Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

NATION-BUILDING
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its ranks people with other cultural characteristics. Throughout the nineteenth century in
Europe, as peoples developed a national consciousness, some also became hostile toward
minorities in their midst. By the end of the nineteenth century, an ever-increasing number
of nations broke out of the grip of the Habsburg, Ottoman, and Russian empires, forging territorial
claims that included minorities. Though the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, in the aftermath
of World War I, tried to find peaceful and constitutional solutions to the problem of
minorities, the twentieth century failed to provide security for minority peoples. In 1922,
Turkey and Greece exchanged (amid much suffering and sorrow) their respective Turk and
Greek minorities in order to draw together all members of the national group into a unified
whole, along the lines of racial homogeneity; between 1915 and 1923 Turkey committed
genocide against its Armenian minority; between 1941 and 1945 Nazi Germany killed off
European Jewry in the name of racial purity; the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947
saw massive population transfers take place across the new borders, again, with huge loss of
life and human rights violations; the Tutsi-dominated government in Burundi launched a
wave of genocidal massacres against the country’s Hutu in 1991; in 1994, Hutu killed their
Tutsi neighbors en masse in Rwanda; in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995, Serbs
and Croats engaged in an ethnic war in their quest for ethnically pure territories (which saw
a third population, the Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, the additional target of both Serbs and
Croats at different times); and in Kosovo, in 1998–1999, the Serbs engaged in ethnic cleansing
on a scale that saw nearly a million Kosovar Albanians forced to leave their homes. Thus
did radical völkish nationalism contribute to genocide, a dynamic which has been brought
into the twenty-first century as Government of Sudan (GOS) troops and the Janjaweed (Arab
militias) have been trying since 2003 to eliminate the black Africans of Darfur from Sudanese
soil. Violence in the name of ethnic homogeneity continues to manifest itself as the most
lucid expression of nationalistic zeal.
Nation-building. In relation to the issue of genocide, nation-building refers to the
effort of the international community—generally the United Nations (along with
regional organizations)—to assist a nation in the aftermath of genocide to rebuild its
infrastructure in any number of ways (e.g., establishing and maintaining peace, including
the establishment of fair and just policing units; developing a justice system; helping to
create democratic rule and conducting fair elections; assisting in the development of
economic viability and stability; and the resettling of refugees).
Nation-state. The concept of the nation-state remains a category and concept critically
important for those concerned with genocidally related issues. The 1648 Treaty of
Westphalia (“Peace Treaty between the Holy Roman Empire and the King of France and
Their Respective Allies”), which affirmed the territorial and political sovereignty and
integrity of the nation-state, remains foundational both to civilization and international
law. The invasion of one nation-state by another or group of nation-states, regardless of
reason (e.g., land expansion, economics and resources, genocide), remains among the
root causes of wars of offense, defense, aggression, and the like. Even after genocide has
been formally determined—for example, the case of Bosnia-Serbia-Croatia, as well as
Rwanda, both in the 1990s—issues of state sovereignty and territorial integrity give
pause for either unilateral action on the part of individual states or multinational action
on the part of the United Nations. Questions of international law and treaty obligations
compound the complexities in the desire or effort to stop such acknowledged genocidal
activities.