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OC Media
18 hours ago
- Politics
- OC Media
Pashinyan remains most trusted politician in Armenia — at only 13% approval
Sign in or or Become a member to unlock the audio version of this article Join the voices Aliyev wants to silence. For over eight years, OC Media has worked with fearless journalists from Azerbaijan — some of whom now face decades behind bars — to bring you the stories the regime is afraid will get out. Help us fuel Aliyev's fears — become an OC Media member today Become a member Amidst the crisis between the Armenian government and the Armenian Apostolic Church, a new survey commissioned by the International Republican Institute (IRI) has found that Armenians are largely satisfied with the church. In addition, while Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan was the most trusted politician in Armenia, his popularity, as well as that of his Civil Contract party, has declined. The data was collected via telephone administered interviews with 1,505 Armenian residents and Nagorno-Karabakh refugees from 16–26 June. The results of the survey were published on Monday. According to the results, Pashinyan was the most trusted politician in Armenia, with 13% of respondents expressing confidence in him. He was followed by Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, with 5%, and opposition leader and former President Robert Kocharyan with 4%. Notably, 61% of respondents said they did not trust any political figure. Support for Pashinyan and his Civil Contract party declined to 17%, down from 20% in both 2023 and 2024. In contrast, the rating of Kocharyan's Armenia Alliance faction doubled, rising from 2% to 4%. Amidst the crisis between the Armenian government and the Armenian Apostolic Church, which has escalated since late May, survey data showed that the church was the institution with the second-most level of approval in Armenia, with 58% of respondents expressing satisfaction with its work. Respondents were most satisfied with the Armenian Armed Forces, which received an approval of 72%. Meanwhile, only 38% of respondents expressed satisfaction with the Prime Minister's office, a continued decline from over 80% in the aftermath of the 2018 Velvet Revolution. Advertisement The courts were the only public institution where the public have consistently been dissatisfied since August 2018 — according to the latest data, 52% of respondents were dissatisfied, while only 31% were satisfied. Despite criticism and protests against the government's handling of social assistance, 55% of respondents said they were satisfied with the Armenian government's support programmes for displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, while 36% expressed dissatisfaction. In addition, the IRI survey noted that they 'found signs of increasing political disengagement among young Armenians, with 37% of youth (age 18 to 35) responding that they would not vote if national parliamentary elections were held next Sunday'. The report quoted Stephen Nix, Senior Director for Europe and Eurasia at IRI, as saying that the Armenian government 'should undertake serious efforts to involve Armenian youth in the political and electoral processes'. Russia is still seen as a political threat Despite the apparent favourable turn in Armenia–Russia relations, following a freefall that started after lack of support in light of the Azerbaijani attack towards Armenia in 2021 and 2022, Armenians still view Russia as a political threat, behind just Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Israel. When asked about the signing of a peace treaty with Azerbaijan, 47% of respondents supported such a move while 40% opposed it. Those against the signing of a peace deal mentioned security issues, risks of war, the cession of territories to Azerbaijan, a lack of trust, and that the terms of the agreement are dictated only by Azerbaijan as the main disadvantages to such an agreement. Separately, Armenia's prospective membership in the EU enjoys broad support, with 49% of respondents saying they would vote in favour and only 15% opposed. Among those who expressed support for Armenia's accession to the EU, the main perceived benefits were strengthening the country's security, stability, and economy, and developing the country. In contrast, opponents of EU membership cited several concerns, including the deterioration of traditional Armenian family values, problems related to preserving national identity, the emergence of security problems, a negative impact on the economy, and risks of 'angering' Russia. Indeed, national security and border issues were considered to be the main problem that Armenia currently faces, with 44% expressing such a standpoint. Unemployment was the next biggest issue, receiving 14%, while political instability — 12% — was the third largest problem.
