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against the Greek military junta. It demonstrates the centrality of torture as the
center of gravity for human rights activism in the period. The case study gives
much needed specificity to the oft-cited transnational human rights boom that
emerged in the 1970s. Daniel Cohens moderate revisionism on the role of the
Holocaust in the nascent post-war human rights order is similarly strong, bringing
precision and clarity to assertions that have often been made in the form of sweeping generalizations. Mark Bradleys discussion of the Universal Declaration is
brief, but its observations about the unusual moment of the 1940s are important
and timely.
For specialists pursuing human rights history, and those engaged with debates
about postwar international organization and movements, virtually all the chapters
in these volumes will be valuable. Alongside the works from Daniel Whelan,
Daniel Maul and Samuel Moyn, these books are lodestars for the current trajectory
of human rights history. Somewhat more historical, a little more skeptical and
emphatic on the need for context and contingency, they demonstrate the value
of treating human rights as a truly historical subject of inquiry. Many of these
virtues were already apparent in previous landmark works. But the newer generation of scholarship has forced historians to outline their approaches more transparently and emphatically, and to avoid confusion between advocacy and analysis.
Roland Burke # 2013
La Trobe University, Australia
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2012.759399
Notes and References
1 Kenneth Cmiel, Review essay: the recent history of human rights, American Historical Review, Vol. 109, No.
1, 2004, pp. 117 135; Reza Afshari, On the historiography of human rights reflections on Paul Gordon
Laurens The evolution of international human rights: visions seen, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 29, No.
1, 2007, pp. 1 67; Samuel Moyn, The last utopia: human rights in history (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press
of Harvard University Press, 2010).
2 Lynn Hunt, Inventing human rights: a history (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007).

Genocide and political groups

David L. Nersessian
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010
329 pp., $154 (hbk)
David Nersessians Genocide and political groups references one of the most
lamented lacunae of the 1948 Genocide Convention, and consequently one of
the most enduring issues in genocide studies. As late as November 1948, in the
deliberations of the Sixth (Legal) Committee drafting the conventions text, it
was proposed that political groups be granted the same protection as national, ethnical, racial and religious collectivities. The committees initial vote in favour of
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including political groups was 29 in favour to 13 against. . . with 9 abstentions

(p. 109). Yet opponents raised diverse objections:
The Soviets felt that political groups were incompatible with the so-called scientific definition of genocide. Other nations claimed that political groups were difficult to identify and
lacked the stability inherent in other categories. The third [objection] was a pragmatic view
that including political groups would reduce participation in the treaty. (p. 109)

