African Genocides

During the 1960’s, most African countries previously held by the Europeans were released from colonial rule. The Europeans didn’t put in place any government or infrastructure before they relinquished control. This vacuum of power led to an influx of totalitarian regimes and dictatorships followed by a pandemic of poverty across the continent. Many of these dictators aligned with the Soviet Union, who further exploited Africa’s vast natural resources with no compensation given to the local people. In the past half century, some of the Soviet aligned dictators and hierarchies have been toppled in violent civil wars and replaced by democratic elections. However this new concept of African “democracy” has not brought peace and prosperity with
However before one can decipher the true root cause of genocides, one must first have an understanding about what genocide is. The number of African genocides that have happened and their severity depends on the definition of genocide. The most commonly recognized definition of genocide is that of the UN. This definition rose in popularity during the 1950’s in Germany. The term “genocide” was coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin just after the Holocaust during the Nuremberg Trials. After the trials in 1948, the UN formally endorsed the term genocide as a description of crimes against humanity, when The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1 (CPPCG)
However, the UN definition is highly flawed. It has been called vague and unclear by many scholars because it doesn’t include the millions of lives lost because of civil wars or governmental opposition. Noor Akbar sums it up best in his manuscript, How Should We Define Genocide?, “By making the victim group inclusive...and limiting physical elements to exclude traces of ethnocide, this definition resolves the problems inherent in the UN definition.” 1 Using a broader definition of genocide, one that includes “indiscriminate, systematic killing of one group...in time of war or peace,” 1 at least a dozen genocides have occurred across Africa, killing tens of millions.