Description
Despite the development of a norm cluster on the condemnation of the crime of genocide, including the norm on the prevention and punishment of genocide, the non-impunity norm or Responsibility to Prosecute, and the Responsibility to Protect, the ‘crime of crimes’ continues to be committed to date often with impunity. This is often attributed to competing interests within the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) or to non-Western states’ insufficient socialization into the anti-genocide norms. However, counterintuitively, the proposed paper highlights the agency of the norm violators in legitimizing their misbehavior to international audiences. To do so, those accused of genocide contest the anti-genocide norms by exploiting the ambiguities sorrounding the definition of genocide, thus affecting the implementation of the norms. The paper therefore posits that genocide perpetrators aim to prevent a consensus on the definition of the violations as genocide from emerging within the international community, most notably the UNSC, the Secretary-General and regional organizations, consequently impeding any potential punishment measures. Despite being the most prominent case of genocide in the 21st century and numerous human rights NGOs’ calls for action, the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar has been neglected by the international community and collective action to punish Myanmar’s leaders is absent. This paper will draw on the constructivist theory of norm contestation to carry out a qualitative analysis of the discourse advanced by genocide perpetrators and those who defend them (i.e. Aung San Suu Kyi and her defense lawyers). It aims to analyze how genocide perpetrators contest the anti-genocide norms and discursively justify their use of genocidal violence by persuading their target audience and/or silencing their opponents. This paper asserts that an understanding of how genocide perpetrators legitimize their actions to international audiences provides the basis not only to account for why impunity often prevails, but also to reflect on the current state, strengths and flaws of the anti-genocide norms.
