AN APPRAISAL OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE IN INTERNATIONAL LAW: A CASE STUDY OF ITS APPLICABILITY TO SOME INCIDENCES IN NIGERIA

CHAPTER ONE

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

1.1         Background of the Research

Humanity is caught in a paradoxical epoch that is characterized by hope and great yearning for peaceful co-existence amongst people, yet there are conflicts and possibilities of more explosive conflicts based on the mobilization of various identities and deterioration of relations at different level of identity divide. This deterioration of relations, which often spurs diverse crises, may be predicated on different divides, such as religious, racial, ethnic or national identity. Such crises on the basis of identifiable divides often degenerate to “genocide” the worse crime known to humanity.³ Genocide has been commonly used particularly in political dialogue to describe atrocities of great diversity, magnitude and character.⁴ Yet the prospect of the term arising in policy making often imposes an intimidating break on effective responses to the calamity of the crime.⁵ The crime of genocide, has over the years, dug the steps of mankind, and aborted the age long conceived sanctity and dignity of man. It shook the conscience of Winston Churchill, yet eluding a description; Churchill thus, called the terrible horror he saw as “a crime without a name”⁶ Scholars have also described genocide as “the crime of crimes”.