Genocide Studies

This book shows how scholarly studies of prejudice, identity formation, and genocide studies can shed light on global examples of religious hatred. The book is divided into four parts, focusing respectively on: theories of prejudice and violence; historical developments of antisemitism, Islamophobia, and race; contemporary Western antisemitism and Islamophobia; and, prejudices beyond the West in the Islamic, Buddhist, and Hindu traditions. Each part ends with a special focus section.

Key features include:
- A compelling synthesis of theories of prejudice, identity, and hatred to explain Islamophobia and antisemitism.
- An innovative theory of human violence and genocide which explains the link to prejudice.
- Case studies of both Western antisemitism and Islamophobia in history and today, alongside global studies of Islamic antisemitism and Hindu and Buddhist Islamophobia
- Integrates discussion of race and racialisation as aspects of Islamophobic and antisemitic prejudice in relation to their framing in religious discourses.
- Accessible for general readers and students, it can be employed as a textbook for students or read with benefit by scholars for its novel synthesis and theories.

The book focuses on antisemitism and Islamophobia, both in the West and beyond, including examples of prejudices and hatred in the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions. Drawing on examples from Europe, North America, MENA, South and Southeast Asia, and Africa, Paul Hedges points to common patterns, while identifying the specifics of local context.
Religious Hatred is an essential guide for understanding the historical origins of religious hatred, the manifestations of this hatred across diverse religious and cultural contexts, and the strategies employed by activists and peacemakers to overcome this hatred.

More than fifty years after subjection to anti-Jewish persecution, Holocaust survivors embody divergent responses to the conflict that endangered their existence. Narrative analysis of oral and written testimonies by survivors reveals three major modes of creatively reclaiming personal agency: avoiding violence by delimiting the realm of control, embracing violence through forcible dispensation of justice, and expanding agency by exercising personal ability in the economic realm. The first-person narratives of Jewish survivors illustrate this autopoeisis, or creative redirection of conflict. The testimonies reveal transformation as an ongoing process of working through rather than working out conflict, an approach that accords well with the Judaic moral principle of tikkun olam, the imperative to repair a fractured world.

In this paper, I examine how the criminology of genocide suffers from problems characteristic of the first generation of genocide scholarship, such as sweeping comparison, narrow legalism, and inattention to genocidal processes. Moreover, I highlight recent second generation work within genocide studies that has gone largely ignored by criminologists, and in particular North American criminologists, and which would allow the criminology of genocide to overcome some of its disciplinary limitations. In particular, I point to the growing areas of critical, colonial, and settler colonial genocide studies as offering vital lessons for the criminology of genocide, using the example of residential schools in Canada, and the Fort Alexander Indian Residential School in particular, to illustrate my arguments.

Enacted February 24, 2014 and effective until August 1, 2014, Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act targeted Ugandans of minority sexual orientations and gender identities—many of whom self-identify as 'kuchu'—by imposing life sentences for homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. The original Anti-Homosexuality Bill introduced in 2009 promised even worse for kuchus: it would have mandated that all Ugandans report known homosexuals and threatened execution for serial offenders and other perpetrators of “aggravated homosexuality.” In the context of Ugandan political conflict, emerging international human rights norms, and global asymmetries of power, Uganda has become an ideological battlefront where competing actors—both US-based and Ugandan—advance their respective visions of a just and righteous global society. These factors mandate that US-based activists and organizations painstakingly consider how (or whether) they can advocate responsibly and effectively for international human rights related to gender identity and sexual orientation. Through interdisciplinary lenses and critical analysis, this paper explores three questions:

• How is Uganda distinct from other sites of antigay legislation?
• How have US-based organizations impacted Ugandan discourse and policy toward kuchus?
• How can US-based rights advocates and activists campaign for kuchus without doing them further harm?

The few works on the Yezidi Genocide that have appeared thus far have mainly focused on the violence perpetrated against the Yezidis and no work has attempted the construction of a general historical narrative covering the essential political dimensions of the Genocide and its aftermath. This chapter begins to address this need by providing a basic chronology and description of pivotal episodes in the political history of the Yazidi Genocide.

