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GENOCIDE
In the aftermath of the Nazi atrocities committed during World War II and the subsequent war crimes trials at Nuremburg, the member states of the United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, more commonly known as the 1948 Genocide Convention or "The Genocide Treaty." Its purpose is to define the act of genocide and to condemn it both morally and legally.
The accusation of genocide was clearly not meant to be taken lightly. If such were the case, virtually all parties to war would face the possibility of punishment. Genocide, according to the Convention, consists of acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." In fact, genocide is defined as killing members of a particular group, whether it be a national, racial, ethnic or religious group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, intentionally inflicting on members conditions designed to bring about the physical destruction of the group, preventing births within the group, or forcibly transferring children from the group to another. Moreover, the crime may consist of any of these acts, and need not involve more than one. And the guilty parties may, in the words of the treaty, be constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or even private individuals.
Clearly, any violent conflict, whether it be a full-scale war waged by official armies or a popular revolution against a detested dictator, is likely to cause the death of members of groups representing both sides. And war, almost by definition, involves potential physical and mental harm to participants and civilians alike. So it seems obvious that the Genocide Convention does not make war a crime, per se. This conclusion is at least implied in language that makes genocide a punishable offense whether committed in time of war or peace; in other words, genocide may or may not accompany war, but it is not the same thing as war.
This brings us to the matter of ethnic conflict -- those situations in which the combatants are defined by their ethnic differences. In this case, it would seem fairly obvious that both parties are purposely seeking to kill and/or harm members of the opposing group -- and, more importantly, they do so precisely because of the ethnic (or in some cases religious) identity of the opponent. This alone, in the absence of other necessary factors, cannot be sufficient grounds for invoking the genocide treaty. If it were, Israel and 95 percent of her citizens might find themselves convicted of genocide against Palestinian Arabs; Indonesia would be punished for its ruthless repression of the East Timorese; China would be hauled into the world court for the occupation of Tibet; and the United States would face formal condemnation and penalization by the United Nations for the gratuitous and sadistic slaughter of Iraqi troops, the bloodbath in Somalia, the surrogate wars in Angola and Nicaragua, the attack on Tripoli, the invasions of Panama and Grenada, and much more. But in reality, no powerful nation has ever been held accountable in a "world court" for aggression against a vulnerable opponent.
Ironically, the first proceeding brought expressly under the banner of genocide is the Arusha trial -- the case arising from the mass slaughter in Rwanda that began in 1994. But the Rwanda situation, as utterly catastrophic is it has been, was nonetheless a civil war. And it is not one that differs, except possibly in scale, from a number of other post-colonial conflicts in the southern hemisphere.
As Barry Crawford has noted (Submission to the United Nations Tribunal on Rwanda, London, 1995), "Genocide means more than mass murder. [It] is distinguished from all other forms of killing by the motivation behind it." The critical point is made that western intervention, both military and economic, set the stage for what may be the most memorable mass orgy of human violence in recent times. Rwanda, already impoverished by a World Bank-imposed structural adjustment scheme, had become completely polarized between supporters of the pre-1994 Hutu-led government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RDF), a Tutsi-dominated military force aided and trained by westerners which staged regular raids on the countryside from its base in Uganda. Thus, within hours of President Juvenal Habyarimana's assassination in April of 1994, total chaos erupted country-wide. But, says Crawford, "mass movements and social upheavals cannot be organized in advance by a secret conspiracy and brought into instantaneous action at the push of a button." Thus, he adds, that what happened in Rwanda "was not genocide, but bloody civil war between two bitterly opposed sides struggling for power."
Crawford and others have argued that the prosecution of one group of combatants (Hutu) and not the other (Tutsi) trivializes the concept of genocide and serves to "demonize" Africa -- perpetuating the image of the "pathological" African, thereby allowing western powers to absolve themselves of responsibility for events in the region and legitimizing the "moral authority of the old imperialists in Africa" (Crawford 1995).
The intent of the Genocide Convention, then, was clearly to separate those in positions of power who engage in planned, carefully-executed and premeditated actions to destroy a group of people from those who act in a random or spontaneous manner, no matter how terrible the outcome of a conflict or how intense the ethnic hatreds that may flare during such a confrontation.
Crawford suggests this requirement when he argues: "The idea that the beleaguered Hutu-led government could plan and execute the deliberate annihilation of an entire people, at a time when it could not even organize to sell the coffee beans on which its economy depended, borders on the incredible." In other words, the organization and competence required for an act of genocide simply did not exist in Rwanda.
That an act must be committed by persons or governments in a position of power in order to be genocide seems, in fact, to be the most basic prerequisite for the commission of this most heinous crime. And in Rwanda, as in most local and regional conflicts of this sort, the bloodshed resulted more from a power vacuum than from an effective state apparatus bent on systematically eliminating a targeted group of people.
Defining Power
The idea that genocide is a crime of an authoritarian nature is validated by the context in which the Convention was written -- namely the Nazi-fascist extermination of Jews and East Europeans, an act of calculated mass murder that required effective leadership, a strong and well-ordered political structure, and coordinated, methodical action.
And if genocide is a planned program executed by persons in positions of power against a specific racial, religious or ethnic group, then this raises the question of what constitutes power.
In the strictly political sense, power can be defined as a monopoly on the means of force. Given the political divisions existing in Rwanda since the 1980s, it is difficult to conclude that either the pre-1994 Hutu-majority government or the western-aided RDF had what could even be remotely described as the unilateral ability to impose its will on the other.
This does not mean that no form of absolute power was exercised in Rwanda prior to, during, or after the civil war. That is open to question, but there can be little doubt that western nations played a key role in creating the conditions that led to the conflict. It was well known by Rwanda's Hutu majority since about 1990 that the RDF was being armed and that it intended to overthrow the existing government, install a Tutsi monarchy, and confiscate land belonging to Hutus; in this environment, an intense hatred and fear of Tutsis was kindled among the Hutu population (Carina Tertsakian, Amnesty International, at Africa Direct conference, London, 27 July, 1997). And support for RDF came from western countries, mainly the U.S. and Britain, through the government of Uganda. Belgium, which had originally supported Habyarimana's leadership, eventually switched its position and sided with the RPF, leaving France as the only western country supporting the existing government. In August of 1993, under an agreement signed in Arusha, Tanzania ("the Arusha Accords"), the UN sided with the RPF, and in December of that year, France abandoned Rwanda, leaving Habyarimana virtually isolated (Crawford, 1995).
