The Ten Stages of Genocide

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Dr. Gregory Stanton

By Gregory H. Stanton, President, Genocide Watch

Classification Symbolization Discrimination Dehumanization Organization

Polarization Preparation Persecution Extermination Denial

Genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear. Stages may occur simultaneously. Logically, later stages must be preceded by earlier stages.  But all stages continue to operate throughout the process.

1. CLASSIFICATION: All cultures have categories to distinguish people into “us and them” by ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality: German and Jew, Hutu and Tutsi. Bipolar societies that lack mixed categories, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are the most likely to have genocide. The main preventive measure at this early stage is to develop universalistic institutions that transcend ethnic or racial divisions, that actively promote tolerance and understanding, and that promote classifications that transcend the divisions. The Catholic church could have played this role in Rwanda, had it not been riven by the same ethnic cleavages as Rwandan society. Promotion of a common language in countries like Tanzania has also promoted transcendent national identity. This search for common ground is vital to early prevention of genocide.

2. SYMBOLIZATION: We give names or other symbols to the classifications. We name people “Jews” or “Gypsies”, or distinguish them by colors or dress; and apply the symbols to members of groups. Classification and symbolization are universally human and do not necessarily result in genocide unless they lead to  dehumanization. When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups: the yellow star for Jews under Nazi rule, the blue scarf for people from the Eastern Zone in Khmer Rouge Cambodia. To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden (swastikas) as can hate speech. Group marking like gang clothing or tribal scarring can be outlawed, as well. The problem is that legal limitations will fail if unsupported by popular cultural enforcement. Though Hutu and Tutsi were forbidden words in Burundi until the 1980’s, code words replaced them. If widely supported, however, denial of symbolization can be powerful, as it was in Bulgaria, where the government refused to supply enough yellow badges and at least eighty percent of Jews did not wear them, depriving the yellow star of its significance as a Nazi symbol for Jews.

3. DISCRIMINATION: A dominant group uses law, custom, and political power to deny the rights of other groups.  The powerless group may not be accorded full civil rights or even citizenship. Examples include the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 in Nazi Germany, which stripped Jews of their German citizenship, and prohibited their employment by the government and by universities.  Denial of citizenship to the Rohingya Muslim minority in Burma is another example.  Prevention against discrimination means full political empowerment and citizenship rights for all groups in a society.  Discrimination on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, race or religion should be outlawed.  Individuals should have the right to sue the state, corporations, and other individuals if their rights are violated.

4. DEHUMANIZATION: One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects or diseases. Dehumanization overcomes the normal human revulsion against murder. At this stage, hate propaganda in print and on hate radios is used to vilify the victim group. In combating this dehumanization, incitement to genocide should not be confused with protected speech. Genocidal societies lack constitutional protection for countervailing speech, and should be treated differently than democracies. Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen. Hate radio stations should be shut down, and hate propaganda banned. Hate crimes and atrocities should be promptly punished.

5. ORGANIZATION: Genocide is always organized, usually by the state, often using militias to provide deniability of state responsibility (the Janjaweed in Darfur.) Sometimes organization is informal (Hindu mobs led by local RSS militants) or decentralized (terrorist groups.) Special army units or militias are often trained and armed. Plans are made for genocidal killings. To combat this stage, membership in these militias should be outlawed. Their leaders should be denied visas for foreign travel. The U.N. should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations, as was done in post-genocide Rwanda.

6. POLARIZATION: Extremists drive the groups apart. Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda. Laws may forbid intermarriage or social interaction. Extremist terrorism targets moderates, intimidating and silencing the center. Moderates from the perpetrators’ own group are most able to stop genocide, so are the first to be arrested and killed. Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups. Assets of extremists may be seized, and visas for international travel denied to them. Coups d’état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions.

7.  PREPARATION:  National or perpetrator group leaders plan the “Final Solution” to the Jewish, Armenian, Tutsi or other targeted group “question.”  They often use euphemisms to cloak their intentions, such as referring to their goals as “ethnic cleansing,” “purification,” or “counter-terrorism.”  They build armies, buy weapons and train their troops and militias.  They indoctrinate the populace with fear of the victim group.  Leaders often claim that “if we don’t kill them, they will kill us.”  Prevention of preparation may include arms embargos and commissions to enforce them.  It should include prosecution of incitement and conspiracy to commit genocide, both crimes under Article 3 of the Genocide Convention.