Dorothee Wein, Volker Mall und Harald Roth dokumentieren 62 Jahre nach Ende der NS-Barbarei erstmals den Bau des Militärflughafens bei Hailfingen/Tailfingen, auf dessen Gelände später das Außenlager des KZ Natzweiler im Elsass errichtet wurde. Doch sie zeigen noch mehr. Sie folgen den Spuren von 1945 bis heute und beschreiben den Umgang der Justiz und der Bevölkerung mit den Verbrechen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem Bau des Flugplatzes und im KZ-Hailfingen/Tailfingen passierten.

Although some scholarship has discussed the argumentative tactics of Holocaust deniers and how they persuade some audiences to reject seemingly obvious factual events, no research has addressed how Holocaust survivors themselves confront this direct challenge to their lived experience. Using videotaped oral testimonies in the Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive (the world’s largest such collection), this study examines how survivors meet the challenge of Holocaust denial in Germany and in the United States.
Close analysis of the argumentative tactics embedded in survivor testimony reveals that survivors craft narratives with richer dimensions than acknowledged in the twisted historiography of Holocaust denial. Survivors attest not only to the facticity of external events but also to affective memory, chronicling how they process and adapt to trauma. This affective dimension of testimony suggests that survivors’ narratives employ more complex layers of argumentation than simply claiming correspondence to particular historical incidents. [In press--upload coming soon!]

Ayhan Aktar has been working on anti-minority policies in modern Turkey since 1991. In the Ottoman Empire’s final decade (in 1906), non-Muslims constituted 20% of the population; by 1927, they were reduced to 2.5% and, nowadays, they make up less than 0.02% of the population of Modern Turkey. Armenians were subjected to deportations (1915), Greeks were ‘exchanged’ (1922–1924) and Jews were forced to migrate abroad (after 1945). Like many other nation-states in the Near East, Turkey has been able to homogenize its population on religious grounds. This book is a collection of Aktar's articles about this transformation.

Aktar criticises nationalist historiographies and argues "For instance, a scholar conducting research on the Jewish community during the republican period could easily come to the conclusion that only Jews were discriminated against by the Turkish state. However, this is only partially true! All non-Muslim minorities were discriminated against and their stories cannot be understood unless the Turkish state and its policies are placed at centre stage. Utilizing diplomatic correspondence in the British and US National Archives has enabled me to understand anti-minority policies as a whole and to treat the subject within a totality."

This book will interest scholars and students of nationalism, minority studies and Turkish history and politics.

A chronology of all measures introduced by the National Socialist municipal administration and other perpetrator agencies against the Berlin Jews. The day by day chronicle, based on many hitherto unknown sources, provides the reader with a detailed and graphic picture of how the exclusion of the Jews from all spheres of public life unfolded over time and who was responsible for it. The introduction discusses the overlooked importance of local institutions for the radicalization of the persecution in the capital of the Third Reich, yet also touches upon the reactions and resistance of the Jews.

This study analyzes controversies and public attitudes concerning the Bandera faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)
and Stepan Bandera in Ukraine. The research question is: Which factors affect attitudes toward the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera in contemporary Ukraine? This article employs comparative and regression analyses of surveys commissioned by the author and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in 2009 and 2013 to determine the effects of regional and other factors on attitudes toward these organizations and the OUN-B leader. The study shows that regional factors and perceptions of these organizations' involvement in mass murder were the strongest predictors of the views concerning the OUN-B, the UPA and Bandera. Their public support is strongest in Galicia and weakest in the East and the South, in particular, in Donbas and Crimea, two major conflict areas since the “Euromaidan.”

Հայ իրականության մեջ առաջին դեպքը չէ, երբ Հայոց ցեղասպանության տարելիցների կապակցությամբ հրապարակումներ են լինում, որոնք փորձում են նորովի ներկայացնել Ցեղասպանության թեման և ուսումնասիրության նոր մեթոդներ են առաջ քաշում, սակայն այս հարցում միշտ էլ կա նոր ասելիքի կամ ասելիքի նորոգման կարիք: 2015թ. վերջին լույս տեսավ Հայկազեան հայագիտական հանդեսի 35-րդ հատորը, որը կրում է «Հարիւրամեակէն անդի՛ն, եւ` ի՛նչ» խորագիրը: Թերևս այդ «Ի´նչ»-ն էլ հենց խորհրդանշում է ողջ հատորի բովանդակությունը։

