60 years after the UN Convention - Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation

violence, legitimacy and dynamics of genocide – notions of mass violence examined 41
In this way, the display of the means of violence not only underscores
the legitimacy of such particular violence, but it also symbolically sanctions
concrete violent actions. The sanctioning of violent acts happens of
course through an array of legal instruments, such as laws, ordinances,
administrative orders or police action allegedly taken in the face of imminent
risk or danger. Lastly, state courts may rule that acts of violence
by individuals, even if resulting in someone’s death, may have been legitimate
because such action was taken in self-defence.
While concrete actions of violence as well as whole fi elds of violent
action are sanctioned by the state in this way, the state also defi nes
what is to be understood by illegitimate violence. An important recent
instance is domestic violence, which in many countries has been
included in the realm of illegitimate violence and therefore ostracised,
at least by being included in acts to be prosecuted under criminal
law. This came about as a consequence of intense public debate.
Characteristically, legal provisions were not suffi cient in every case to
ensure adequate police action. In this way, the case of domestic violence
shows not only the malleability even of offi cial and statutory
notions of violence, which thus emerge as subject to public debate
and political decision-making; it also reveals an intricate and always
precarious interplay between state institutions and civil society actors
who claim rights and in this case also sanctions against acts that
are legally ostracised but whose designation as such is still the subject
of public controversy; in the case of domestic violence, it also shows
the resentment and recalcitrance that go back to patriarchal concepts
and interests.
In sum, the state legitimates and carries out a wide range of violent
acts, even though precisely not any kind of violence. Such defi nition
and sanctioning takes place above all through the legal system in the
modes just outlined, and in particular through the actions of its coercive
apparatuses, the military and the police. Signifi cantly, violence
legitimated and exerted by the state is rarely designated as such, making
violence appear as non-state, illegitimate action. A critique of
the law, in particular along the lines mapped out by Benjamin (1980),
however, would expose this as, precisely, an ideological cloak hiding
from view the pervasive and systematic violence, both implicit
and explicit, upon which the very existence of the state is predicated.
However, such an indictment should not obliterate the important
distinction that exists between the domestic and the international. In
particular, whereas the modern state is normally considered to be under
an obligation to extend a certain protection towards its citizens,
which also includes shielding them from wanton acts of violence or