Moreover, Rwanda's economy had suffered tremendously due to external forces. These included a World Bank and IMF structural adjustment plan and a dramatic fall in the price of coffee, which accounts for about 80 per cent of the nation's trade (Crawford, 1995). The death of Habyarimana on 6 April 1994 came at a time when tensions could not possibly have been higher. As Crawford notes, the war that broke out was incredibly brutal, but it was also beyond the control of anyone ostensibly "in power" anyone in Rwanda.
The invocation of the genocide treaty against Rwanda's old-guard military does nothing to prevent similar situations from occurring elsewhere on the continent. It merely criminalizes the unfortunate participants in a vicious upheaval, the battle-lines for which were drawn early by foreign institutions. Even more to the point, the genocide charge conveniently exonerates the west for its provocative activities in the region. In fact, it could be argued that no one could have foreseen the scale and intensity of the fighting or the enormous loss of life it caused -- with the possible exception of U.S. and British intelligence.
And it is obvious that western nations, acting as bilateral donors of aid and arms or through the UN, played a critical role in the events that led up to the war. World Bank policy is controlled by the United States through a special oversight unit at the Department of the Treasury. The western nations that aided and abetted the RPF did so in a spirit of mutual collaboration. Everything from the collapse of Rwanda's economy to the Arusha conference demands that the Rwandan government accommodate the unpopular Tutsi opposition forces was orchestrated by westerners. Thus, one can conclude that if anyone exercised a "monopoly on the means of force" in Rwanda, it was the U.S. and its allies. And they, more than anyone, could be called perpetrators of genocide.
But this raises yet another question. If genocide is an attempt by persons having the power to act systematically to harm or destroy another group, what conditions must be met in order for their acts to be genocidal? This is an even more complex issue than that of capability.
Demographics
When taken together, the five specified acts that constitute genocide -- killing members of a group, doing bodily or mental harm, imposing conditions calculated to cause the group's destruction, the prevention of births and the transfer of children from the group -- suggest that the acts themselves must have a demographic objective. In other words, the measures described in the text must be an integral part of a larger plan that is, in the words of the treaty itself, "calculated to bring about [the group's] physical destruction in whole or in part." Hence, the will to eradicate a group or to reduce its numbers is a fundamental and necessary element of the crime of genocide.
There can be no doubt that the holocaust in Germany during World War II was an act committed by a people (the Nazi establishment) enjoying absolute power over those under their domination, that it was methodically perpetrated against ethnic, racial and religious groups powerless to resist, and that it served the purpose of "population control." Besides the infamous concentration camps and gas chambers in which millions were exterminated, the Nazi "racial purity" platform included the sterilization of "inferior" elements within Germany society and, later, in occupied territories, as well as the dissemination of contraceptive agents among populations considered "undesirable" by Nazi standards.
Hermann Rauschning, who defected from the Nazi party in the 1930s, warned of the plans of German leaders in a 1940 book called The Voice of Destruction. In that text, he recalled a 1934 conversation in which Hitler said about the peoples of eastern Europe:
"We are obliged to depopulate... We shall have to develop a technique of depopulation... I don't necessarily mean destroy; I shall simply take systematic measures to dam their great natural fertility... There are many ways, systematical and comparatively painless, or any rate bloodless, of causing undesirable races to die out... By doing this gradually and without bloodshed, we demonstrate our humanity." (Rauschning, 1940, at pages 34-38).
On the 27th of April, 1942, an official memo was sent out ordering a campaign of population control against the Russians. It stated, "Every propaganda means, specially the press, radio and movies, as well as pamphlets, booklets, and lectures, must be used to instill in the Russian population the idea that it is harmful to have several children. We must emphasize the expenses that children cause, the good things that people could have had with the money spent on them. We could also hint at the dangerous effect of child-bearing on a woman's health." (Quoted in Harvest of Hate by Leon Poliakov, 1954, at 272- 274).
Another memorandum, prepared at Hitler's request in July of 1942 by his secretary, Martin Bormann, advised: "The Fuhrer believes that we should authorize the development of a thriving trade in contraceptives. We are not interested in seeing the non-German population multiply." (Poliakov, 1954)
And in 1944, yet another official memorandum stressed the same policy: "In order to round out this propaganda in a practical way contraceptives should be quietly distributed (with the Reich bearing the cost). There is no harm in leaving a valve open to the natural desires of the persons of alien blood as long as this will not interfere with cutting off the flow of reproduction among these people of alien race" (Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, Washington, 1949-54, IV:1122, Nuremberg NO-5311).
And, of course, all this occurred even as the Reich undertook well-publicized measures to increase birthrates among German (or "aryan") peoples.
It was this policy of calculated and selective depopulation -- using every available means from birth control to wholesale murder on an unprecedented scale -- that ultimately led to the war crimes trials and the genocide treaty, and not the enormous loss of life that occurred on the battlefield. It is an important distinction, whether the issue is the Rwandan civil war or modern-day population control programs.
It is also telling that ordinary German citizens, many of whom looked favorably on the demographic agenda of the fascist government, were not implicated. The fact that only high-level officials were tried as criminals only reinforces the point that genocide is a crime committed through the coercive power of the state.
Population Control in the Early Years
The introduction of population control as a global undertaking began quietly in 1945 with the introduction of population change as an official subject for data gathering and analysis, research, and policy study at the newly-founded United Nations. The move to include demographic issues was promoted by the United States and Great Britain, and it passed over the objections of the Soviet bloc.
This occurred at a time when western anxiety about low birth rates was at an all-time high. In fact, two years before the creation of the UN, Britain's King George the Sixth had established a special panel to look into the matter of falling fertility at home. That panel, which released its final report in June of 1949, concluded that the downward trend in Britain's birth rate was something unique to the wealthy nations, and that it constituted a tremendous danger to western interests.
Among other things, the royal panel noted the extraordinarily high rate of population growth experienced by the European nations in the previous two centuries, and said: "The increase in population provided both a motive for, and a means to, the development of the modern techniques of production, trade and communications on which present day European standards of living are based, for it provided both an expanding market and an expanding labour supply." Furthermore, it advised that "the growth of European population, and the expansion of the economic system of which it was partly the cause and partly the essential condition, were largely responsible for the extension of European control over inhabited tropical and semi-tropical countries and their development as suppliers of food and raw material" (Royal Commission on Population, His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1949, at page 7).