Նոյեմբերի 5-ին Գիտությունների ազգային ակադեմիայում տեղի ունեցավ Հայկազյան հայագիտական հանդեսի 35-րդ հատորի շնորհանդեսը․ ներկա հյուրերը՝ ՀՀ սփյուռքի նախարարը, ՀՀ ԳԱԱ փոխնախագահը, այլ ելույթ ունեցողներ, կարևորելով հանդերձ հանդեսի դերը հայ իրականության և սփյուռք-հայրենիք կապի մեջ, խոսելով Հայկազյան Համալսարանի գործունեության մասին, այնուամենայնիվ, չանդրադարձան շնորհանդեսի բուն առիթին՝ հանդեսի վերջին հատորին։ Նշենք, որ 35-րդ հատորի շնորհանդեսը փաստում է դրան նախորդած հատորների ձևավորման փորձառության կուտակման մասին:
Հատորում տեղ են գտել 18 հոդված, 3 քննարկում, 9 հրապարակում, 5 հաղորդում և դերսիմահայերի վերաբերյալ հուշագրություններ:

Հայկազյան Հայագիտական հանդեսի 35-րդ հատորի առաջին երկու հոդվածը (Աշոտ Ոսկանյան, «Աղետի պահապանը»․ Ռոբեր Քոփթաշ, «Հայ քաղաքական միտքը երիտթուրքական հեղափոխությունից առաջ և հետո») ծածուկ կաղապարներով փորձում են ընթերցողին հասցնել այն միտքը, որ Մեծ եղեռնի իրագործման մեղքը հաճախ այս ու այն կողմ որոնելու փոխարեն պետք է մեր բաժին սխալը փորձենք ուղղել՝ ի սկզբանե ընդունելով այն: Երրորդ հոդվածը (Եղիկ Ջերեջյան, «Համբարձում Բոյաջյանի (Մեծն Մուրադ) խորհրդարանական գործունեությունը (1908-1912թթ․)») ներկայացնում է հայկական ներկայությունը թուրքական խորհրդարանում Առաջին աշխարհամարտի տարիներին։ Այն նաև, թեկուզ անուղղակիորեն, այնուամենայնիվ տեսանելի է դարձնում առաջին երկու հոդվածների կաղապարի արդարացիությունը, այն է՝ Օսմանյան խորհրդարանում որոշակի տեղ ու կշիռ ունեցող հայ մտավորականների աչքի առջև էր սկսվում հայերի կոտորածը:

This study examines the role of political factors in attitudes toward World War II in contemporary Ukraine. The question under examination is which factors determine public views of the principal warring sides and their leaders in Ukraine. This paper uses a representative national survey specifically designed for this research project and conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2012. It analyzes the roles of regionalism, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, age, and sex in attitudes toward the Red Army, Soviet partisans, the German Army (Wehrmacht), and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) during the war, as well as toward the wartime leaders of the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the UPA. The analysis of the survey data shows that regional values, political party preferences, ethnicity, language, and age have significant effects on views of the Soviet Army and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during the war and attitudes toward the wartime activities of Joseph Stalin and Roman Shukhevych. Public perceptions of the German Army and Adolf Hitler in Ukraine do not vary much across regions, political parties, and ethnic, language, age, and sex groups.

During the Holocaust and the subsequent process of what has become known as liberation, women constantly confronted convergent oppressive forces. Under the Nazi regime and its cohorts as well as during the liberation process, Jews faced torture and genocide. Jewish women constantly lived with an additional layer of oppression: threatened or actual sexual violence. Positioned at the vortex of intersecting oppressions, how can the identities of these women transcend their stature as victims? How do women creatively reposition themselves vis-à-vis the perpetrators and the traumatic events so they can maintain or reclaim their agency and dignity?
Centering on narrative analysis of first-person testimony gleaned from memoirs and from the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive (VHA), this investigation covers four narratively sustained modes of comportment toward sexual violence. First, mutual aid demonstrates an ethic of care. Second,  degrading or minimizing the perpetrator or the sexual act retains the narrator’s dignity. The final two angles offer complementary ways to avoid or repel assault: distracting an assailant by directing him toward more attractive targets, and rendering oneself repellant.
Departing from the prevailing approach of treating Holocaust survivor testimonies primarily as responses to trauma, this project reveals how the narrators actively craft their identities through the storytelling process. This creative molding of identity through narrative, a process called autopoeisis, recasts survivors of these and other traumas as dynamically (re)negotiating their understanding of self and their relationship to lived experiences. Trauma stories thereby further tikkun olam—repair of a fractured world.

