Killing Them Softly: Forcible Transfers of Indigenous Children

Abstract

Abstract.The forcible transfer of indigenous children in North America and Australia are part of a global phenomenon that consisted of the kidnapping, trafficking, removal, and identity changes of children of particular groups. Article II(e) of the United Nation Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide prohibits the forcible transfer of children of a group to another group (FTC). The FTC echoes domestic and international legal norms and policies for the protection of children since early twentieth century. Its particular applicability to specific victims within a protected group -children -conveys a unique ethical position compared to the other acts enumerated acts in Article II, and the UNGC as a whole. This uniqueness may justify the much needed conceptual leap from the legalistic western-biased notion of genocide towards a more inclusive recognition of the political, social, and economical aspects of genocide. Keywords

Cultural Genocide in Canada? It Did Happen Here.

“…It was a policy which by drastic methods, aimed at the rapid and complete disappearance of the cultural, moral and religious life of a group of human beings" (The United Nations Secretary General 2008, 235). This was articulated together with the concern that the definition of cultural genocide (along with the protection of political groups) provided an undue expansion in the scope of the UNGC, to the point of breaching the sovereignty of member countries in undertaking policies of assimilation or protecting their governments from insurgent groups (The United Nations Secretary General 2008, 223, 231;Amir 2015;MacDonald and Hudson 2012;Mundorff 2009 Some delegates were concerned that some of the practices employed in their home countries for dealing with Indigenous peoples, immigrants, and minorities would be considered genocidal. Hence, the New Zealand delegate argued that even the UN might be held accountable for cultural genocide under its own definition.…”