Noting that population growth continued to take place beyond the borders of the industrial world, the commissioners concluded: "The establishment or continuance among western peoples of sizes of family below replacement level would accentuate a change in relative numbers which threatens in a few generations to be as radical as that between France and Germany in the nineteenth century, and might be as decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the west. The question it should be observed is not merely one of military strength and security; that question becomes merged in more fundamental issues of the maintenance and extension of western values, ideas and culture" (Royal Commission on Population, 1949, at pages 135-136).
In the United States, too, similar worries were being expressed. Frank Notestein, head of an elite demographic research center at Princeton University, warned in 1944 that the development of industry in nations with high fertility rates would only guarantee that western peoples would "become progressively smaller minorities and possess a progressively smaller proportion of the world's wealth and power." Notestein, who soon afterward was chosen the first head of the UN Population Division, admonished: "The determination of national policy toward the underdeveloped regions must be made in light of that fact" (Notestein, in Demographic Studies of Selected Areas of Rapid Growth, Proceedings, 22nd Annual Conference, Milbank Memorial Fund, New York, 1944).
Similar concerns over a potential shift in the balance of global power were expressed forcefully and with alarming frequency by security specialists, corporate bosses, policy planners, and well-connected academics all over the west during this era.
Western promotion of population control in developing regions began officially with the founding of the UN. Assistance was funneled to "private" family planning groups through large American foundations and non-govermental organizations and even such "secret" bureaus of government as the Central Intelligence Agency (see, i.e., Gerard Colby with Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, Harper Collins, 1995).
After at least two military panels in the U.S. formally and publicly recommended that population control be made part of U.S. aid to developing nations, Congress in 1965 voted to include family planning in the overseas development budget. The amount of money set aside for this purpose -- openly described by American legislators as "the population budget" -- has consistently increased from year to year. By the late 1970s, hundreds of millions of dollars in Congressionally-earmarked population funds were going every year to a variety of projects to train so-called "third world" medical personnel to operate family planning clinics, to establish and equip birth control centers, and to advocate host country policies favorable to population control activities. By the mid 1980s, money allocated for other programs (including Economic Support Funds, the Commodity Import Program, the Sahel Development Fund and African Development Fund) was being diverted to family planning campaigns in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. And between 1980 and 1995, the World Bank increased population sector spending from about $100 million a year to over $2.5 billion (a 25-fold increase).
All of this suggests that western leaders, particularly those in the U.S., considered birth curbs in developing countries to be a matter of extremely high priority. And there is much on the record to support that assumption.
In 1988, the Department of Defense commissioned a series of studies on demographic trends and their impact on U.S. national security. A summary of the reports, written by an instructor at the National Defense University in Washington and published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in its Washington Quarterly (Spring 1989) concluded: "As difficult and uncertain as the task may be, policymakers and strategic planners in this country have little choice in the coming decades but to pay serious attention to population trends, their causes, and their effects. Already the United States has embarked on an era of constrained resources. It thus becomes more important than ever to do those things that will provide more bang for every buck spent on national security. To claim that decreased defense spending must lead to strategic debilitation is fatuous. Rather, policymakers must anticipate events and conditions before they occur. They must employ all the instruments of statecraft at their disposal (development assistance and population planning every bit as much as new weapon systems). Furthermore, instead of relying on the canard that the threat dictates one's posture, they must attempt to influence the form that threat assumes."
And a 1991 report commissioned by the U.S. Army Conference on Long Range Planning, published in the Summer 1991 edition of the journal Foreign Affairs, came to an even more remarkable conclusion. Noting the relatively rapid increase of populations in other regions and the pending decline of the west in terms of absolute and relative numbers, the document stated: "By these projections a very different world would seem to be emerging. Such trends speak to pressures for a systematically diminished role and status for today's industrial democracies. Even with relatively unfavorable assumptions about Third World economic growth, the share of global economic output of today's industrial democracies could decline. With a generalized and progressive industrialization of current low-income areas, the Western diminution would be all the more rapid. Thus, one can easily envision a world more unreceptive, and ultimately more threatening, to the interests of the United States and its allies. The population and economic-growth trends described could create an international environment even more menacing to the security prospects of the Western alliance than was the Cold War for the past generation" (emphasis added).
Remarks to the effect that population trends are taken more seriously than even the cold war and that population control should be elevated to the same level of importance as the development of new weapon systems suggest that the United States is serious indeed about imposing birth limits on the non-western peoples of the world. But are such programs necessarily genocidal?
First it is useful to look at the full text of the 1948 United Nations document, which follows. After that, the relevant aspects of the population program are discussed.
CONVENTION on the PREVENTION
and PUNISHMENT of
the CRIME of GENOCIDE
1948
The Contracting Parties,
Having considered the declaration made by the General Assembly of the United Nations in its resolution 96(I) dated 11 December 1946 that genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world;
Recognizing that at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity; and
Being convinced that, in order to liberate mankind from such an odious scourge, international co-operation is required,
Hereby agree as hereinafter provided:
ARTICLE 1
The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace, or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.
ARTICLE 2
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
ARTICLE 3
The following acts shall be punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide
ARTICLE 4
Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals.
ARTICLE 5
The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or of any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3.
ARTICLE 6
Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international panel tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction.
ARTICLE 7
Genocide and the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition.
The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force.
ARTICLE 8
Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3.
ARTICLE 9
Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute.
ARTICLE 10
The present Convention, of which the Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish texts are equally authentic, shall bear the date of 9 December 1948.
ARTICLE 11
The present Convention shall be open 31 December 1949 for signature on behalf of any Member of the United Nations and any non-member State to which an invitation to sign has been addressed by the General Assembly. The present Convention shall be ratified, and the instruments of ratification shall be deposited with the Secretary-General of the United Nations. After 1 January 1950 the present Convention may be acceded to on behalf of any Member of the United Nations and of any non-member State which has received an invitation as aforesaid. Instruments of accession shall be deposited with the Secretary of the United Nations.
ARTICLE 12
Any Contracting Party may at any time, by notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, extend the application of the present Convention to all or any of the territories for the conduct of whose foreign relations that Contracting Party is responsible.
