The Hugo Valentin Lecture 2010: Professor William Schabas

What's in a Word? Atrocity Crimes and the “Genocide” Label

Professor William A. Schabas

National University of Ireland, Galway

The eighth Hugo Valentine Lecture is given by Professor William A. Schabas at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Schabas is professor of international law with a focus on human rights and director of Ireland's Center for Human Rights at the National University. He is one of the world's foremost authorities in his field. As a lawyer, he has prosecuted human rights cases in the United States Supreme Court, the Supreme Court of Canada and in other prominent legal arenas. He has also served as a member of the UN Human Rights Committee and, between 2002 and 2004, as a member of Sierra Leone's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He has published a large number of works with significant influence in areas central to research and teaching on human rights and genocide. His books include Genocide in International Law (2009), War Crimes and Human Rights (2008) and The UN International Criminal Tribunals: The Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sierra Leone (2006) – all published by the highly regarded Cambridge University Press.

The evening's lecture deals with the term genocide and how it came about as a reaction to the limitations of the classification crimes against humanity, which was developed during the Nuremberg trials. In recent years, there has been an expansion of the heading crimes against humanity in international law so that today it covers all related disputes where the term genocide does not easily fit. At the same time, international courts have tried to oppose the expansion of the interpretative framework for the concept of genocide, such as when the victims or their representatives consider that a classification other than genocide would mean trivialization or "denial". There is thus a tension between a legal, internationally recognized concept of genocide and a more popular or everyday understanding.