Straits Times
6 days ago
- Straits Times
Georgia stops the sale of $3 million of uranium that could have been used in a bomb
TBILISI - Georgia's State Security Service said on Thursday that it had detained two people for handling and attempting to sell $3 million worth of uranium which could have been used to make a deadly bomb. Georgia's State Security Service said it had prevented a "transnational crime" involving "the illegal sale and purchase of nuclear material, in particular, the radioactive chemical element uranium." One Georgian citizen and one foreigner were arrested in the western city of Batumi on the Black Sea, the statement said. The pair, whom the statement did not name, could face up to 10 years in prison. The State Security Service said that the uranium could have been used to make a deadly bomb with mass fatalities. When contacted by Reuters, the State Security Service declined to give any further details on how enriched the uranium was. The Service published video on Thursday showing law enforcement agents using a radiation scanner to inspect a passenger vehicle as well as two small vials, one of which appeared to contain a white, powdery substance. Uranium-235 is an isotope that is fissile, meaning it can sustain the nuclear chain reaction used in nuclear reactors and nuclear bombs while Uranium-238 is not fissile. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore Fatal abuse of Myanmar maid in Bishan: Traffic Police officer sentenced to 10 years' jail Singapore Man charged over manufacturing DIY Kpods at Yishun home; first such case in Singapore World US strikes destroyed only one of three Iranian nuclear sites, says new report Business 5 things to know about Kuok Hui Kwong, tycoon Robert Kuok's daughter and Shangri-La Asia head honcho Singapore Sex first, then you can sell my flat: Women property agents fend off indecent proposals and harassment Singapore Singapore Prison Service debunks online claims that it launched 'the world's first floating prison' Singapore Jail for elderly man for using knife to slash neighbour, who later died of heart disease Opinion Grab tried to disrupt taxis. It now wants to save them The security of nuclear materials was one of the biggest concerns after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, of which Georgia was a member. There have been several serious incidents involving the illicit trade in nuclear materials in Georgia over recent decades. In 2019, Georgia said it had detained two people for handling and trying to sell $2.8 million worth of Uranium-238. In 2016, authorities arrested twelve people, including Georgians and Armenians, in two separate sting operations within the same month and accused them of attempting to sell in total about $203 million worth of uranium-238 and uranium-235. In 2014, Georgia caught two Armenians trying to smuggle Cesium-137, a radioactive isotope of the metal cesium, into the country. Data from the U.N. nuclear watchdog's Incident and Trafficking Database (ITDB) showed that trafficking of nuclear and radioactive material remains very limited. REUTERS
EVN Report
6 days ago
- Health
- EVN Report
Why Armenian Children Eat So Much Sugar
Sugar is everywhere in Armenia. Sugar-laden foods are the first thing on display in nearly every corner store, among the shelves stacked with candy bars, cakes and sugary drinks. School canteens are no different, with pastries crammed alongside the khachapuri , bags of chips, and sodas of all flavors. Even at home, sugar lurks in foods that might appear healthful at first glance—in jams, jugs of the simmered fruit drink, kompot, and in homemade cakes and buttery sweet bread, gata . Feeding kids sugar is largely seen as a gesture of love, and as a consequence, Armenian children are eating it at alarming frequency. According to a 2024 World Health Organization (WHO) report that examined childrens' eating habits and health across 44 countries in Europe and Central Asia, Armenian kids aged between 11 and 15 eat more sugar per week than any other country analyzed. Nearly half reported eating chocolate, candy, or other sugary foods at least four times a week. They also rank among the top soda consumers for the same age group. 'Armenians are champions of sugar consumption,' says Arev Mazloumian, a nutritionist at the American University of Armenia (AUA) in Yerevan who has worked extensively on the Ministry of Health's school feeding programs in Armenia. 'Finally, we're first in something.' At the heart of the country's obsession with sugar is the vital role it plays in Armenian culture and daily life. Leading producers of candy are part of national identity, and giving sweets is often seen as a display of care and hospitality. But the risks associated with such high consumption are just beginning to become apparent. Like much of the world, the number of children who are overweight and obese is rising in Armenia, and doctors are reporting earlier cases of type 2 diabetes, typically considered a disease of middle-age. From a child's perspective, the appeal is simple: candy, cake and chocolate taste good. But the responsibility for making these choices often lies with the adults. Here, family has a 'very, very big influence,' says Mazloumian. Caring for children is a source of pride for families, and food plays a central role in this expression of love, with generous portions and rich foods seen as a tangible way to nurture kids. The World Food Programme reported data that showed that love and care are central to feeding practices in Armenia, with parents and grandparents expressing affection by making a child's favorite meals—even when those meals contained high levels of sugar, fat or salt. According to the study, caregivers also perceived homemade foods, including cookies and cakes, as inherently healthy since they don't contain additives. This belief also extended to traditional beverages such as kompot —which children consumed more than soda — regarded as healthy despite the high sugar content. Malzoumian also points to the misconception of honey as a health food. 