SAVING LIVES IS GOOD FOR YOUR SOUL – SEND THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.  NOT TO DO SO, IS HIGHLY ILLEGAL.

‘Huge, huge numbers:’ insurance group sees death rates up 40 percent over pre-pandemic levels 

THE SOLUTION IS RIDICULOUSLY SIMPLE.  ALL IDIOTS CAN DO IT, EVEN YOU - DOING SO IS VERY GOOD FOR THE SOUL  -  AND IT PROTECTS AGAINST RADIATION

The issue of the political rehabilitation and glorification of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) became one of the central political issues in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan. It provoked major political and historical controversies and debates in Ukraine and other countries. Presidents Yushchenko and Poroshenko, their parties, far right organizations, and many Ukrainian historians attempted to recast the OUN-B and the UPA as parts of a popular national liberation movement that fought against Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and to present the OUN-B and UPA leaders as national heroes. They denied, minimized or justified the involvement of the OUN-B and the UPA leaders and members in the mass murder of Jews, Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians.

The analyses of biographic publications, historical studies, and archival documents show that the majority of the OUN-B and UPA leaders and very large proportions of their members collaborated with Nazi Germany, mainly in the beginning of the Second
World War. Nearly half of the top and middle-ranked leaders of these organizations and
at least until the end of 1943 the majority of UPA members served in various police formations. They assisted the German occupation authorities in implementing genocidal policies towards the Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles by helping to carry out mass shootings and create conditions intended for the physical annihilation of the entire Jewish population and large numbers of Ukrainians, Russians, and Poles, specifically in Volhynia. The fact that many police commanders and large numbers of policemen in various locations and formations followed orders from the OUN-B by deserting en masse from their service, in particular in Volhynia in the spring of 1943, and forming the basis of the UPA shows that these commanders and police members were de facto controlled by the OUN-B.

In the first half of 1944, tens of thousand Ukrainians left their country together with the withdrawing German occupiers in order to avoid confrontation with the approaching Red Army and the Soviet authorities. Between the summer of 1941 and their time of departure, all of these Ukrainians had had some kind of experience with the Holocaust, either as observers, as rescuers or as perpetrators. In the second half of the 1940s they were relocated from DP camps to various western countries such as Australia, Canada, the USA and the United Kingdom, while some remained in West Germany and Austria. In their newspapers and numerous memoirs they frequently described and discussed the Second World War, but they either did not mention the Holocaust at all or portrayed it as a crime committed only by the Nazis and a small group of unpatriotic Ukrainians. The participation of the Ukrainian police, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), and various types of ordinary local Ukrainians did not appear in these memoirs and historical discourses. On the contrary, some of these actors, in particular the members of the OUN and the partisans of the UPA, were commemorated as freedom fighters and national heroes. Concentrating on western Ukraine, this article explores how, during the Cold War, the Ukrainian Diaspora forgot the annihilation of the Jews, turned Holocaust perpetrators and war criminals into heroes of Ukraine, and argued that survivors from eastern Galicia and Volhynia, who mentioned Ukrainians as perpetrators, were Soviet propagandists and Jewish chauvinists.

"The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist" is the first comprehensive and scholarly biography of the Ukrainian far-right leader Stepan Bandera and the first in-depth study of his political cult. In this fascinating book, Grzegorz Rossolinski-Liebe illuminates the life of a mythologized personality and scrutinizes the history of the most violent twentieth-century Ukrainian nationalist movement: the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army. Elucidating the circumstances in which Bandera and his movement emerged and functioned, Rossolinski-Liebe explains how fascism and racism impacted on Ukrainian revolutionary and genocidal nationalism. The book shows why Bandera and his followers failed—despite their ideological similarity to the Croatian Ustaša and the Slovak Hlinka Party—to establish a collaborationist state under the auspices of Nazi Germany and examines the involvement of the Ukrainian nationalists in the Holocaust and other atrocities during and after the Second World War. The author brings to light some of the darkest elements of modern Ukrainian history and demonstrates its complexity, paying special attention to the Soviet terror in Ukraine and the entanglement between Ukrainian, Jewish, Polish, Russian, German, and Soviet history. The monograph also charts the creation and growth of the Bandera cult before the Second World War, its vivid revivals during the Cold War among the Ukrainian diaspora, and in Bandera's native eastern Galicia after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