ARTICLE 13
On the day when the first twenty instruments of ratification or accession have been deposited, the Secretary-General shall draw up a proses-verbal and transmit a copy thereof to each Member of the United Nations and to each of the non-member States contemplated in Article 12.
The present Convention shall come into force on the ninetieth day following the date of deposit of the twentieth instrument of ratification or succession.
ARTICLE 14
The present Convention shall remain in effect for a period of ten years as from the date of its coming into force.
It shall thereafter remain in force for successive periods of five years for such Contracting Parties as have not denounced it at least six months before the expiration of the coming period.
Denunciation shall be effected by a written notification addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
ARTICLE 15
If as a result of denunciations, the number of Parties to the present Convention shall become less than sixteen, the Convention shall cease to be in force as from the date on which the last of the denunciations shall become effective.
ARTICLE 16
A request for the revision of the present Convention may be made at any time by any Contracting Party by means of a written notification in writing addressed to the Secretary-General. The General Assembly shall decide upon the steps, if any, to be taken in respect of such a request.
ARTICLE 17
The Secretary-General of the United Nations shall notify all Members of the United Nations and the non-member States contemplated in Article 11 of the following:
(a) Signatures, ratifications and accessions received in accordance with Article 11;
(b) Notifications received in accordance with Article 12;
(c) The date upon which the present Convention comes into force in accordance with Article 13;
(d) Denunciations received in accordance with Article 14;
(e) The abrogation of the Convention in accordance with Article 15;
(f) Notifications received in accordance with Article 16.
ARTICLE 18
The original of the present Convention shall be deposited in the archives of the United Nations.
A certified copy of the Convention shall be transmitted to each Member of the United Nations and to each of the non-member States contemplated in Article 11.
ARTICLE 19
The present Convention shall be registered by the Secretary-General of the United Nations on the date of its coming into force.
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Family Planning?
Population Control?
Or Genocide?
For almost 50 years, the United States has actively worked to cultivate the use of birth control in the developing world. In fact, since 1965, fertility limitation has been a key element of America's "development assistance" to the southern hemisphere. And the stated objective of these overseas population activities -- now funded not just by the U.S. government, but also by the governments of most other developed countries, by huge corporations and private foundations, and by virtually all western-controlled multilateral bodies from the global and regional lending institutions to the social agencies of the UN -- has been to reduce the rates of population growth in the affected nations. The goal of actively "stabilizing" the census count in other countries, however, proved highly controversial. So the programs were soon redefined in terms that drew attention away from the western demographic interest. The following section deals with the ideologies that have been advanced as justification for aggressive advocacy of "family planning."
Argument: Family planning programs are a measure intended only to benefit the reproductive health of women, to allow better child spacing, and to improve the lives of women and children.
Clearly, family planning projects would not be considered genocide if their only purpose and their primary effect were to improve health. But the evidence suggests that this is not the case at all. Enormous amounts of money and effort have gone into surveys to determine existing attitudes toward contraception, to devising strategies to change opinions and beliefs, and to the development and dissemination of propaganda to bring about changes in reproductive behavior. So massive has this effort been that anyone wanting a study of fertility preferences and family size in any given sub-district of Addis Ababa, Lagos, or Dar-es-Salaam at any particular time could probably find a study containing exactly that information either at the UN or with one of scores of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractors. Literally hundreds of millions of dollars has been put into psycho-social research and audience pre-testing for propaganda messages. Billions have been spent by USAID for largely-clandestine "constituency building" efforts overseas -- projects in which funds are provided to "front" groups working to change public policy in such a way that the role of foreign governments is carefully concealed. And still more billions of dollars have gone through government-funded "aid" organizations, private foundations, corporations, and lending institutions to establish and operate service delivery points for western-supplied contraceptives.
Even as all this is done to persuade people to adopt "modern" family planning methods, virtually nothing is spent on medicine. One might expect that, if health were the real concern, there would be a corresponding effort to track down people who fail to seek proper dental care, to make available an unlimited supply of antibiotics and other medicines for the treatment of such deadly diseases as malaria, and to inaugurate an all-out attempt to improve sanitation in nations where water supplies are contaminated or where sewage disposal is inadequate.
But this has not been the case. In fact, the opposite is true. In 1975, according to a 1992 World Bank Operations Evaluation Study (Population and the World Bank: Implications from Eight Case Studies), the government of Kenya spent just under four per cent of its budget on health care. And there was no "national" population program. In 1985, shortly after a wholesale birth control campaign had been launched at the insistence of bank advisors and bilateral aid donors, the portion of the national economy spent for health declined to barely two-tenths of one per cent. And one must take into account the fact that the 1985 budget was undoubtedly smaller than it had been in 1975, the result of diminished public service spending under structural adjustment.
Indeed, by the time of the UN International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in September of 1994, Kenya was virtually without basic medicines and health care personnel had been unpaid for a considerably period of time, according to representatives of Kenyan women's groups attending the Cairo conference. Yet radio and television announcements continually urged the use of family planning.
Exceptionally high maternal mortality rates have been cited as justification for reducing births in developing nations, particularly in Africa. But it is generally acknowledged that first births are statistically far more dangerous than subsequent pregnancies. Reducing the number of sixth, seventh, or eighth births to individual women, in other words, is less likely to prevent the death of women in delivery than is the avoidance of a first birth. So birth control alone could hardly have a major impact on the number of deaths that occur in or after childbirth unless a considerable number of women were to forego childbearing entirely -- something that will not happen any time soon on a voluntary basis in Africa. The more obvious solution, improved obstetrical care for women at risk, has not been a serious part of the program. In fact, complications at childbirth -- caused by such anti-fertility measures as the intra-uterine contraceptive device (IUCD), pills, and improperly-done sterilizations -- are likely to increase as more women are recruited for family planning.
It should also be mentioned that many of the contraceptives distributed in developing nations have been known to cause terrible health problems in developed nations. The IUCD, for instance, became in the 1980s the subject of the largest U.S. class action suit to date. While its use has long since been abandoned at home, the U.S. government continues to export the devices by the tens of millions for use in population programs in the southern hemisphere -- often under conditions that increase the likelihood of side effects while minimizing the chance that there will be effective treatment for serious, life-threatening complications.