8. PERSECUTION: Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity. Death lists are drawn up. In state sponsored genocide, members of victim groups may be forced to wear identifying symbols. Their property is often expropriated. Sometimes they are even segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved.  Genocidal massacres begin.  They are acts of genocide because they intentionally destroy part of a group.  At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. If the political will of the great powers, regional alliances, or the U.N. Security Council can be mobilized, armed international intervention should be prepared, or heavy assistance provided to the victim group to prepare for its self-defense. Humanitarian assistance should be organized by the U.N. and private relief groups for the inevitable tide of refugees to come.

9. EXTERMINATION begins, and quickly becomes the mass killing legally called “genocide.” It is “extermination” to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human. When it is sponsored by the state, the armed forces often work with militias to do the killing. Sometimes the genocide results in revenge killings by groups against each other, creating the downward whirlpool-like cycle of bilateral genocide (as in Burundi). At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed international protection. (An unsafe “safe” area is worse than none at all.) The U.N. Standing High Readiness Brigade, EU Rapid Response Force, or regional forces -- should be authorized to act by the U.N. Security Council if the genocide is small. For larger interventions, a multilateral force authorized by the U.N. should intervene. If the U.N. is paralyzed, regional alliances must act. It is time to recognize that the international responsibility to protect transcends the narrow interests of individual nation states. If strong nations will not provide troops to intervene directly, they should provide the airlift, equipment, and financial means necessary for regional states to intervene.

10. DENIAL is the final stage that lasts throughout and always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims. They block investigations of the crimes, and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile. There they remain with impunity, like Pol Pot or Idi Amin, unless they are captured and a tribunal is established to try them. The response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts. There the evidence can be heard, and the perpetrators punished. Tribunals like the Yugoslav or Rwanda Tribunals, or an international tribunal to try the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, or an International Criminal Court may not deter the worst genocidal killers. But with the political will to arrest and prosecute them, some may be brought to justice.

© 2013 Gregory H. Stanton.  Originally presented as a briefing paper, “The Eight Stages of Genocide” at the US State Department in 1996. Discrimination and Persecution have since been added to the 1996 model.

I am grateful to many people for improvements in my original 8 stage model, in particular to Prof. Alan Whitehorn of the Royal Military College of Canada, who suggested the terms Stigmatization for what I have called Discrimination, and Extreme Victimization for what I have called Persecution.  I have chosen the more familiar terms Discrimination and Persecution because they fit better into the law of discrimination and the international law of persecution.

No model is ever perfect.  All are merely ideal-typical representations of reality that are meant to help us think more clearly about social and cultural processes.  It is important not to confuse any stage with a status.  It is more like a fluctuating point on a thermometer that rises and falls as the social temperature in a potential area of conflict rises and falls.  It is crucial not to confuse the model with a linear one.

The purpose of this model is to place the risk factors in Barbara Harff's pioneering analysis of country risks of genocide and politicide into a processual structure.  Risks of political instability are characteristic of what Kuper called "divided societies," with deep rifts in Classification.  Targeted groups of state-led discrimination are victims of Discrimination.  An exclusionary ideology is central to Dehumanization.  Autocratic regimes foster the Organization of hate groups.  An ethnically polarized elite is characteristic of Polarization. Lack of openness to trade and other influences from outside a state's borders is characteristic of Preparation for genocide or politicide.  Massive violations of human rights is evidence of Persecution. Impunity after previous genocides or politicides is evidence of Denial.

This processual model demonstrates that there is a logic to the genocidal process, though it does not proceed in a linear order.  By helping us understand the logic of genocide, people can see the early warning signs of genocide and know when it is coming. Leaders can design policies to counteract the forces that drive each of the stages.

Ultimately the best antidote to genocide is popular education and the development of social and cultural tolerance for diversity.  That is why Genocide Watch and the International Alliance to End Genocide hope to educate people around the world to resist genocidal forces whenever they see them.  Finally the movement that will end genocide must come not from international armed interventions, but rather from popular resistance to every form of discrimination; dehumanization, hate speech, and formation of hate groups; rise of political parties that preach hatred, racism or xenophobia; rule by polarizing elites that advocate exclusionary ideologies; police states that massively violate human rights; closure of borders to international trade or communications; and denial of past genocides or crimes against humanity against groups within or without the state that is in denial.

The movement that will end genocide in this century must rise from each of us who have the courage to challenge discrimination, hatred, and tyranny.  We must never let the wreckage of our barbaric past keep us from envisioning a peaceful future when law and democratic freedom will rule the earth.

For those who doubt there is any direction in history, our common humanity is enough to give meaning to our cause.  To those of us who know that history is not some directionless accident, this is our calling and our destiny.  John F. Kennedy said, "On earth, God's work must truly be our own."