Total Number of Pages: 7
Suggested Title: Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide, War Crimes
New Resolution
General Church Budget Implications: None
Global Implications: Yes
As the time approached when Jesus was to be taken up into heaven, he determined to go to Jerusalem. He sent messengers on ahead of him. Along the way, they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for his arrival, but the Samaritan villagers refused to welcome him because he was determined to go to Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw this, they said, “Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to consume them?” But Jesus turned and spoke sternly to them.
– Luke 9:51-56
“We confess that as Christians we too have responded to religious and ethnic differences out of fear, ignorance and even hatred. We have too quickly resorted to violence as a means of resolving conflicts. “The rising tide of violence in the world threatens to engulf communities, nations, and world civilizations. It is time for the Church to become proactive in resolving conflict nonviolently and developing alternatives to violence.”
– “The Church’s Response to Ethnic and Religious Conflict” (Resolution #81, BOR 2004)
Seeking nonviolent conflict resolution and alternatives to violence, the Council of Bishops, in June 2004, offered a discussion guide “In Search of Security” that reminded United Methodists that “our Christian ethic tells us: ‘If you want peace, work for justice.’ This is the course we should pursue in search for security. … Security in the perspective of faith ‘is a state of being that flows from the inclusion of all in the bounty of the earth. Security is meant for all and results from a concern of each one for the other. Security results from a concern for the common good and the promotion of solidarity between nations and peoples. Security stems from a recognition and defense of basic human rights.”
The Social Principles of The United Methodist Church (¶ 165C, “War and Peace”) states: “We believe war is incompatible with the teachings and example of Christ … [and] insist that the first moral duty of all nations is to … resolve by peaceful means every dispute that arises between or among them.” In the same
paragraph The United Methodist Church also states, “We therefore reject war as an instrument of national foreign policy.”
How and who will determine when “the last resort” has been reached and war becomes the only way to stop “such evils as genocide, brutal suppression of human rights, and unprovoked international aggression”? The international community has been wrestling with that concern. The International Responsibility to Protect states that it is the “clear and unambiguous acceptance by all governments of the collective international responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Willingness to take timely and decisive collective action for this purpose, through the Security Council, when peaceful means prove inadequate and national authorities are manifestly failing to do it.”
In 2006, the Ninth Assembly of the World Council of Churches (WCC) assembled in Porto Alegre, Brazil, noted that Responsibility to Protect has “shifted the debate from the viewpoint of the interveners to that of the people in need of assistance, thus defining sovereignty as a duty-bearer status. … States can no longer hide behind the pretext of sovereignty to perpetrate human rights violations against their citizens and live in total impunity. … [T]he responsibility to protect and serve the welfare of its people is central to a state’s sovereignty. When there is failure to carry out that responsibility, whether by neglect, lack of capacity, or direct assaults on the population, the international community has the duty to assist peoples and states, and in extreme situations, to intervene in the internal affairs of the state in the interests and safety of the people.”
In the twenty-first century, as in the twentieth, the atrocities during war and peacetime have been and continue to be directed against civilians. The participants of the WCC assembly cited previously called attention to the “cries arising daily in their home countries and regions due to disasters, violent conflicts and conditions of oppression and suffering,” and committed themselves and called on the ecumenical movement “to bear witness to transformation in personal lives, churches, societies and the world as a
whole.” In other words, “if you want peace, work for justice.” “Don’t be defeated by evil, but defeat evil with good” (Romans 12:21).
It becomes imperative that the international community find peaceful means to exercise its responsibility to protect and never as a “last resort” have to go to war or even intervene militarily. But, “ending violence and wars, and checking impunity and disregard for international human rights and humanitarian laws” will require more than political will and moral courage.
Concrete mechanisms are needed to realize the totality of human rights – civil, political, social, economic, and cultural.” One of those mechanisms is the new International Criminal Court, which has been set up through an intergovernmental process to bring to justice individuals who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression.
What are these international crimes so that we as United Methodists might understand existing means for pursuing the perpetrators and caring for the victims?
War Crimes, according to Article 8, paragraph 2, subparagraph (a) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, are defined as “Grave breaches of the Geneva Convention of 12 August 1949, namely, any of the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention:
(i)Wilful killing;
(ii) Torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments;
(iii) Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health;
(iv) Extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly;
(v) Compelling a prisoner of war or other protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power; (vi) Wilfully depriving a prisoner of war or other protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial; (vii) Unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement;
(viii) Taking of hostages.”
Subparagraph b) in the same Article 8, paragraph 2, adds, “Other serious violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, within the established framework of international law, namely, any of the following acts: i) Intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population as such or against individual civilians not taking direct part in hostilities. …”
Crimes against humanity are, namely: “murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, and other inhumane acts committed against civilian populations, before or during war; or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds in execution of or in connection with any crime within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal, whether or not in violation of the domestic law of the country where perpetrated. …” This definition was established by the Allies and the U.S. and was contained in Article 6 of the Charter of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) sitting in Nuremberg in 1945. While no specialized convention was ever developed on crimes against humanity, such a category of crimes has been included in the International Tribunals for both the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda as well as in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as any act “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or
religious group, as such: 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; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
Ethnic cleansing is a “purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas. … This purpose appears to be the occupation of territory to the exclusion of the purged group or groups.” Many resolutions of the United Nations Security Council declare ethnic cleansing to be a violation of international humanitarian law and demand that perpetrators be brought to justice.
The crime of aggression is defined by the Statute of the International Criminal Court as “the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations.
In 2005 the World Council of Churches affirmed the establishment of the ICC as “the most important step forward in International Law. … The Court provides the international community with an instrument to defend human rights and pursue justice for specified crimes that otherwise would be committed with impunity. …” United Methodists first expressed their support for the Court in the 2000 General Conference. In that resolution, The United Methodist Church was called to search for ways to be a “witness to transformation in personal lives, churches, societies and the world as a whole” and pursue the elimination of violence, war, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide in each of our societies and throughout the world.
Therefore, the General Conference urges United Methodists to pray and to gather in study groups to learn about the degrading effects that war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide inflict on victims and perpetrators and those who silently stand by in the communities they live. United Methodists must initiate
actions against impunity associated with violations of international humanitarian law by, among others, campaigning in all nations to ratify the Rome Statute especially in those countries where there are United Methodists.
The United Methodist Church calls on the Council of Bishops, all agencies, commissions, local churches, districts, annual and central conferences to witness to the urgent need to stop the destruction of human lives, properties and communities through means already sanctioned by national and international laws, especially through war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and crimes of aggression. The Church must seek, develop, and share resources in as many languages as possible and through the varied means available to enable its members to:
a) remain informed and work toward the prevention of conflicts, atrocities, violence, and suffering;
b) support and participate in the World Council of Churches’ Pilgrimage for Peace, mobilize our churches to advocate for peace with justice;
c) assure the presence and participation of the Church in those places where people need protection and humanitarian aid;
d) employ judiciously the moral authority of religious leaders for mediation between and among stakeholders and differently powerful actors;
e) remain informed on the work of the International Criminal Court; and
f) support organizations working for human rights, including especially the Human Rights Council of the United Nations.
Date: August 26, 2019
The Rev. Susan Henry-Crowe General Secretary
Bishop Sally Dyck
President of the Board
General Board of Church & Society Phone: 202-488-5629
E-mail Address: gso@umcjustice.org