EŞREF: Kuşçubaşı’nın Alternatif Biyografisi, gayrinizami harp tarihimizin en meşhur ismini en insani özellikleriyle ortaya koyan sıradışı bir kitap…

Adı tarihe Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa’nın kurucusu ve ilk başkanı olarak geçen Eşref Kuşçubaşı gerçekte kimdi? Ömrünü gayrinizami harp ve istihbarat faaliyetleriyle geçiren bir kahraman mı? Yoksa Milli Mücadele sırasında Yunan saflarına geçerek yıllar boyunca Türkiye Cumhuriyeti’ne karşı savaşan bir vatan haini mi?

Gayrinizami harp ve istihbarat tarihi uzmanı Polat Safi, bu sorulara Eşref Kuşçubaşı’nın çoğu gün yüzüne yeni çıkmış olan şahsi evrakına dayanarak hazırladığı alternatif biyografiyle yanıt veriyor: EŞREF, yakın tarihimizin, hakkında
çok şey yazılıp çizilmesine karşın aslında hala bir muamma olan bu tartışmalı figürüne dair ezberleri bozuyor ve ona önce bir insan, sonra tarihi bir kişilik olarak yeniden ayna tutuyor.

Bu kitap aynı zamanda yakın tarihimizi ilgilendiren birçok karanlık noktayı da aydınlatıyor: Eşref, Arabistan Devrimci Komitesi diye bir örgüt kurdu mu? Çok yakın olduğunu iddia ettiği Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Enver Paşa ve Çerkes Ethem’le nasıl bir ilişkisi vardı? Garbi Trakya Hükümeti ve Teşkilat-ı Mahsusa’nın başkanlığını yaptı mı? Mehmet Akif Ersoy, “Çanakkale Destanı”nı onunla birlikte gittiği Necid görevi sırasında mı yazdı? Eşref, Yakup Cemil hadisesinde nasıl bir rol oynadı? Milli Mücadele aleyhindeki ayaklanmalarda payı oldu mu? Neden Yunan tarafına geçti? Atatürk’e suikast girişimindeki rolü neydi? ve daha nicesi…

Günther Anders’ Philosophy of Technology; From Phenomenology to Critical Theory
(London: Bloomsbury, 2022)

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/g%C3%BCnther-anders-philosophy-of-technology-9781350228580/?fbclid=IwAR3eNUw90xrdaJ44UC1MTKYnSvegjeyBgFbIsY4viZrJdmdlqgYNpHjMPlI

To download click here : https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:23569

La promulgation de la loi du 23 février 2005 « portant reconnaissance de la Nation et contribution nationale en faveur des Français rapatriés » donne lieu à un important débat public et à la diffusion d’une pétition d’historiens exigeant l’abrogation de toutes les lois dites mémorielles (loi de 2005 en cause, mais aussi loi Gayssot de 1990, loi reconnaissant le génocide arménien et loi Taubira de 2001). Cette pétition repose sur une dénonciation qui présuppose que lesdites lois, mises sur le même plan, auraient une fonction et un objet identiques. Or ce double présupposé est critiquable : d’une part, le fait d’appréhender ces textes comme ayant la même fonction, celle de sanctionner un comportement, est basé sur une confusion qu’il s’agit de clarifier ; d’autre part, considérer qu’ils ont le même objet, en l’occurrence l’établissement d’une vérité officielle par le Parlement ou les juges, relève d’un malentendu qu’il convient de dissiper s’agissant des lois de 1990 et de 2001. Ainsi le problème ne serait pas tant celui d’une inflation législative alarmante de lois scélérates, établissant une vérité d’Etat ; mais plutôt celui du sens, à peine caché, de l’adoption d’un texte tel que l’article 4 de la loi de 2005, qui impose une interprétation légitimement contestée par les historiens.
Sévane Garibian

Is genocide the correct word for the brutal treatment that Native nations suffered at the hands of public authorities and settlers during the United States’ continental expansion? Jeffrey Ostler revisits this question in his comprehensive and impressively thorough book Surviving Genocide: Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas.