'No matter how many times I tell people that honey is still a sugar, no one believes me,' she says. 'It is a better alternative, but it's still considered a sugar.' The normalization of sugar-laden foods is tied to more than just Armenian traditions, history also plays a role. The deprivation of the 90s, when food availability became scarce, caused the pendulum to swing the other way entirely, says Kim Hekimian, an associate professor of nutrition at Columbia University in New York, who has worked on local health initiatives for several decades. 'People in multiple generations went through deprivation,' she says. 'It's an understandable reaction to want to over-feed.' Sweets are also a staple of celebrations and social exchanges. Birthdays are celebrated enthusiastically, and cultural norms around hospitality mean that guests are expected to bring sweets to a home, and hosts feel compelled to offer them. Kids are also often rewarded with candy and sweet treats. 'Armenians are constantly giving candy to kids,' says Hekimian. 'All of us do it to a certain extent, as a bribe for good behavior.' Sugar consumption begins at an early age, says Satenik Mkrtchyan, the director of the School Feeding and Child Welfare Agency , which promotes balanced nutrition for schoolchildren. Things like sweetened tea are part of every family's morning and evening rituals, she says, and at a very young age kids are often given foods with sugar added to them, such as murabba (similar to jam). Sugar is even added to typically savory dishes such as kasha (a buckwheat dish) and shila (a kind of soup), to make it more palatable for children, Mkrtchyan says. Since eating habits form early in life, what children are fed in their first years can shape their preferences and health for decades to come. 'Once you have sugar, you always want it more and more and more,' says Mkrtchyan. 'You will not have any power to stop that.' That's why dietary patterns during infancy, and even the diet and health of the mother, play a key role in long-term well-being. Apart from the local dishes laced with sugar, some lingering practices from the Soviet era also shape how some infants are fed today, Hekimian says. Clinical advice once encouraged giving fruit and vegetable juices to infants only several months old — a practice at odds with modern recommendations . Such drinks contain large amounts of sugar. There was also a belief that breast milk should be supplemented with water. 'And to make that water more palatable, people would put some sugar in it,' Hekimian says. With many parents still living in multigenerational households, new mothers face pressure to follow well-meaning, but outdated, advice. 'You have generations of people who were taught those guidelines,' says Hekimian. 'These are early, early exposures that then develop taste preferences.' By the time children reach school age, many of those preferences have already been formed, and they're met with environmental challenges that offer few alternatives. Many students arrive at school with as little as 300 drams, according to the WFP report. Even if they wanted something healthier, their only options at the butka , or school canteen, are often pastries, sweets and chips. 'A lot of people mentioned that they don't even have the choice to buy something healthy,' Mazloumian says of the study. In higher-grade schools, the absence of cafeterias is also common, she says, limiting students' access to proper meals. The 'Westernization' of food has affected the availability of more nutrient-dense options at markets beyond the butka s, too. 'If you go to the supermarkets, it's all processed foods, candies,' she says. 'This was mostly in high income countries… now it's happening everywhere in the world.' Many kids might not know healthy food when they see it, either. The Mazloumian and Hekimian's experience teaching university-age students about nutrition has pointed to a bigger misunderstanding of 'healthy' foods in Armenia. When asked to name items for a healthy breakfast, many of their students mention avocado and salmon — neither of which are cheap or readily available in Armenia. 'There is a very, very, very big misconception that eating healthy is expensive,' says Mazloumian. 'You don't have to drink a 2,000 dram matcha latte or eat quinoa or avocado every day to be healthy.' Instead, beans, lentils and chickpeas, as well as seasonal fruits and vegetables which are part of a traditional Armenian dietary pattern, are affordable and nutritious, she says. Mkrtchyan and Mazloumian have been part of efforts to change eating behaviors from a young age within schools. One of the most promising efforts is the national School Feeding Program, active across Armenia's regions except Yerevan, which provides low-sugar, low-salt and limited trans fat meals to students aged six to ten. As part of her work on the program, Mazloumian has reviewed dozens of menus around the country, and sugar shows up everywhere. In some kindergartens, tea served to the children often contains several teaspoons of sugar ('Tea shouldn't even be provided to young children — let's not go there,' she says). With limited funds to create a menu, some schools lean on sugar and sweets to reach the caloric target. Meals devised as part of the School Feeding Program prove that healthy meals don't have to be expensive. These school meals can be as cheap as 150 drams per child, says Mazloumian. Such a meal would consist of a cabbage and carrot salad, rice, lentils, bread, cheese and a piece of fruit. But kids aren't always sold on the healthier plates. These menus that contain minimal amounts of added sugar or salt, 'imagine how difficult it is for that child to get used to this food.' For instance, they serve kompot without added sugar. 