The weeks-long conference at the United Nations to produce an Arms Trade Treaty is ending without the creation of a treaty. None of the draft treaties which have circulated in the past several days came remotely close to finding consensus support. The impossibility of achieving consensus involved a wide variety of issues and nations, far […]
Archive | Genocide
Ecstatic crowds in Libya celebrating imminent use of U.S. military force against Gaddafi
By David Kopel on March 17, 2011 7:08 pm in Genocide, International Human Rights Law, International Law
U.N. Security Council Resolution passes 10-0. Live feed from Benghazi on Al Jazeera English. The Resolution authorizes “all necessary measures” except military occupation of Libya. By my reading, the authorization includes destruction of Gaddafi’s anti-aircraft defenses, and of his air force and its mercenary pilots. As President Reagan once said, “We begin bombing in five […]
Text of U.N. Security Council draft resolution on Libya
By David Kopel on March 17, 2011 5:28 pm in Genocide, International Human Rights Law, International Law
Right here, provided by the Inner City Press, which has long been the best English-language media covering the United Nations. The resolution authorizes member states–acting either through regional organizations or nationally–to “take all necessary measures” to establish a no-fly zone over Libya. It further authorizes the member states to enforce the arms embargo against Libya […]
Frank Dikötter on Mao’s Mass Murders
By Ilya Somin on December 17, 2010 12:48 am in Communism, Genocide, International Human Rights Law, International Law
Back in September, I wrote a post about historian Frank Dikötter’s excellent new book on Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward” terror famine of the early 1960s. Dikotter recently published a New York Times op ed summarizing his thesis: The worst catastrophe in China’s history, and one of the worst anywhere, was the Great Famine of […]
Did Joseph Stalin Commit Genocide?
By Ilya Somin on November 23, 2010 3:14 am in Communism, Genocide, International Human Rights Law, International Law, Russia
In his excellent recent book Stalin’s Genocides, Stanford historian Norman Naimark argues that Joseph Stalin committed genocide and not “merely” mass murder. Few any longer deny that Stalin’s regime slaughtered millions of innocent people. But the Russian government and some Western writers continue to argue that these murders were not genocidal, and that Stalin therefore […]