"In this study Polish emigre Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the term 'genocide' and defined it as a subject of international law"--Provided by publisher.

"In this pathbreaking study Polish emigre Raphael Lemkin [1900-1959] coined the term "genocide" and defined it is a subject of international law. While the term has come to mean the extermination of a people, Lemkin used it to describe all programs that sought to increase "Aryan" birthrate while working to exterminate the social, cultural and economic independence of non-Germanic peoples.

This case study highlighting the story of Raphael Lemkin challenges everyone to think deeply about what it will take for individuals, groups, and nations to take up Lemkin's challenge. To make this material accessible for classrooms, this resource includes several components: an introduction by Genocide scholar Omer Bartov; a historical case study on Lemkin and his legacy; questions for student reflection; suggested resources; a series of lesson plans using the case study; and a selection of primary source documents. Born in 1900, Raphael Lemkin, devoted most of his life to a single goal: making the world understand and recognize a crime so horrific that there was not even a word for it. Lemkin took a step toward his goal in 1944 when he coined the word "genocide" which means the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group. He said he had created the word by combining the ancient Greek word "genos" (race, tribe) and the Latin "cide" (killing). In 1948, three years after the concentration camps of World War ii had been closed forever, the newly formed United Nations used this new word in a treaty that was intended to prevent any future genocides. Lemkin died a decade later. He had lived long enough to see his word widely accepted and also to see the United Nations treaty, called the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by many nations. But, sadly, recent history reminds everyone that laws and treaties are not enough to prevent genocide. Individual sections contain footnotes.

Raphaël Lemkin (1900-1959) coined the word "genocide" in the winter of 1942 and led a movement in the United Nations to outlaw the crime, setting his sights on reimagining human rights institutions and humanitarian law after World War II. After the UN adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948, Lemkin slipped into obscurity, and within a few short years many of the same governments that had agreed to outlaw genocide and draft a Universal Declaration of Human Rights tried to undermine these principles. This intellectual biography of one of the twentieth century's most influential theorists and human rights figures sheds new light on the origins of the concept and word "genocide," contextualizing Lemkin's intellectual development in interwar Poland and exploring the evolving connection between his philosophical writings, juridical works, and politics over the following decades. The book presents Lemkin's childhood experience of anti-Jewish violence in imperial Russia; his youthful arguments to expand the laws of war to protect people from their own governments; his early scholarship on Soviet criminal law and nationalities violence; his work in the 1930s to advance a rights-based approach to international law; his efforts in the 1940s to outlaw genocide; and his forays in the 1950s into a social-scientific and historical study of genocide, which he left unfinished. Revealing what the word "genocide" meant to people in the wake of World War II—as the USSR and Western powers sought to undermine the Genocide Convention at the UN, while delegations from small states and former colonies became the strongest supporters of Lemkin's law—Raphaël Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide examines how the meaning of genocide changed over the decades and highlights the relevance of Lemkin's thought to our own time.

Presents the never-before-published autobiography of Raphael Lemkin, who immigrated to the U.S. during World War II and made it his life's work to fight genocide, a term he coined, with the might of the U.N. Genocide Convention.

Inspired by recent works on Nazi empire, this book provides a framework to guide occupation research with a broad comparative angle focusing on human interactions. Overcoming national compartmentalization, it examines Nazi occupations with attention to relations between occupiers and local populations and differences among occupation regimes. This is a timely book which engages in historical and current conversations on European nationalisms and the rise of right-wing populisms.

Historically delineates the problems of genocide as a concept in relation to rival categories of mass violence.

The law of occupation imposes two types of obligations on an army that seizes control of enemy land during armed conflict: obligations to respect and protect the inhabitants and their rights, and an obligation to respect the sovereign rights of the ousted government. In theory, the occupant is expected to establish an effective and impartial administration, to carefully balance its own interests against those of the inhabitants and their government, and to negotiate the occupation's early termination in a peace treaty. Although these expectations have been proven to be too high for most occupants, they nevertheless serve as yardsticks that measure the level of compliance of the occupants with international law. This thoroughly revised edition of the 1993 book traces the evolution of the law of occupation from its inception during the 18th century until today. It offers an assessment of the law by focusing on state practice of the various occupants and reactions thereto, and on the governing legal texts and judicial decisions. The underlying thought that informs and structures the book suggests that this body of laws has been shaped by changing conceptions about war and sovereignty, by the growing attention to human rights and the right to self-determination, as well as by changes in the balance of power among states. Because the law of occupation indirectly protects the sovereign, occupation law can be seen as the mirror-image of the law on sovereignty. Shifting perceptions on sovereign authority are therefore bound to be reflected also in the law of occupation, and vice-versa.

Based on previously inaccessible material from international archives, Human Rights in the Shadow of Colonial Violence examines the relationship between emerging human rights concepts after 1945 and repressive British and French actions against anticolonial movements in Africa.