Norplant, the device that is surgically placed in a woman's arm, has likewise become the subject of widespread legal claims in the west, and its use has declined dramatically in the industrial world. Among other things, Norplant is believed to cause permanent loss of vision, not to mention long-term bleeding, weakness, and infection. Yet poor women in less-developed countries have been induced to have insertions only to find that the family planning clinics refuse to remove the devices -- even when the women become dangerously ill (BBC Television, London, "Horizons", 6 November 1995).
Problems associated with oral contraceptives, injections, and even condoms often become far worse in countries where modern medical care systems are lacking. And those are precisely the places where the use of family planning is cultivated most aggressively.
The money spent over the past three decades to promote smaller families in developing countries is probably enough to make every nation on earth self-sufficient in terms of agricultural production, to create an industrial infrastructure in Africa comparable to that of the west, or to provide free schooling through the college level to the entire young adult population of the continent. But people are still hungry, educational facilities are falling apart, and what industry does exist is largely profitable only to overseas investors. And absolutely nothing has been treated as an imperative with the exception of birth control.
Argument: Family planning programs are not genocide because no one is forcing people to use birth control -- people seek it out because they themselves want it.
In public, at least, western officials always refer to population programs as "voluntary." But once again, the inside story is a bit different.
The enormous amount of survey work, attitude studies, propaganda, and sociological analysis associated with the population program reveals clearly the intent of donors to achieve a particular demographic outcome that is entirely inconsistent with the personal wishes of individuals and couples in targeted countries. Were people eager to accept offers of free family planning services there would be no need to understand the persistence of large families nor to devise propaganda messages and outreach campaigns that "persuade" them of the desirability of birth control.
Moreover, governments are often pressured to adopt "bilateral" population programs as a means of transferring the unpopularity of the efforts to host-country administrators. Nigeria is a case in point.
In 1987, the U.S. Department of State prepared a project paper for Nigeria (Sub-Project Paper, Family Health Initiatives II - Nigeria: 698-0462.20, 9 July 1987). An introductory section noted that the total fertility rate in Nigeria (the average number of children born to a woman during her reproductive lifetime) was estimated at 6.5 -- or between six and seven children per woman. But desired fertility, the number of children women would have on the average if they could choose the size of their families, was put at 8.5 -- two children more than was actually the case. (This is the information all that door-to-door canvassing is designed to acquire.)
One would think that if the program in Nigeria were truly an exercise in "voluntary family planning," its main objective would be to increase fertility, not to reduce it. And that was in essence the argument presented to Nigerian officials when they were approached to approve the program. "Family planning" was defined as a service to help the Nigerian people "achieve their wishes" when it came to "preventing unwanted pregnancies" and "securing desired pregnancies," in ways "compatible with their culture and religious beliefs."
But elsewhere, the same project document identified the project as "a major, innovative, and far-reaching endeavor," which was "designed to increase the acceptability and the practice of family planning by approximately four fold in the most populous country of Africa" -- and all this just in its first five years of operation. Furthermore, it proposed to use the mass media "to enhance the acceptability of smaller family norms and family planning," and to create a mechanism that would "strengthen the process of policy implementation and strategic planning for efficient mobilization of an effective and self-sustaining national family planning program." In other words, the point was first to change cultural standards with regard to family size so that the Nigerians would have fewer children than they actually want and, second, to take over as much control as possible from the Nigerian government where "policy implementation" is concerned. Needless to say, nothing was included to improve fertility. Indeed, the sole purpose of the project was to subtract from the number of children being born into Nigerian households, and not to offer free choice.
Often the assertion of voluntarism is so dubious that one has to question the operative definition of the word, "voluntary." A November 1991 publication of the International Planned Parenthood Federation in London (IPPF) offers a perfect example. In a report titled "Focusing on Women in Karanataka," a correspondent describes the activities of the IPPF affiliate, Family Planning Association of India (or PFAI), in a rural setting. When villagers first caught sight of the FPAI vehicle, she writes, they "immediately assumed they were going to be bulldozed into mass sterilizations" and would quickly "run inside [their houses] and close the doors and windows." Not exactly an optimistic beginning for a "voluntary" program, one might think. But after extensive propaganda and some blatantly manipulative tactics, the association begins to make inroads. Among other things, the birth control propaganda was "reinforced through cultural symbols that are familiar to the community. For instance, women who have opted for sterilization after their second child are ... given coconuts, steel utensils, and held up as role models... [And] houses where all eligible couples have adopted family planning are recognized with a triangle." This, readers are meant to infer, establishes the truly voluntary nature of the program. Women who remain unwilling to participate are described in the report as being "still at the initial stage of community participation," and a family planning official is quoted: "They don't always perceive their needs. The welfare worker has to point them out." A similar remark is made about a man with two daughters who refuses a vasectomy because he wants to have at least one son. "It'll take a little more counseling to change his opinions," a fieldworker says (People, IPPF, 2 November 1991).
But in many places, even this shallow pretense of free choice has been abandoned. The journal Inside Indonesia (March 1992) carried a revealing description of family planning activities there, based on first hand observation: "Village and sub-village heads are assembled and expected to submit the names and numbers of targets in their areas. These people are summarily 'enrolled', then taken to a place where the contraceptive is inserted, usually the village head office. Where villagers are reluctant to comply with the summons military or police personnel will come and pick them up." The report describes physical attacks on family planning workers, and says that these incidents, too, along with "subsequent refusals" to accept family planning services, "were dealt with by the police or army using intimidation of the husband or wife or both." The same report describes the infamous "safari" recruitment program in these words: "In 1988 during a safari a group of women were taken into a locked room where they were held at gunpoint. The women panicked and tried to escape through the locked glass windows, which resulted in a number of injuries from shattered glass. ln one safari during our study in 1990, lUDs were inserted at gunpoint to those who continued to resist."
Literature prepared by USAID contractors, UN agencies, the World Bank, and a host of private and semi-private family planning associations is redundant to the point of absurdity when it comes to the "problems" encountered in administrating population campaigns. And virtually all of the tens or even hundreds of thousands of reports and memos evaluating the "problem" over the last few years deal with the unpopularity of the services and near-universal resistance to population planning. Of course, voluntarism is what these institutions, too, would prefer to see. It would make their work far easier. But where voluntarism does not work, persuasion is tried. And where persuasion fails, bribery, intimidation, and even outright force is sure to follow.
