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New centre in U.K. for genocide studies

Droughts in Africa, hurricanes in America, floods in Bangladesh — the dramatic images of climate change. However, according to Dr. Juergen Zimmerer, if temperatures continue to rise, there could worse in store: genocide.

Dr. Zimmerer, director of the new Centre for the Study of Genocide and Mass Violence at Sheffield University in northern England, explains that globalisation has intensified the competition for resources. “Climate change will increase the scarcity of resources, be it habitable land or drinkable water, amid the already existing shortage of fossil energy such as oil.”

“Genocide and competition over resources are definitely related and my fear is that the 21st century, rather than the 20th, will turn out to be the century of genocides,” he says.

The possibility of genocide being caused by globalisation, climate change and competition for scarce resources will be one of the focal areas of study at the centre, the first of its kind in the U.K.

As well as competition for living space, genocide results from the dehumanisation of one group by another. “The key condition for genocide is to have two groups, with the dominant one considering the other to be its polar opposite. Once you define a group as ‘not human’ or ‘sub-human’, ordinary people will do things which they would not do to people they regarded as fellow human beings.”

Dr. Zimmerer adds that the “biologisation of identity” in modern times has fostered genocidal violence. In the pre-industrial world, where people’s identities were shaped around their birthplace, religion or allegiance to a monarch, one could convert to a new religion, for example. In modern times, identities have increasingly formed along national and racial lines, which one cannot change, and groups are able to dehumanise others on biological grounds. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2007

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