As we approach the 75th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention), it is important to reflect on it from an Australian perspective. Australia’s ratification of the Convention in 1949 has and continues to have very significant impacts both domestically and with respect to foreign policy.

The Genocide Convention was passed by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948, and came into effect in 1951. The first human rights treaty, it declares genocide a crime under international law which contracting parties undertake “to prevent and to punish.” Under the Convention, genocide is defined as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) killing members of the group; (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

This definition has had very particular consequences for Australia given its colonial history. In 1997, Bringing them Home: The National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families concluded that Australia’s forcible removal of indigenous children from their families constituted genocide. Yet many Australians have struggled to accept a conception of Australia that recognises this historical perpetration of genocide. While some of the Report’s recommendations were adopted, many were not, and Indigenous Australians continue to grapple with ongoing disadvantage and discrimination. The latest Closing the Gap report, designed to monitor progress towards overcoming Indigenous disadvantage, revealed only four of nineteen targets were on track. Indigenous Australians still experience reduced life expectancy, higher rates of imprisonment, higher rates of suicide, and higher levels of children in out-of-home care compared to other Australians. Moreover, the defeat of the Voice referendum has been experienced as a deep blow by many Indigenous Australians. While the Australian government has formally apologised to the Stolen Generations, much remains to be done to overcome the ongoing and systemic disadvantages experienced by Indigenous Australians as a direct result of this experience.

In the foreign policy arena, Australia has at times demonstrated strong leadership in pursuit of its commitment “to prevent and punish” the crime of genocide. In 1999, after voting in favour of independence from Indonesia, the East Timorese people were subject to brutal retaliatory violence. Many experts feared imminent genocide. The Australian government, pushed by a massive public outcry, worked feverishly to ensure a robust international response. The subsequent International Force for East Timor, or INTERFET, led by Australia, comprised our largest international peacekeeping mission. It stabilised the situation and prevented further escalation, paving the way for a UN mission and the eventual independence of Timor Leste.

Australia has also demonstrated its willingness “to punish” genocide through its substantial funding in support of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC). The ECCC was established as a hybrid court by the Cambodian government and the United Nations to try senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge, responsible for the 1975-1979 genocide in Cambodia. Between 2004 and 2020, Australia contributed more than AUD$44 million dollars to the ECCC. While the court has been deeply criticised for its staggering costs and limited achievements, it is significant for bringing three leading perpetrators of the Cambodian genocide to justice. Australia’s willingness to support this endeavour demonstrates our capacity for international leadership in promoting compliance with the Convention.

In other cases, however, Australia has failed in its obligations “to prevent and punish” genocide. For example, Australia’s response to the genocide of the Uyghurs in China has been deeply disappointing. Beginning in 2014, China conducted a campaign involving the mass arbitrary detention of Uyghurs, forced sterilisation, forced removal of Uyghur children to boarding schools, alongside many additional human rights violations. While the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and others have recognised this as genocide, Australia has failed to do so. Successive Australian governments appear to have prioritised trade relations over the robust condemnation of genocide. Yet by placing trade above human rights, Australia is sending a dangerous message as to our willingness to tolerate the genocidal treatment of vulnerable minorities.

Australia has also lagged behind its western allies through the failure to recognise the Armenian genocide. The Armenian genocide occurred more than a century ago during World War One. Well over a million Armenians were killed by the Young Turk regime, with Australian Diggers witnessing some of the violence. In the aftermath, Turkiye mounted a sophisticated campaign of genocide denial, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Despite this, many Western countries have formally recognised the Armenian genocide, including the US and Canada. Yet Australia continues to dance around the topic in deference to Turkiye’s position. This position of complicity with genocide denial is at odds with our commitments under the Genocide Convention, as well as with Australian values.

Most recently, Australia has also refrained from robustly condemning mass atrocities in Tigray, Ethiopia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan, each of which may constitute genocide. It has chosen to primarily respond to these atrocities as humanitarian crises, with only general statements of condemnation of the violence. Such an approach, however, emboldens perpetrators as they face few, if any, consequences for their crimes.

Australia has an opportunity to be a world leader in the promotion of human rights and the prevention of genocide. Such a position aligns with Australian values. Yet not only have we failed to display leadership in our compliance with the Genocide Convention, currently we stand as an outlier for our weak positions compared to other western nations. As we approach the 75th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, it is time for Australia to do more.

Deborah Mayersen is a Senior Lecturer in International and Political Studies at the University of New South Wales Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy. Deborah’s research expertise is in the field of genocide studies, including the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide and genocide prevention. Her publications include On the Path to Genocide: Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined (Berghahn Books, 2014), and the edited volume A Cultural History of Genocide in the Modern World (Bloomsbury, 2021).

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.