither has the United Nations proffered the resources – human, financial or otherwise – that would be essential to ending this ethnic cleansing campaign, which promises to claim the lives of many more Black Darfuris.

The Bush Administration apparently believes that it has faithfully discharged its duty under the Genocide Convention by merely using the G word.  But the Bush Administration’s failure is not that they haven’t accurately identified the genocide in Darfur.  Instead, it is that they, like their predecessors, have failed to put an end to it.

Ryan Paul Haygood is an attorney in New York City.

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