Thesis advisor: Donald Hafner / Thesis advisor: Timothy Crawford / This Scholar of the College senior honors thesis moves beyond moral pronouncements and the vague excuse of international "lack of will" for genocide intervention to introduce an inductive typology identifying practical, specific factors responsible for the world's repeated unwillingness to intervene during genocide under the obligations of the 1948 Genocide Convention. Drawing on original, classified documents contained in the UN Office at Geneva, the thesis proposes methods of mitigating the influence of these factors and evaluates the degree to which the Responsibility to Protect, a new humanitarian intervention norm, attenuates or exacerbates the causes of non-intervention. The project was awarded the John McCarthy S.J. Award for the most distinguished Scholar of the College senior thesis in the Social Sciences at Boston College. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science Honors Program. / Discipline: Political Science.

[pt] O presente trabalho propõe uma investigação de algumas das condições de possibilidade quanto ao conceito de Genocídio. Buscando entender alguns dos limites políticos e sociais na utilização do termo Genocídio – no Internacional ou não -, estabelece-se uma análise que tenta conciliar as bases que tornam possível a invenção do conceito em 1944 pelo jurista polonês Raphael Lemkin, bem como sua recepção, abordagem, e disputas quanto ao que o conceito deve(ria) significar entre 1944 e dezembro de 1948, quando a Convenção para a Prevenção e a Repressão do Crime de Genocídio foi aprovada pela Assembleia Geral das Nações Unidas. Mais do que apenas determinar a politização (Politisierung) do Conceito, argumenta-se que um entendimento sobre o que Genocídio é ou deveria ser, seja no recorte temporal proposto, seja nos debates que se seguem no Campo de Estudos sobre Genocídio, requer uma abordagem que reflita as múltiplas temporalidades que cada reinvindicação de significado do Conceito traz em si. / [en] This work seeks to investigate a few of the conditions of possibility for a concept of Genocide. By establishing an analysis that tries to reconcile the basis under which the creation of the concept in 1944, as well as its reception, take and dispute of what the concept must (have) mean(t) between 1944 and December 1948, when the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was approved by the United Nations General Assembly, this work aims for an understanding of a few of the political and social limits on the employment of the term Genocide. More than just considering the politicisation (Politisierung), it is argued that a certain understanding of what Genocide is or ought to be, be it through the proposed temporal frame or through the debates that follow in the Field of Genocide Studies, requires an approach that reflects on the multiple temporalities that each claim for a certain meaning that is brought within the Concept.

In early 1999, newly appointed Indonesian President Habibie authorised a referendum on independence for East Timor. It was held under UN supervision and an overwhelming majority voted in favour. This was not well received by the conservative Indonesian military TNI, which saw this as the beginning of an Indonesian state collapse. Therefore, the TNI launched a month-long offensive in East Timor in the autumn of 1999, characterised by massive displacement, burning of infrastructure, sexual violence against women, and repeated cases of wanton murders. Consequently, some historians have described the period as a genocide. The term genocide aims to describe a concept where a perpetrator has a coordinated plan to destroy key elements of national groups, with the aim of ending the groups’ existence as a whole. Genocide is thus strongly characterised by the idea of human rights and, by extension, has a liberal underpinning. This study aims to determine whether the East Timor Crisis of 1999 can be described as a genocide; whether the description is correct if consideration is made to what constitutes a group and the intent of the perpetrator. It also aims to achieve this by using the originator of the term Raphaël Lemkin's eight societal domains in which he regards genocide to be committed and thus applies events from the East Timor Crisis within these domains to determine whether genocide has taken place. The study makes use of a qualitative, theory consuming case study methodology. It then concludes that genocide, with exceptions, occurred within every societal domain of the East Timorese society throughout the East Timor Crisis of 1999.