BYM presses David Lammy on genocide
Friends urge David Lammy to clarify comments he made
Britain Yearly Meeting (BYM) has joined calls for the foreign secretary to urgently clarify comments he made in the House of Commons.
The signatories called on David Lammy to clarify the UK government’s understanding of: genocide in international law; the scope of the UK’s international obligations pursuant to the Genocide Convention and Rome Statute; and what steps must be taken to fulfil such obligations. The call follows David Lammy’s response to a question on 28 October in which he framed the definition of genocide around numbers, such as ‘when millions of people lost their lives in crises like Rwanda, the second world war, and the Holocaust’. He claimed usage of the term ‘undermines the seriousness’ of the crime.
According to the statement from the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, this was ‘a dangerously misguided understanding of the crime, which introduces a numerical threshold into the definition of genocide. The Genocide Convention contains no such threshold. While the number of victims including as a proportion of the protected group is relevant – the latest figures show 43,000 killed – the death toll alone is not determinative for findings of genocide’.
The foreign secretary faced backlash following his comments, with other critics saying the term ‘genocide’ is a legal term that depends on the perpetrator’s intent.
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