Global Issue: Genocide in the Twentieth Century Language Essay (Essay Sample)

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Global Issue: Genocide in the Twentieth Century
Some of the key words used in this essay include genocide, offender, and atrocity. In reference to the book Genocide: A reader by Meierhenrich, the author defines Genocide as the murder of a big group, especially of a particular country or ethnic group (12). The book also defines Offender, as an individual committing a wrongdoing (13), and Atrocity as an exceedingly horrid or inhumane action, mainly causing injury or physical violence (15).
In the piece of an inscription "To kill a people: Genocide in the twentieth century," Cox mentions that ever since the 1970s, the genocide study has increased massively (2). Cox further states that the two overall purposes of genocide research were to develop more concerted reasons for genocide as well as a greater understanding of repercussions than in the literary works before (3). What's more, cox contends that the genocides cost more than 40 million lives in the 20th century. The source ascertains that Genocide is a term that was conceived by Lemkin Raphael (1900–1959), a Polish-Jewish researcher who was committed to the development of an international human rights tool to prevent genocide in response to atrocities that had taken place in Second World War (20). The efforts he made resulted in the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Penalty of Genocide Crime - December 9, 1948 . The Convention is lawfully internationally binding but has turned out to be a subject of contentious debate, mainly in relation to competing “genocide” interpretations (20).
In keeping with the book: “Introduction to the Global Studies,” Campbell, Aran, and Christy assert that genocides in the twentieth century were several. The authors state, “In addition to nuclear threats and armed conflicts, the world has witnessed several genocides” (357). Indeed, this claim is supported by Meierhenrich in the book Genocide: A reader, who lists the numerous genocides that transpired in the twentieth century (12). According to the latter, the genocides included the following Herero between 1904 and 1907; the Ottoman Empire genocide in Armenia 1915–23; the Holodomor from 1932–33 in former Soviet Ukraine; the1938–45 Jewish Holocaust, the 1971 incident in Bangladesh; Cambodia between 1975 and 1979; East Timor between and 1975–1999; Bosnia 1991–95, and the 1994 episode in Rwanda (Meierhenrich 12). The purpose of this paper is to give a synopsis of the genocide of the twentieth century, discuss why genocide is a global issue, highlight the most pressing thing about the issue of genocide in the twentieth century, and provide a way to address the problem of genocide.
           The selection of this topic followed a reflection on the brutality and inhumanity that transpired during the twentieth-century genocides mentioned beforehand. Indeed, by choosing this topic, one can agree that genocides are occurrences that evoke revulsion, despair, and shame, even decades after their existence. The topic was interesting for this undertaking because it can help the current generation to look back into the twentieth century as a way of trying to gain perspective on the complex crises of the present times. While choosing the topic, it was contended that the genocides of the twentieth century were an absurdity, a momentary slip into societal madness due to some unique convergence of particular conditions, still unsounded.