In the end, a negotiated political compromise was arrived at (p. 111), spearheaded by the US. While expressing regret at the outcome, the US argued that
including political groups could jeopardize widespread support for the convention
(which, ironically, the US itself would not ratify until the 1980s). So political
groups were droppedbut not because of a theoretical determination that they
were unsuitable, Nersessian stresses (p. 111). Indeed, in the process of ratifying
the convention, no fewer than eleven states chose to overtly recognize political
groups in their domestic legislation on genocide: Bangladesh, Cambodia,
Columbia [sic], Costa Rica, Cote dIvoire, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Lithuania,
Panama, Poland, and Slovenia, while nine others recognize a broad form conception of genocide, in which groups may be defined by any arbitrary criterion
(p. 112).
Nersessians core assertion is that the exclusion of political groups [from the
Genocide Convention] has proved to be an utterly impractical distinction over
the past 60 years, and there is no justifiable reason to continue to hold reasonable
progress on this crime hostage out of a misguided sense of fidelity to the past
(p. 217). His argument begins with a commendably clear and concise overview
of the conventions drafting; the fault elements of mens rea, actus rea, and
special intent; and an especially provocative discussion of Human groups and
genocide (Chapter 4), which decisively quashes the notion that the groups protected by the convention are characterized by permanence, stability, and
inalienability, as political groups supposedly are not (p. 54). Nersessian also
devotes intriguing passages to creative interpretations of the convention under
national law, especially the Spanish Audiencia Nacionals assertion that political
groups could be granted protection under a catch-all category of national groupings. The Audiencias decision, rendered in the Augusto Pinochet case, was subsequently overturned by higher courts.
This sophisticated legal theoretical discussion culminates in a crucial section
on Political groups and political genocide (pp. 7685), in which Nersessian
states the case for including political groups as a protected category. Among his
key contentions is that Political rights are important rights that have a similar
(albeit not identical) level of international acceptance and recognition as, for
example, the rights of ethnic minorities. Moreover, national, racial, ethnic and
religious characteristics are so often used as a proxy for political identity, and
thus in practice political groups often overlap significantly with the enumerated
group categories (p. 76). Chapter 6, on The Role of Other International
Crimes, explores the separate framing of crimes against humanityespecially
the crime of persecution, which Nersessian rightly considers the closest to
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genocide, requiring as it does a specific discriminatory intent (p. 155) rather than
just a systematic policy of criminal behaviour toward civilian populations. These
observations on persecution and genocide are the most enlightening and stimulating I have read.
Perhaps the most urgent reason for incorporating political groups is the simple
fact that there have been many historic examples of political genocide (p. 76).
Among the examples that Nersessian cites are the millions of political victims
of communist regimes in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe; the Indonesian
genocide of the mid-1960s; Cambodias Khmer Rouge holocaust; and diverse
acts of political extermination in Uganda, Equatorial Guinea, Guatemala and
Argentina (pp. 189 190). So what is to be done?
Nersessian does not propose that the targeting of political groups should be subsumed under persecution or another crime against humanity. At the same time,
he emphatically does not recommend that the Genocide Convention be revisited
and redrafted. While the convention contemplated future revision, and any contracting party can make a rest to alter [it], he deems any efforts to directly amend
the Genocide Convention itself to be unworkable in practice (p. 205). Instead,
Nersessian argues that A better approach would be to follow the progressive
example utilized with the Geneva Convention and to create an Optional Protocol
to the Genocide Convention, which states could ratify if they wish (p. 206). He
offers a draft text which merely substitutes political group for group in
Article II of the convention (e.g., Killing members of the political group, Forcibly transferring children of the political group to another political group,
p. 206), leaving all other wording intact. States that already recognize political
genocide in their domestic genocide legislation would likely sign on, and over
time, other signatories likely would also be drawn to the Optional Protocol. But
the crime of political genocide. . . would not apply with respect to any state
that refused to affirmatively support it (p. 210).
It is an elegant argument, and I can find few logical flaws in it, although Im not
sure Nersessian has fully parsed the issue of distinguishing political groups that
legitimately require protection from those that have no moral or legal claim to
it. This is pertinent with regard to political groups that states designate as subversive: these are precisely the groups most likely to be targeted for political genocide. It may be self-evident, as Nersessian asserts, that politically-inspired
criminal organizations like Al Qaeda have crimes against humanity as their fundamental modus operandi, and thus do not merit protection as such (p. 214). But
separating such criminal/terrorist organizations from political groups who
employ defensive violence against a predatory or murderous state may be a
harder task than he acknowledges.
There are some mistakes and typos in Nersessians text, including the disappointingly consistent rendering of Colombia as Columbia, and a wince-inducing
error on the very first page, claiming that the Rwandan genocide exacted a toll ten
times that of the 7,500 victims of the Srebrenica massacre. These are fairly minor
glitches in an otherwise rigorous and well-researched volumeone that also
includes a highly useful appendix of Unofficial Translations of Domestic Laws
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on Genocide from 84 States (pp. 280 324). More regrettable is the fact that
Oxford University Press has chosen to list the volume at a frankly prohibitive
price. It is to be hoped that a paperback edition will make Genocide and political
groups somewhat more accessible for individual purchase. This groundbreaking
work deserves a wide audience.
Adam Jones # 2013
University of British Columbia
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2012.759401

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