Lest there be any doubt that coercion is an officially-sanctioned part of U.S. population "assistance," the enforcement of strong population policies by "police and military" in developing nations is explicitly endorsed in a 1976 briefing produced by a high-level task force on population within the United States National Security Council. Population policies, says that document, are most likely to be effective if three essential conditions are met: there must be "strong direction from the top" (meaning government officials), "community or 'peer' pressures from below," and "adequate" services that "get to the people." It concludes: "population programs have been particularly successful where leaders have made their positions clear, unequivocal, and public, while maintaining discipline down the line from national to village levels, marshaling governmental workers (including police and military), doctors, and motivators to see that population policies are well administered and executed. Such direction is the sine-qua-non of an effective program" (Attachment to Memorandum for the Chairman, Under Secretaries Committee, National Security Council, January 3, 1977, study by NSC task force May 1976).
Argument: Family planning programs are not genocide because there is no intent to target a racial, national, ethnic, or religious group.
This point is very much like the one about voluntarism: "the project is voluntary -- but we just have to get them do it." The issue of targeting along racial or ethnic lines produces much of the same ambiguous rhetoric. Nobody involved in pushing birth control in Nigeria or Kenya or Mexico wants to be called a racist. They don't even want to think of themselves as having racist goals. And perhaps, as individuals, they don't. But the overall program is clearly delineated along racial, regional, and national lines. Population control is being promoted in the so-called "third world" -- among people who just happen to be Africans, Arabs, Asians, and Latin Americans. And it is being promoted by nations in the industrialized world in which the population is predominantly of Anglo-Saxon or European origin (leaders even more so). The goal is to reduce the number of births in the southern hemisphere, thus ensuring ensure that the future populations of the various regions and nations will be substantially smaller than they would have been absent the birth control effort.
At the same time, however, pro-natalist policies are in place in many of the sponsoring nations that have the express goal of increasing the rate of population growth among their own people. In fact, the European Parliament in 1984 called upon all member nations to take action to increase fertility. Noting that "Europe's standing and influence in the world depend largely on the vitality of its population," and calling itself "seriously disturbed by the recent statistics showing a rapid decline in the total fertility rate in the EEC," the parliament prescribed "measures to combat this marked trends towards population decline, which is common to all the Member States..." Even more to the point, the resolution stated that "population trends in Europe will have a decisive effect on the development of Europe and will determine the significance of the role which Europe will play in the world in future decades," and warned that "unless steps are taken to reverse this trend [toward falling fertility], the population of the Europe of Ten will account for only 4.5 percent of the total world population by the year 2000 and only 2.3 percent by 2025, as opposed to 8.8 percent in 1950" (The European Parliament, Resolution No. C 127/78, 14.5.84, 1984).
Indeed, most European nations do have programs to encourage larger families. There are such things as government-required maternity leave and benefits, family allowances from the state, housing preferences to people with more than a certain number of children, and even employment favoritism for the fertile few. The government of France reportedly pays up to $800 per child to women who give birth. And Germany, ever since it was West Germany in the early 1980s, has offered a variety of incentives with the stated goal of increasing the number of German births by 200,000 per year. Yet most of these same nations are enthusiastically backing campaigns for birth reductions in the south.
The selective application of measures to reduce the numbers of a particular group is a key issue in the genocide debate. Every single one of the acts defined as genocide in the UN Convention includes the word "group." So one must consider what constitutes a "group." Indeed, every person belongs to one or more groups. But an isolated act of murder is not genocide. The killing (or prevention of births or tranfer of custody over children) must be done in an attempt to diminish the group which is the object of the genocide.
In this case, we have several nations involved in an attempt to prevent reproduction among many other nations. But do these two blocs, the post-industrial countries and the emerging nations of the south, constitute groups? To the extent that the "donors" have a shared interest in population control, it seems evident that they could be described as a group. And the target nations, being similarly situated in relevant ways, also could fairly be called a "group" (or perhaps separate "groups") as the term applies to the crime of genocide.
This is not to suggest that high officials from wealthy nations will be hauled before an international tribunal by leaders of the developing world any time soon. Indeed, it is these same powerful countries that control the flow of money to and from the poorest nations which also dominate the "new world order." But classifying nations whose population are mainly of European descent as one group, and people of color as another, does illuminate the racial nature of global population control in a way that appears consistent with the treaty's definition of genocide.
Furthermore, the fact that the old powers are uniquely in a position to define and implement what passes for "international law" makes yet another point about power. This block of countries -- and especially the United States as the world's "sole surviving superpower" -- does indeed exert a "monopoly on the means of force" over the same aid-dependent nations that are being pressured to reduce population growth, just as they seek to do militarily over their ideological enemies. This powerful bloc, under U.S. leadership, is able to fund population programs, to use international lending institutions and multilateral agencies of every kind to leverage host-country policy change, and to mount a credible threat of economic, political, or even military ruin to those who balk at their leadership. They possess the means to develop programs, impose policies, set goals, monitor implementation, and evaluate progress. They can literally compel others to give in to their demands, and even use the same authority to get the recipient nations to claim ownership of projects they have been forced to adopt. Moreover, they do so with a reasonable expectation that they can get away with it -- which is would seem to be exactly what the Genocide Convention was designed to prevent.
It might, of course, be argued that not all nations backing the population program are "white," in the sense that Europe and America are. The most obvious exception is Japan. The Japanese not only provide money for population programs around the world, but are actively seeking ways to increase their own birthrate as well. But Japan is now part of the western alliance. It was hardly an "under-developed" nation before the war, and became, at the end of World War II, the first real target of a U.S. population scheme. Once the country's demographic growth was "contained," the Japanese found themselves in essentially the same situation as the Europeans -- in a state of anxiety about being overwhelmed and marginalized by the emerging countries of the so-called "third world." By the same reasoning, the "white" population of Northern Ireland, especially Catholics, remain subordinated to British rule, giving them a shared status with people in the southern hemisphere. But these exceptions do not diminish the fact that population control is being applied in a discriminatory manner by the leaders of the industrial world to a distinct class of peoples.
Finally, many would complain that unless there is the intent to totally eradicate a group of people, there is no genocide. And supporters of the worldwide population program insist they only want to keep the numbers of people in target countries to a "manageable" level. The treaty, however, is intended to prevent the "physical destruction" of a group, "in whole or in part." In other words, merely reducing the size of a group of people for the sake of population control is no less an offense than attempting to accomplish its complete physical destruction.
