Genocide discourse in international relations is relatively new, emerging post-WWII with the Genocide Convention challenging state sovereignty in the interest of preventing another mass atrocity in the wake of the Holocaust. However, the definition of genocide excludes structural violence, a form of violence that particularly impacts marginalized groups in the West, creating a significant lack of accountability for state actors. Structural violence is characterized by slow, normalized violence and institutional harm conducted by denying populations the necessities of life. This form of violence is normalized through social structures, resulting in issues like decreased life expectancy, resulting from famine, poverty, unemployment, and marginalization overall. Black Americans’ historical experience serves as a glaring example of state-sanctioned structural violence. Structural violence differs significantly from internationally recognized, genocidal violence, as it inflicts harm gradually through societal frameworks. This form of violence is overlooked in the conventional definition of genocide. The exclusion of structural violence perpetuates a biased understanding of mass atrocities and actively and intentionally shields state actors from accountability. Challenging the conceptualizations of genocide in the status quo and instead, advocating for a persecution of structural violence would improve standards of accountability towards state actors who are responsible for global atrocities that target civilian populations.

The hierarchy in which the international community perceives violence has created moral blindness that obscures the multifaceted nature of civilian suffering perpetuated by governments. This is particularly true for influential and powerful states in the Western world. It’s important to consider how we have arrived at our current frameworks and understandings of genocide and note how we did not arrive here in a vacuum. The states that influenced the current global understanding of genocide, had the motivation to dis-include structural violence from its definition. Look to the case of We Charge Genocide. On December 17, 1951, there was a case presented to the United Nations, charging the US with the genocide of its Black citizens by the Civil Rights Congress. The specific language in the United Nations Genocide Convention that would have labeled the forms of violence the US perpetuated against Black Americans as genocidal was not included in the final convention. This was arguably done to ensure the U.S. would ratify the United Nations Genocide Convention, adopted by the UN in 1948, but not ratified in the U.S. until 1986, which it would likely not have if the framework to charge the U.S. with genocide existed anywhere in the convention. Scholars support this narrative as well, Heller, in “Is ‘Structural Genocide’ Legally Genocide? A Response to Hinton,” notes how the US was nervous about how language in the convention could leave them exposed to being charged with Black genocide, and this anxiety caused the stipulation of “special intent” to be added to the conditions of genocide in the United Nations Genocide Convention. This stipulation is outlined in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and includes the “intent to destroy” as a requirement for an act to be considered genocidal. This stipulation ensured that acts are only classified as genocide when there is clear evidence of the perpetrators’ intention to destroy a specific group, shielding perpetrators of mass atrocities who can conceal or deny intentions to fully eliminate the group they targeted. Heller goes on to state, “The fear of being accused of genocide is part of the reason the US didn’t ratify the (United Nations Genocide Convention) UNGC until 1986 and after that codify genocide with an even higher threshold of (“special”) intent and (“in whole or in substantial part”) destruction required. These debates about Black genocide took place in the open and on the Senate floor.” (Heller 2021) The significance of the case of We Charge Genocide cannot be understated. It is an example of how an influential state’s interests quite literally shaped the international community’s legal understanding of what kind of violence is genocidal and who can be protected by the measures in the United Nations Genocide Convention.

The long-term consequence of this reality is that some states can commit mass atrocities at home and abroad without repercussions or criticism. International influence ultimately plays a significant role in determining whether violent actions against citizens are considered punishable by the international community. Moses asserts in “The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression”that, “political narrative(s) on how genocide is legally defined and discussed (are) often used to detract attention from other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities and the “collateral damage” of missile and drone strikes, blockades, and sanctions” (Moses p.g.1). This leaves us with a stark reality that certain forms of genocide not only becoming relatively morally accepted in the international community but also commonplace. Civilian life is lost in massive numbers, and groups are specifically targeted, but their murders are deemed legitimate depending on which state killed them, why, and how. States are protected when they commit atrocities so long as the kind of violence they engage in, fits into the agreed-upon narrative which defines genocide. The volume or scale of violence imposed upon civilian populations, in this case, does not matter unless the instance of violence meets the Western interest-driven criteria in the United Nations Genocide Convention, which was explicitly influenced by U.S. motivations. As a consequence, civilian populations suffer with no legitimate means for international intervention. Inhumane and violent atrocities targeting specific groups, which cause civilian deaths in the thousands, are not categorized as genocidal. This reality is not limited to the case of Black Americans but considers the thousands of lives lost in Vietnam, Japan, and the Middle East. Robson in, “Politics of Mass Violence in the Middle East”, emphasizes the bloodshed in the Middle East specifically, pointing to the scale of the suffering seen there and the lack of legal framework available to intervene, referring to “the  external provision of weapons (and the political space to use them) product(ing) some of the most shocking spectacles of late twentieth-century mass violence anywhere, from the Lebanese civil war to the massacres of Palestinian refugees at Sabra and Shatila to the Iraqi campaign against the Kurds that became known as the Anfal (and) every one of these bloody episodes (is) explained away by the superpowers who had acted as collaborators and enablers.” (Robson p.g. 8-9) The ability of states to commit these atrocities is protected by the current frameworks of genocide written into the United Nations Genocide Convention. So long as these cases of mass violence cannot be categorized, approached, and studied as genocidal, in either intent or practice, our current framework fails us and fails to prevent more cases of violence from unfolding in the future.

Adjusting the current provisions in the United Nations Genocide Convention would provide civilian populations around the world with an objective protective measure that denounces all forms of violence that target them and avoids any justification of such violence. This would mean equally persecuting all forms of civilian destruction and improving the standards of accountability towards state actors who have been previously shielded in the status quo. The sheer scale of violence that has been observed internationally since the ratification of the United Nations Genocide Convention is enough to justify amendments being made to the convention which would extend its ability to protect civilian populations and prevent mass atrocities around the world.