HGS Annual Lecture 2024: In Defence of the Concept of Genocide
Eighty years ago, as the final winter of the Second World War began, the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin introduced the idea of “genocide” to describe the deliberate destruction of population groups that he saw the Nazi occupiers committing in Europe. Four years later, his idea was enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Today, the idea and the Convention are invoked to describe, and potentially criminalise, atrocities in the Ukraine, Gaza and other wars.
Yet there remain strong reservations about the genocide idea among lawyers and scholars of war and violence, leading some to call for replacing it with other descriptive and legal terms. In this lecture, Professor Martin Shaw will outline the debate and its relevance to current events, explaining what we should understand by “genocide” and why it is an essential idea for everyone concerned with mass atrocities.
After the lecture, there will be a Q&A with the speaker.
Date and time: 17 October, 2024, 16:00hr
Location: Aula Universiteit van Amsterdam, Singel 411, Amsterdam
About Martin Shaw
Martin Shaw is a Research Professor at the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals and emeritus professor at Sussex University. He published What is Genocide? (2015), War and Genocide (2003) en Genocide and International Relations (2013). At the moment, he is working on his new books The Return of Genocide: The Idea and Its Uses after Gaza, which will be published in late 2025.
Registration
Attendance is free. To register for this lecture, please send an e-mail to bestuurssecretariaat@niod.knaw.nl before October 15.
Programme
- 15:45 Doors open
- 16:00 Introduction by Uğur Üngör
- 16:05 Lecture by Martin Shaw and Q&A
- 17:15 Drinks