Genocide and the Europeans

Genocide is one of the most heinous abuses of human rights imaginable, yet reaction to it by European governments in the post-Cold War world has been criticized for not matching the severity of the crime. European governments rarely agree on whether to call a situation genocide, and responses to purported genocides have often been limited to delivering humanitarian aid to victims and supporting prosecution of perpetrators in international criminal tribunals. More coercive measures - including sanctions or military intervention - are usually rejected as infeasible or unnecessary. This book explores the European approach to genocide, reviewing government attitudes towards the negotiation and ratification of the 1948 Genocide Convention and analyzing responses to purported genocides since the end of Word War II. Karen E. Smith considers why some European governments were hostile to the Genocide Convention and why European governments have been reluctant to use the term genocide to describe atrocities ever since.

Karen E. Smith is Reader in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has written extensively about the European Union's foreign relations, including the role that human rights may play in those relations, and is the winner of the 2007 Anna Lindh Award for excellence in research on European foreign and security policy. Her most recent books include European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World (2nd edition, 2008) and The European Union at the United Nations: Intersecting Multilateralisms (with Katie Verlin Laatikainen, 2006).