Architecture of Atrocity
Where can you interrupt the process?
Genocide is a process of committing systematic persecution and violence with the intent to eliminate a targeted group, often including mass murder.
Genocide doesn’t happen all at once. It’s a process that builds over time that can be interrupted at various points. One element of this process is dividing a community into isolated groups in order to weaken their connection with other groups.
Language and Attitudes. This process of division begins with language and attitudes. This looks like the normalization of stereotypes about people’s real or perceived identities, such as their race, religion, nationality, or beliefs.
Avoidance. When these attitudes and beliefs become internalized and normalized, it can lead to actions of avoidance such as exclusion, treating people as inferior, or scapegoating.
Discrimination. Once these individual beliefs and actions become widely accepted or tolerated, policy leaders are empowered to enact discriminatory laws and systems. These policies target certain groups, legalizing discrimination and denying them human and civil rights.
Violence. As this discrimination becomes part of official systems, acts of hate and violence may increase.
Elimination/Genocide. This can create the conditions in which genocide or mass atrocities are possible.
Understanding this escalation helps us recognize the warning signs and take action to interrupt the process before it reaches the point of genocide.
Genocide is preventable.
Image: Installation at the Holocaust Center for Humanity: "Architecture of Atrocity."
Genocide
The phenomenon of genocide can be broadly understood as the process of identity-based group destruction.
The crime of genocide has been defined by Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Article II
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Read more about the Definition of Genocide
Lesson Plans for Teaching about Genocide
- Introduction to Genocide
- Teaching about Genocide
- Modern-Day Genocide, A Study of the Rohingya Minority in Burma
- Crimes Against Humanity and Civilization: The Genocide of the Armenians