And while few people openly call for the total elimination of any group of people, there are those who come dangerously close. For instance, the 1988 Pentagon study that urged national leaders to give population planning the same status as military technology did so despite a recognition that some countries could totally disappear in the wake of an AIDS epidemic. "Although embryonic efforts are underway to forecast the future prevalence and effects of AIDS, it remains an ill-understood phenomenon of pandemic proportions that could easily invalidate all existing population projections," the published summary says. "Some analysts argue that if 100 million people, or 2 percent of the world's population, were infected, total deaths from AIDS in the 1990s could be 50 million. The number infected then could double several more times after that and wipe out some countries in 10 to 20 years. If the number infected increased to 20 percent of the world's population, the delayed deaths could begin to cancel rapid global population growth." (Washington Quarterly, Spring 1989; emphasis added). Yet to this -- indeed in the very next paragraph -- was appended the call for western officials to use "all the instruments of statecraft at their disposal" to address the "threat" of population growth in the developing world.
In conclusion, there can be no doubt that the sense of urgency associated with population control in the western mind virtually guarantees that no chances will be taken. Policy makers would over-react rather than run the risk of doing too little. Stephen Mumford, director of the North Carolina-based Center for Research on Population and Security, illustrates this attitude in a 1977 book, Population Growth Control: The Next Move is America's: "Clearly, an effort of unprecedented proportions is required to half world population growth. Without massive intervention the world's course over the next 50 years is clear. The stakes are high and so is the risk of losing. Massive intervention is an absolute must -- our survival is at stake" (Mumford, 1977, at page 87).
Argument: It is a crowded, crowded world, and if population growth does not stop everywhere, there will be famine, chaos, and the complete destruction of the environment.
This is a point of view not heard nearly so often as in the past -- and with good reason. Alarmist predictions that assigned dates to everything from massive starvation to a worldwide "communist takeover" -- all made with complete certainty from the 1950s to the mid-1970s -- failed to materialize. Even though the more extreme views of this kind have become something of a joke in the west, the contention that this or that country is "over-populated" is still a mainstay of the overseas population policy development process.
But let us look at the facts. Switzerland, which like most of Europe is openly advocating an increase in its own birthrate, has a total of 180 people for every square kilometer of territory. In Germany, where there is a similar pro-natalist policy, each kilometer of land, on the average, is occupied by 235 people. Belgium has a population density of 333 inhabitants for every square kilometer of land, while in the Netherlands the ratio is 460, and in Great Britain (including Wales) it is 330.
Nigeria, on the other hand, has just 118 people per square kilometer, making the country half as "crowded" as Germany. Yet Germany is supposed to increase its population, while Nigerians are being urged to cut back on births. In Uganda, there are an average of only 103 people for every square kilometer of space, in Egypt it is 65, and in Ethiopia there fewer than 60. Zimbabwe, with a population of only 29 people per square kilometer of territory, has only about one tenth the population density of Israel, which has 283. And Japan, with 335 people for every square kilometer, has thirty-seven times the density of Angola, where there are an average of only nine people in the same amount of space.
The Asian "economic tigers," as the rapidly developing nations are sometimes called, offer an even more dramatic contrast. There are 595 people for every square kilometer of land in Taiwan, about 465 in South Korea, and 5,404 in Hong Kong.
If Congo-Brazzaville, with 342 square kilometers of territory, were to have the same population density as Belgium, it would have 113 million citizens, instead of the two-and-a-half million who live there now. But the Belgians are not inclined to think of themselves as redundant, while the Congolese are constantly reminded of the dangers of "over-population." Still more interesting are such countries as Mauritania and Namibia, each with a fewer than two people per square kilometer. If Mauritania, with more than a million square kilometers of land, were to be home to all five and a half billion people on earth, the population density still would be about the same as in Hong Kong or Singapore.
Obviously, crowding is not the issue. Many of the richest nations are the most densely settled, while those with very small populations remain undeveloped. One can only conclude, then, that population control has much less to do with how many people are in a particular place than with who the people are.
Argument: Family planning is only intended to reduce the rate of population growth and let economic development catch up.
As noted earlier, it is commonly accepted in the west that the rapid and significant increase of the European population is the factor most responsible for the development of modern production, trade, and communications, and that the steady increase in that region's population was "largely responsible for the extension of European control over inhabited tropical and semi-tropical countries" (Royal Commission on Population, U.K., 1949). In fact, it is generally accepted that from the mid 16th century until the end of the 19th, the total population of the world (including Europe) increased about four-fold, while the European people themselves multiplied seven times in number. This would mean that Europe's population, including people of European descent in the "new world," experienced a rate of population growth that was more than twice that of the non-European peoples. And it was precisely among this group, and at this time, that the most remarkable innovation and advancement occurred.
In the United States, too, a similar pattern is seen. The recorded census in the year 1800 was just over five million. That number had multiplied nearly 15 times by the year 1900 when more than 76 million U.S. citizens were counted. Between 1900 and 1940 -- a little more than one generation -- population nearly doubled again to 132 million. And it was during these years of incredible growth that the country emerged as a major power.
Western leaders are keenly aware of the fact that their power status arose, not in spite of population growth, but because of it. Yet they insist when dealing with leaders of developing states that the rate of population growth must be reduced as a prerequisite for economic development. And they are also fully conscious of the fact that population growth will help the "new" nations of the south as they undergo the same transition.
In an article titled "The Africanization of Europe" which appeared in the May/June 1990 edition of the journal American Enterprise, demographer Jean-Claude Chesnais of the Institut National d'Etudes Démographiques in Paris acknowledged that the momentum for economic advancement was on the side of the high-fertility countries. "The abrupt and massive changes in world population distribution resulting from the demographic trends of the next few decades will lead to a reshaping of world political geography whose general outline can already be foreseen," he wrote. "Young powers will emerge, basing their strength in large part on their population size and the stimulus it creates, and old powers will fade as their populations decline."
This is not a new observation -- nor is there anything the least bit unique about the assumption that below-replacement fertility in the west, combined with high birthrates in the south, will ultimately dislodge the current world powers from their coveted place of preeminence. "[W]e must never lose sight of the fact that the world population imbalance is heavily against us and is becoming ever more so," says a fairly typical National Security Council memorandum written back in January of 1959 (NSC 902/1; 1 January 1959).
