Declaring Genocide: Framing Human Rights Abuses in the 21st Century

How does the international community decide to frame grievous human rights abuses during wartime? Using the Islamic State’s campaign of human rights abuses against the minority Yazidi population over the past decade, we consider modern media portrayals of mass atrocities and the use of the term genocide. We argue that Western news will initially have few articles defining these atrocities as genocide, but with the passage of time, they will be more widely recognized as a mass atrocity. That is because, initially, only human rights groups will employ the term to draw attention to the abuses, but as the United States becomes more involved militarily in the region, more actors and policymakers will use the term to provide a moral justification for intervention. We test this theory through the analysis of multiple Western media sources from the start of the ISIS campaign in 2014 until 2020. Tracing the evolution of language used to describe the violence against the Yazidis, specifically focusing on the term “genocide,” we find support for our claims. These findings will provide important insight into the politics and challenges of classifying acts of mass atrocities in the 21st century.