New publications

New thesis

News: Mar 01, 2010

The Holocaust and Genocide in History and Politics. A Study of the Discrepancy between Human Rights Law and International Politics

The focus of the dissertation is on the role of the Holocaust in interpreting genocide in international politics. The Holocaust by becoming one of the main influences on morality and ethics in the post-world war world is often seen as a standard to measure good and evil. Consequently, the Holocaust has become an important tool that can be used by the actors of international politics to achieve different rhetorical and practical goals of politics.
The dissertation illustrates the way in which the Holocaust is used as the “lens” through which other mass atrocities are interpreted and compared and the consequences this have on the fulfillment of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

The central question of the study is what role has the Holocaust played in the ways that “genocide” has been interpreted in post-war politics? To answer the question the dissertation examines the development of the Holocaust into its status as the great moral wrongdoing and its relationship to the concept of genocide through out post-war history and politics. The role played by the Holocaust in genocide politics is further emphasized by the case studies of the Cambodian and Rwandan genocide and the usage of the Holocaust in relation to the international community’s responses to the two cases.

Link to fulltext version of the thesis (opens in new window)
 

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