In 1994, former Deputy Director for Intelligence at the CIA Ray Cline wrote an entire book on the topic which was called The Power of Nations in the 1990s: A Strategic Assessment ((University Press of America, 1994). "A study of national power, in the final analysis, is a study of the capacity to wage war," he remarked, "but it is also in the normal run of cases an appraisal of many other kinds of international competition or conflict, where differences are resolved within a political or an economic context." In other words, it still comes down to a matter of a nation, acting alone or in league with its allies, having the capacity to impose its will on others. And what gives a nation that capability? This was exactly what Cline addressed in the book.
Space, resources, technology, political unity, and even "national will" are all vital elements. But population, according to Cline, is the single most important factor. "People exploit the raw economic resources of the territory the live in a develop the political and social traditions that shape national cultures," he wrote. "A large territory, if accompanied by a large population, almost automatically confers the status of power on a nation and will be so interpreted by strategists and makers of foreign policy" (Cline, 1994). And the nations destined to attain such status in the future are, of course, those now described almost contemptuously as "the third world."
The implication of doing nothing to change population trends has been the subject of considerable alarm -- and perhaps even exaggeration. "Historical experience certainly suggests that in the long run relative demographic weights tend to translate into relative political and economic power," says Paul Demeny of the New York-based Population Council, a major USAID contractor. Noting that Europe accounted for 17 per cent of the world's people at the start of the century, but will have barely 8 per cent in the year 2000, Demeny warns that "the consequence of any sustained difference between the rates of growth of two populations occupying the same ecological niche is straightforward: the eventual complete displacement of the slower growing population by the faster growing one" (Demeny, "International Aspects of Population Studies," March 1982, the Population Council, New York; emphasis added).
Note that Demeny literally equates the numeric decline of the west with its total extinction. And if that is the guise under which the global population campaign has been mounted, one might fairly assume that the leaders of this movement could rationalize their acts even if those actions were to "inadvertently" result in the complete elimination of their alleged rivals; after all, they might say, it was self defense.
There have been many thousands of similar reports and essays -- literally thousands and thousands of them -- produced over the past half-century by government agencies, powerful "think tanks," and well-connected scholars. In fact, one is virtually assured of finding some reference to the "national security" dimension of world demographics in any U.S. government study of foreign relations or military power that applies to a region (as opposed to a single country) and takes a long-term view.
Control is being exercised in ever more complex and varied ways. It has become evident since the beginning of the 1980s that the purposeful impoverishment of the developing world has become the essence of the global agenda. Mandatory structural adjustment schemes imposed by western-controlled lenders, the devaluation of currency, inequitable trade practices, and self-serving "aid" projects have all visibly contributed to the breakdown of the world's most vulnerable economies. With the cold war now over, the old constraints against western intervention have evaporated, and the U.S. and allied nations see themselves as free to intervene politically and militarily in ways that adversely affect local stability. They increasingly pursue policies that lead to situations in which there is a power vacuum, as was the case in Rwanda, knowing the horrendous outcome that is possible in the event some domestic crisis ignites an orgy of spontaneous violence. And the resulting human catastrophe is inevitably exploited as "proof" that the local populace is unfit for self-governance and in need of administrative control (meaning both political and/or military supervision, as well as reproductive control) -- or even punishment. To invoke the Genocide Convention as a way to validate this image is a perversion of the intent and meaning of the treaty. It also diverts attention from the genocidal nature of western population programs and military/economic intervention in the less-developed world. Indeed, the combined effect of this exploitation and aggression demonstrates that reproductive interference is at the core of a much larger strategy to impede development and to prevent the rise of other regions and blocs as competitors for power.
Family planning schemes, imposed on unconsenting subjects with the conscious intent to prevent the progress of potential competitors, seem clearly to constitute an effort to bring upon the target nations "conditions of life calculated to bring about their destruction," at least "in part." This seems even more obvious when the total picture is taken into account. And if sufficient paranoia exists at high levels of government -- as extensive research suggests that it does -- these self-described "leaders of the free world" may indeed be willing to accept the permanent annihilation of at least some individual, sovereign, and culturally-distinct peoples, rather than take a chance the balance of world power will evolve to their disadvantage.
Conclusion
If genocide, as defined in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, applies to an organized and premeditated act -- committed by persons in a position of power against members a relatively vulnerable group of people -- it must exclude hapless combatants in civil wars brought on by outside interference, no matter how gruesome and regardless of the scale and intensity of the atrocities that take place. Furthermore, it is the preoccupation with demographics that is the embodiment of genocidal intent, as is illustrated by both the history and the language of the treaty. Thus, a planned program of population control -- carried out by a powerful bloc of countries against unwilling individuals in exploited nations -- seems to be precisely the crime which the convention was designed to prevent. And if these measures are undertaken with the will to impose on targets a permanent condition of powerlessness, the act becomes virtually indistinguishable from the actual extermination of those peoples.
There are many who have complained about coercive or racist motives behind the global population control program, about the way policies have been imposed on nations dependent on foreign aid and credit, about the untold human suffering caused by contraceptives given under horrendous conditions to ambivalent users, and about the devious and disrespectful ways in which these anti-natalist campaigns are brought to the people. But little has been said about finding ways in which these practices can be effectively resisted at a time when unity within the former "non-aligned" bloc has been ruptured and when one nation standing alone would pay a heavy price for confronting the global power structure.
But the Genocide Convention may offer real hope to the oppressed -- not because there is any possibility of directly using international law to restrain or punish those responsible, of course, but rather as an organizing principle and a focal point for cross-national and cross-cultural solidarity among the many and diverse peoples of the south. The concept may even be broad enough to include not just birth prevention, but the debt crisis, covert operations, and other tactics employed against the emerging nations of the south. As such it is not politicians so much as intellectuals and academics who will have to take the initial lead in educating people about the nature of genocide and its bearing on contemporary north-south issues. While there may not be the least likelihood of successfully bringing charges against those responsible for the situation of demographic and political warfare that exists in the world today, there is a genuine opportunity to appeal to that moral authority that resides in the sense of decency and conscience of all peoples and to bring the matter forcefully to the table at every international discussion.
If the genocide treaty means anything at all, it is that a powerful institution or class of people must never again be allowed to inflict harm on those over whom they seek to consolidate control. And no abuse of power should be more dreaded than that committed by a group of people or nations who have appointed themselves the arbiters of how many people will be allowed to make up the whole of another group.
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