Il genocidio non è prerogativa dei soli Stati autoritari. Tenendo costantemente in tensione analisi concettuale e indagine storiografica, I dannati senza terra ricostruisce, nelle sue inquietanti sfaccettature, la storia della catastrofe indigena perpetrata dalle “democrazie” occidentali: dagli Stati Uniti al Canada, dall’Australia alla Nuova Zelanda. Veri e propri genocidi, realizzati per mezzo di politiche eliminazioniste di natura fisica, biologica e culturale: dal massacro all’assimilazione coatta, passando per la sterilizzazione eugenetica. Ne emerge un quadro al tempo stesso commosso, provocatorio e rigoroso, che intende restituire dignità alle vittime dimenticate e rispondere alla sfida lanciata dal revisionismo storico e al suo tentativo di cancellare i crimini più efferati dell’Occidente.

Californian Indian societies, land is life. The affirmation of the aforementioned statement is based on the premise that land is necessary for their livelihood. A commonality that can be identified out of the three societies mentioned above is that they all lived off the land by means of hunting and eventually gathering. Faith to a great degree for natives all over the world, is inextricably bound to the use of the land. The San believed that there was no life without the land due to the spiritual enactment of it; Aboriginal people of Australia had a spiritual, physical and cultural connection to their land and Californian natives had a perception of the land as being sacred and a living being (Brady, 1998). Therefore, a contest for land can also be regarded as a contest for life. The most evident commonalties that is shared by all of the societies mentioned above is that they were virtually whipped out. Dr Mohamed Adhikari suggests that the main agents for the destruction of the Cape San societies was owing to the Dutch-speaking pastoralists whose homicidal form of acquiring land and the ecological damage caused from their farming exploits, virtually certified the

This chapter investigates whether the Holocaust was the catalyst for the adoption of a number of seminal texts in the postwar 'human rights revolution', including the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). An examination of published and archival source material reveals that the negotiations over the drafting of these documents were marked by a total or near-total silence on the mass murder of Jews. The article concludes with an analysis of why during the drafting process the framers of these texts, including Jewish delegates whose family members had been killed in the Holocaust, refrained from invoking the slaughter of European Jewry at the same time as they called attention to other Nazi crimes.

[For a more in-depth analysis of the Holocaust origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, see my 2012 article in the Journal of Genocide Research]

This paper investigates how national ideologies are able to contribute towards the preparation of the path to genocide. It looks at a concept of 'othering' where ideology can dehumanise the other and looks at the cases of Bosnia and Rwanda for further insight.

This dissertation will examine the military intervention conducted by NATO in Kosovo in 1999.  By examining the pre-existing situation, the justifications given, the methods used, and the results of the intervention, it will be determined whether the characterization of this event as a “humanitarian intervention” is accurate.  In the first chapter, the literature on Kosovo, human rights, and humanitarian intervention is examined to assess the current state of the debate on the Kosovo intervention.  Following this introduction is a chapter on the idea of human rights.  This begins with a brief history of human rights, then assesses the standing of human rights in international law and international relations and the ways in which they apply to the Kosovo intervention.  The concept of humanitarian intervention is examined in the next chapter, including a short survey of its history in the post-World War II period, an examination of different definitions of the term, and a determination of what criteria were (or should be) applied in order to evaluate whether or not an intervention qualifies as “humanitarian”.  The fourth chapter is a case study of the intervention in Kosovo in the spring and summer of 1999, applying the ideas of human rights and humanitarian intervention to the course of events before, during, and after the NATO bombing campaign.  This chapter includes a brief historical background to the conflict, then moves on to an analysis of the motives, behaviour, and interests of the intervening parties, and an assessment of the outcome of the intervention.  The final section of this chapter is the conclusion, which summarizes the findings of this thesis and evaluates their significance in both academic and practical terms.