'No one drank that,' she says. 'Imagine you're drinking this with 40 teaspoons of sugar, and then no sugar.' The Ministry of Health recently updated their standards to reduce the amount of sugar recommended to children. From 40-45 grams per day— about a can of coke-worth of sugar — the recommended daily amount dropped to 20-25 grams, depending on age. 'But the implementation needs a lot of work,' Mazloumian says. In Kindergartens, some parents agree with the new menus, but others are resistant to the change, says Mkrtchyan, and ask for cakes and sugary teas for their kids. She's also part of an effort to roll out nutrition education to school-age children across the country. 'It's too early to measure the outcomes of this,' Mkrtychyan says, but 'the idea is to present rules for health, nutrition, physical activity and food safety.' She also suggests 'very intensive' educational work is also needed among parents and grandparents—the primary influences of a child's diet. Despite efforts to reduce sugar intake in school meals, changing broader perceptions about sugar remains difficult. Globally, the warnings about sugar are gaining traction, but this phenomenon is relatively recent. A few decades ago, fat was the taboo nutrient on supermarket shelves. Foods, such as yogurts, milks and spreads, began to be 'fat-free', but necessitated the addition of other flavors, especially salt and sugar, to remain palatable. Now, a growing body of evidence points to the overconsumption of sugar leading to long–term health effects , especially obesity , type 2 diabetes, and heart disease —Armenia's biggest killer. Armenia isn't an outlier in the global increase of overweight and obesity among kids and adults. A national study on childhood obesity found that more than a quarter of kids were overweight and about 13% were obese; those results were approximately double the previous survey three years prior. No robust data exists for diabetes prevalence among children, but anecdotally, doctors are reporting seeing diabetes at a younger age, says Mazloumian. 'People get type two diabetes after 40 years of age,' she says. 'Now they are seeing it in children.' High sugar intake is strongly associated with childhood obesity, and increased risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But efforts to reduce sugar consumption are only beginning to be part of the conversation in Armenia—though other countries around the world may provide a blueprint. Mexico and Chile lead the way globally with comprehensive policies aimed at reducing sugar consumption. In Mexico, a sugary-drink tax introduced in 2014 led to a decline in sales of such beverages in its first two years. Chile's 2016 law mandating front-of-package warnings, prohibiting the marketing of high-sugar foods to children, and banning their sale in schools have contributed to a significant reduction in the sales of sugar-heavy foods. Armenia's membership in the Eurasian Economic Union means food labels list calories, fat and total carbohydrates—not the amount of added sugar. Without a quantifiable sugar content, taxing or regulating sugar levels is nearly impossible, says Hekimian. Public discussions about the harms of sugar overconsumption remain nascent, but from a food policy perspective, there appears to be momentum for change . Hekimian points to a growing interest within the Ministry of Health for evidence-backed regulations such as limiting the advertising of sugar-laden foods to children. One Ministry-backed study found a large proportion of products marketed to minors failed to meet nutritional standards among television advertisements, though this analysis didn't include social media. Currently, no legal restrictions exist for the advertising of sugary foods and beverages to children, 'making it hard to counter unhealthy consumption patterns,' Mazloumian says. Sweeping changes to food policy might be challenging to implement where other factors add complexity. Sugar holds a dopamine appeal, says Hekimian, especially significant as part of comfort foods in what she hypothesizes is a state of chronic low-lying depression after war and the pandemic. That national grief might complicate how public messaging lands. 'It's hard to get a message out there that says sugar is bad for you, salt is bad for you,' she says. 'No one is listening to that.' More effective policies are the ones you don't know about. In an ideal scenario, Armenian food producers could quietly reformulate recipes to slowly reduce sugar without public fanfare. 'People don't even have to know about it,' Hekimian says. Alternatively, bold legislative proposals (even if they fail to pass) can spark crucial debate, similar to what happened when lawmakers floated removing salt shakers from restaurant tables several years ago. The law never passed, but it sparked a national conversation about salt. The same could be true of sugar, Hekimian says. 'The body needs sugar,' says Hekimian. 'Nobody is recommending a total and complete ban.' But something has to change, she says. 'We can really delay the introduction of sugar, and get sugar from carbohydrates that are healthier for us.'
Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- General
- Los Angeles Times
Hot cheese breads and meat pies are only the start at L.A.'s best new Armenian restaurant
The primary draw at Tun Lahmajo, a restaurant in Burbank lined with grainy woods to resemble a summer cabin, is right there in the name. A mottled, golden-edged lahmajo lands on nearly every table — or maybe three or four of them, for every person in a group. In Levantine Arabic, the dish is known as lahm bi ajeen: literally, 'meat with dough.' Armenians shortened the phrase and adapted the flatbread as their own. Cooks at Tun Lahmajo stretch their floury palette nearly as thin as a water cracker, though the flavor has far more char and tang. Cooks smear on a silky-rough mixture of seasoned beef and tomato paste right to the brim, which often handsomely buckles in the heat of baking. They might arrive oval, or rounder, or somewhere oblong and in between. Their unpredictable beauty is a reminder that an actual human someone is in the kitchen shaping them. Always, a server rushes them straight from the oven, when they're at once crisp and bendy, on plates where the crusty circumference hangs just over the rim. A squarish wedge of lemon has been dropped on the lahmajo's center. Spritzing juice over the surface cuts the concentrated meatiness. Plenty of customers request extra citrus. I could stop here, and it would suffice as a recommendation. The signature at Tun Lahmajo, consistent and excellent, has already been embraced by the Armenian community of Los Angeles, the largest diaspora population outside of Armenia. They're keeping the place busy. In the months since the restaurant opened last summer, though, the menu has kept expanding, to the point that it can be approached two ways: as a roster of comfort foods, and as a doorway into one cuisine's long and intricate history. To stick with the bready theme a little longer: A single variation of lahmajo is available, shellacked with cheese. But hedonistically cheesy khachapuris — specialties of the Republic of Georgia, bordering Armenia to the north — yank my attention away. Adjarian khachapuri, the version tapered on the ends to resemble a canoe, will be remembered by food obsessives for its moment at the end of last decade. Cheese fills its hull; after baking, the cook cracks over an egg or two with pats of butter to exaggerate the richness. Combine it all with a spoon and voila: molten dip in a bread bowl. To make the puffed Megrelakan (sometimes called Megrelian) khachapuri, eggs and butter are folded into stretchy, grated sulguni cheese before cooking. This one is the jewel. Servers carry it wobbling through the dining room, deflating like a souffle, and then they carve it into sixths at the table using a pizza wheel. Hot and irresistible, the texture is billowy, offset by the crisp, blistered fringes. As the speckled pie cools and its ingredients settle and condense, an appealing salty-sharpness becomes more overt. Savory breads have been the focus from the beginning, when Eduard Janibekyan and his family opened the first Tun Lahmajo in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, in 2008. (The restaurant space had originally been their ground-floor apartment. 'Tun' is Armenian for 'home.') As the business found its rhythms, the Janibekyans had the bandwidth to add broader categories of homestyle dishes: cold salads, roasted meats, a range of soups and herbed stews. They mirrored the process, sped up, at their Burbank location. L.A.'s best Armenian restaurants tend to excel at one forte: the exquisite marinated and charcoal-grilled meats at Mini Kabob; the mulchy pleasures of the greens-filled flatbread at namesake Zhengyalov Hatz; the cured beef, stingingly spiced, packed into sandwiches at Sahag's Basturma. That, or they serve Lebanese-Armenian menus that trace back to the longstanding diaspora community in Beirut. Currently, the finest among our Lebanese-Armenian institutions is the Hollywood outpost of Carousel. Very few local places delve into the regionally specific Armenian repertoire — what Janibekyan's son Vladislav defined in an interview as 'Caucasian cuisine,' referring to the geographic area located between the Black and Caspian seas broadly defined as the Caucasus. Sorting the roots of Armenian food must take into account the aftermath of the genocidal killing of more than 1 million Armenians starting in 1915, and the nearly 70 years under the Soviet regime that closely followed and ended in 1991. The landlocked country, bordering Turkey and Iran to the west, has been a fought-over juncture for millenniums. 