Genocide Watch has gradually taken over the media interface of this issue globally. Providing authoritative coverage of genocide since founding by Gregory Staunton in 1999, Genocide Watch is rarely criticized. People have instinctively recognized its necessity. Staunton is so faithful, well credentialed and experienced in this field it’s disconcerting when he makes a mistake. Genocide Watch has covered and absorbed Canada’s leading genocide organizations as they failed through lack of support. While the organization’s work is reliable, as part of a genocide-prevention industry it was too slow to address Israel’s crimes of genocide against Palestine but if it can be faulted for its current failure to stop – as the most powerful NGO defender against genocide – the ongoing genocide in Gaza, so then can the United Nations and global community.
Genocide Watch is limited by its American roots and perspective which implicitly favour US and NATO policies. I write about it here because of its release with the Pan African Lawyers Union, of The Genocide Watch Manual on Genocide and Genocide Prevention (The Genocide Watch Legal Team, March 2025). I recommend it for professionals and required reading for North American attorneys. It provides necessary information on discerning and gathering court-worthy evidence of genocide, I think it’s the best manual of its kind.
With that understood let me fault it on the following grounds:
1. It is over balanced with African interpretation and applications of the Convention to Africa. Realistically African states are the continual objects of post-colonial and corporate genocide. While tribal wars were implicit in African history, genocide arrived with colonialism.
2. The Convention on Genocide as affirmed and interpreted by Genocide Watch does not extend to the LGBTQ trans community. While the Malabo Protocol was able to include rape and sexual violence in its definition of genocide, that has only found force when exceptionally applied. There’s no excuse for the exclusion of the LGBTQ trans community from inclusion among protected groups, or of sexual violence from aspects of applied genocide. These exclusions suggests attempts to maintain power by political elites (See counter exclusion attempts by the The Lemkin Institute).
3. The Convention as affirmed and interpreted by Genocide Watch doesn’t protect political groups. This is obscene given the C IA’s role in Indonesia 1965, identifying and handing over to the military the names of the country’s communists for extermination. The Convention’s lack of clear protection for political groups is a long standing problem, intentionally placed by counter-socialist countries to allow the ongoing persecution of groups countering corporate and fascist interests. When the Convention outgrows its uses as a control of non First-world countries, political groups will be included as protected.
4. A fault less obvious in the Genocide Watch presentation is its interpretation and acceptance of the Convention’s traditional use of the word “intent” as in “intent to destroy…” In ratifying the Convention the US had to state that “intent to destroy” was specifically required. In other words mass civilian casualties from bombing a military target in a city couldn’t be considered within a context of genocide. Because mass death couldn’t be proven in court as intended the application of the Convention was for years impossible. The current concept of intent was I believe, initially challenged at writing but was championed by the US. It has had to be modified at points by court decisions. It is particularly relevant to nuclear war where we understand that use of nuclear weapons on a military target risks a much larger portion of humanity. Logically the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were clearly genocide. By arguing the acts did not carry the primary intention of exterminating a portion of the Japanese people the US would seek to avoid the obvious verdict. The same argument of collateral damage applies to any bombings shelling, missiling of civilians or infrastructure. The US bombing of Iraq. Israel’s destruction of Gaza. The effect of each was/is a genocide. The industrial warfare techniques of US and Western warfare would be criminalized if the warmakers had not struggled so hard to demand the need for proving “intent.” We didn’t mean to, right? Millions after Millions of civilians. As time passes the requirement of proving intent will give way to common sense.