The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (Development Dialogue, no. 50, December 2008)

Revisiting the heart of darkness – Explorations into genocide and other forms of mass violence. 60 years after the UN Convention.
Edited by Henning Melber. Uppsala: The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation (Development Dialogue, no. 50, December 2008), 302 pp.

This Development Dialogue is published on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9th December 1948. On the basis of the normative framework created and more recently also applied in a few cases, the contributions seek to explore further the socio-historical and -political contexts of genocide and mass violence and test the common approaches against analyses of social realities as well as theories. The historical dimension is of significance to many of the chapters, which have a main focus on African cases and contexts.
The contributions, which are based on two conferences held in Uppsala in December 2006 and Oslo in November 2007, present scholarly as well as politically and morally guided forms of engagement. This blend seeks to acknowledge the need to unite differently posed concerns and appeals in their common efforts to examine further the notion of genocide (as well as its limitations), with the aim of reducing the risks of history repeating itself.

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