'Cultural and gastronomic exchange has been part and parcel of this region for ages … Armenians do not have a national cuisine in the same sense as nationalities that possessed a long history of statehood and well-defined frontiers,' wrote Irina Petrosian and David Underwood in their 2006 book, 'Armenian Food: Fact, Fiction & Folklore.' For the example of lahmajo, the authors pointed to repatriated Armenians in the 1960s returning from the Syrian city of Aleppo as the ones who introduced the dish to Yerevan. How does all this complex history inform a meal in Burbank? Order a starter of strained yogurt, its density somewhere between mascarpone and cream cheese, to dollop over ripped hunks of lahmajo and bring silkiness to meats like lamb ribs roasted in the oven. I love the way qrchick, a ruddy soup jolted with pickled cabbage, slashes the richness of the khachapuris. A dish of mildly spiced, sautéed beef and potatoes, both cut into strips, has been made by Armenian cooks for so long that no one can quite pinpoint the origin of its nickname. It's called 'ker u sus,' which colloquially translates as 'shut up and eat.' If the combination doesn't directly stoke your nostalgia, your inquisitive palate may be more stirred by ostri, garlicky spiced beef infused with dried red chiles and fenugreek. Avelouk, a tangle of wild sorrel served cool and garnished with crushed walnuts, brings a welcome infusion of green to the mix. Khashlama is a category of brothy stews. An elemental variation made with lamb teeters on bland, but the generously sized fish khashlama is a summery joy, brought out in a pot with hunks of trout (watch for bones), peeled potatoes and whole peppers, and heaped with dill, parsley and other feathery herbs. If you can pace your lunch or dinner with leisure, ask for the traditional and endearingly universal chmur: Russets roasted in the oven for 40 minutes and then smooshed tableside, along with plenty of butter, by a server wielding a wooden masher. I could race you down other rabbit holes, including the Levantine shades of kebabs, shawarma, ishli (known elsewhere as kibbeh) and a bulghur-heavy riff on tabbouleh, or borscht and oil-glossed, Uzbekistani-style pilaf to swerve into Soviet-era holdovers. The menu is daunting, and against the many other highlights these choices each rate as fine enough. Probably there will be little room for dessert, but I must point out the gata, a round pastry-cake hybrid served warm that hides an almost custardy layer just under the top crust. One could debate empires and authenticity over a spread at Tun Lahmajo, or take its soulful cooking at face value, but in the end a standout meal concludes as it should begin: with a bronzed thing of beauty pulled hot from the oven.
The Hindu
6 days ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
How genocide came to be named and codified
According to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian occupied territories Francesca Albanese, 'Israel's genocide on the Palestinians is an escalatory stage of a longstanding settler colonial process of erasure'. Her latest report urges UN member states 'to enforce the prohibition of genocide' in accordance with their obligations under international law. The debate is no longer about whether what Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide. It is about whether the international community, including private citizens, will uphold their moral obligation to oppose the genocide unfolding before them in full social media glare. On naming evil The term 'genocide' belongs to the language of transgression — words that describe the wilful violation of basic moral codes such as, for instance, the universal taboo on killing children. But there are gradations even in the forms of extreme violence that determine whether a given atrocity is to be deemed a war crime, a crime against humanity, or genocide — a category of evil so unspeakable that humanity hadn't thought of a word for it. It was a Jewish lawyer from Poland, Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in his book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe (1944). As a university student in the 1920s, Lemkin was horrified by the mass killing of Armenians during World War 1. He couldn't believe there was no international law under which the Ottoman leaders could be tried. 'Why was killing a million people a less serious crime than killing a single individual,' he wondered. Lemkin's interest in the crime of mass murder took a different colour after World War 2, during which he lost 49 members of his own family in the Holocaust. He devoted the rest of his life to the mission of getting recognition in international law for what Winston Churchill called 'a crime without a name'. As Lemkin explains in his book, he formed the word from the Greek 'genos', meaning 'race' or 'tribe', and the Latin 'cide', meaning 'killing'. He defined 'genocide' as 'the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group'. Despite serving as advisor to Justice Robert H. Jackson, the lead prosecutor at the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that conducted the Nuremberg trials, he wasn't happy with how it dealt with the Nazi leaders. The IMT prosecuted them for 'war crimes' and 'crimes against peace'. But how should they be prosecuted for crimes against civilians who were their own citizens — German Jews targeted for their ethnicity? British and French prosecutors sought to use Lemkin's concept of genocide, but the Americans steered clear of it. Given their own (then prevalent) Jim Crow laws of racial segregation, they were anxious not to grant international court jurisdiction over how a government treated its own