genocide by attrition 1939-1993 The Warsaw Ghetto, Cambodia, and Sudan: Links between human rights, health, and mass death

Health and Human Rights

Volumn 2, Issue 2, 1997, Pages 10-45

  Fein, Helen ^a,b  

^a CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK   (United States)

^b NONE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENOCIDE; HEALTH; HUMAN RIGHTS;

CAMBODIA; SUDAN;

EID: 0031443101     PISSN: 10790969     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/4065270     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. R. Lemkin, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe" (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944), p. 79.
2. United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UNGC), UNGA Res. 26A (III), December 9, 1948, entered into force January 12, 1951.
3. My calculation of relative numbers of victims is based on recompilation of estimates cited in a survey by B. Harff and T.R. Gurr, "Genocides and Politicides Since 1945: Evidence and Anticipation" in Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide, Issue 13 (December 1987):1-7 and a survey of "democide" or state mass murders in the twentieth century by R.J. Rummel, "Power Kills: Absolutely Power Kills Absolutely," Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide issue 38 (June 1992):1-12.
4. My calculation of relative numbers of victims is based on recompilation of estimates cited in a survey by B. Harff and T.R. Gurr, "Genocides and Politicides Since 1945: Evidence and Anticipation" in Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide, Issue 13 (December 1987):1-7 and a survey of "democide" or state mass murders in the twentieth century by R.J. Rummel, "Power Kills: Absolutely Power Kills Absolutely," Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide issue 38 (June 1992):1-12.
5. R. Hilberg, The Destruction of European Jewry (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1961) estimates that 500,000 to 600,000 Jews in occupied Poland died directly or indirectly from starvation or one-fifth of the Polish Jews (pp. 173-174); in all, 700,000 or 13.7 percent of his estimated 5.1 million Jewish dead died in "Ghetto and aggravated deaths" (Appendix 3, p. 767).
6. "The use of genocide in conflicts within the state in the regions surveyed (Asia, Africa, and the MidEast) tripled between 1968-88 compared to the preceding score of years (10:3 cases). Genocide and genocidal massacres occur so often that they may be considered normal in these regions." H. Fein, "Accounting for genocide after 1945: Theories and some findings," International Journal on Group Rights I (1993):79.
7. Although regulation of the right to food and related rights in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights are contingent and contextual - "to take steps...to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of these rights..." (Art. 2,1), the next clause (Art. 2,2) expressly forbids discrimination of any kind.
8. Life-integrity violations (include genocide, state extra-judicial executions, "disappearances," torture, and slavery) are forbidden in international law categorically - indeed, the Conventions criminalizing these range from 1927 to 1987. See H. Fein, Lives at Risk (New York: Institute for the Study of Genocide, March 1990), pp. 5-6.1 have differentiated the dimensions of life-integrity rights from 1) rights (other than the security of the person) subsumed under "civil and political rights" and 2) "economic, social, and cultural rights" - both of the latter internationalized in two United Nations covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. My classification schema is similar to the differentiation of others of the dimensions of basic rights. For example, Shue differentiates security, liberty and subsistence implying the right to food - as the core dimensions of basic rights. See H. Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). For other conceptions of basic rights, see J. Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory & Practice (London/Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 39.
9. Life-integrity violations (include genocide, state extra-judicial executions, "disappearances," torture, and slavery) are forbidden in international law categorically - indeed, the Conventions criminalizing these range from 1927 to 1987. See H. Fein, Lives at Risk (New York: Institute for the Study of Genocide, March 1990), pp. 5-6.1 have differentiated the dimensions of life-integrity rights from 1) rights (other than the security of the person) subsumed under "civil and political rights" and 2) "economic, social, and cultural rights" - both of the latter internationalized in two United Nations covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. My classification schema is similar to the differentiation of others of the dimensions of basic rights. For example, Shue differentiates security, liberty and subsistence implying the right to food - as the core dimensions of basic rights. See H. Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). For other conceptions of basic rights, see J. Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory & Practice (London/Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 39.
10. Life-integrity violations (include genocide, state extra-judicial executions, "disappearances," torture, and slavery) are forbidden in international law categorically - indeed, the Conventions criminalizing these range from 1927 to 1987. See H. Fein, Lives at Risk (New York: Institute for the Study of Genocide, March 1990), pp. 5-6.1 have differentiated the dimensions of life-integrity rights from 1) rights (other than the security of the person) subsumed under "civil and political rights" and 2) "economic, social, and cultural rights" - both of the latter internationalized in two United Nations covenants: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. My classification schema is similar to the differentiation of others of the dimensions of basic rights. For example, Shue differentiates security, liberty and subsistence implying the right to food - as the core dimensions of basic rights. See H. Shue, Basic Rights: Subsistence, Affluence, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980). For other conceptions of basic rights, see J. Donnelly, Universal Human Rights in Theory & Practice (London/Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 39.
11. M. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1992/1977), pp. 160-175. Walzer notes that "More civilians died in the siege of Leningrad than in the modernist infernos of Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, taken together."
12. C.G. Roland, Courage Under Siege: Starvation, Disease, and Death in the Warsaw Ghetto (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 224-225.
13. Ibid., pp. 45-46.
14. H. Fein, Accounting for Genocide: National Responses and Jewish Victimization During the Holocaust (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 210.