citizens, a sentiment that was shared by the Soviets as well. Lemkin was disappointed as the IMT prosecuted the Nazis politicians only on charges of 'crimes against humanity', a juridical approach that failed to account for the criminal logic of the Holocaust, which picked out specific ethnic and political groups, including Jews, gypsies and communists. As Lemkin put it, 'The Allies decided a case in Nuremberg against a past Hitler — but refused to envisage future Hitlers.' His fears have come true in Gaza, where the Israeli military continues to enjoy impunity for its mass murder of Palestinians even as Western governments seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge that these crimes have surpassed the threshold of genocide. Codifying genocide In the years following the Nuremberg trials, Lemkin worked relentlessly to get genocide codified in international law. His efforts bore fruit in 1948 with the United Nations adopting the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Although the Genocide Convention included much of Lemkin's ideas, it did not accept all of them. It had a rather narrow legal definition of genocide, with two main elements. It had a mental element, the 'intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group', and a physical element, consisting of any of these five acts: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Initially, this definition was criticised on the grounds that 'intent' is difficult to establish since no government publicises its intent to commit genocide. Also, it is tough to attribute genocidal intent to individuals who can claim to be merely carrying out orders in their official capacity. However, subsequent proceedings, including those of the tribunals set up to try the accused in the Rwanda genocide (1994) and the 1995 genocide of Bosnia Muslims in Srebenica have clarified that 'a pattern of purposeful action' leading to the destruction of a significant section of the targeted group would suffice to establish genocidal intent. While the 1948 Genocide Convention defines the crime and obligates the states that are parties to the Convention to prevent and punish it, the 2002 Rome Statute gives the International Criminal Court the jurisdiction to take up and try cases of genocide. The Genocide Convention, however, still does not recognise mass murder of any social or political group — say, communists — as genocide, an aspect considered a major lacuna by genocide experts. The concept of genocide has also not been adequately applied to understand colonial mass murder, slavery, deportation and other atrocities inflicted upon native populations, including aboriginals by erstwhile coloniser nations and empires. Away from the media spotlight, the egregious practice of forcefully transferring children away from their Aboriginal families — now seemingly benevolent in intent but barely distinguishable from genocide in practice — still goes on in Australia, according to a 2025 report by Human Rights Watch. The importance of 'thinking' Mass murder is by no means a modern phenomenon. Even in ancient times, it was not uncommon for the victors in a war to massacre the entire male population of the conquered kingdom or state. Typically, however, genocides occurred against an enemy population, or in the context of a war. The phenomenon of a state conducting mass murder of a certain ethnic or national group among its own citizens is a more recent phenomenon — one that has raised fundamental philosophical questions about human nature and evil. Some of the most profound engagement with these questions came from Hannah Arendt, a German American Jewish historian and philosopher who covered the trial of Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the Holocaust. In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Arendt asks the question: does a person have to be evil in order to do evil? Her answer is 'no'. All that is required for a person to do evil is to suspend thinking. Arendt argued that it is the exercise of the capacity to think that connects one human with others. What gave Nazism its power was its all out assault on thinking, and on the very impulse to reflect. Eichmann's crime, in this sense, was the banality of doing what seemed to be in the best interests of his career — to please his bosses. This is because for him, thinking had been outsourced to the Nazi bureaucracy and leadership. It is this failure to think — achieved on a mass scale through institutionalised assault on intellectual life, on the life of the mind — that is banal. This banality creates the space for evil to assume the garb of the routine, the normal, and the quotidian, all of which are in ample evidence in the routinised daily massacres of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. As the philosopher Judith Butler observed in an essay on the banality of evil, '[Arendt's] indictment of Eichmann reached beyond the man to the historical world in which true thinking was vanishing and, as a result, crimes against humanity became increasingly 'thinkable'. The degradation of thinking worked hand in hand with the systematic destruction of populations.'
