Amnesty International Director Talks Legal Definition of Genocide at HLS Event

Paul O’Brien, executive director of Amnesty International USA, said military action is not a legally sufficient answer to accusations of genocide at a Harvard Law School talk Wednesday afternoon.

An HLS alum, O’Brien said he came to the Law School to preview a forthcoming article in the Harvard Human Rights Journal about laws surrounding genocide and their application to Israel’s war in Gaza.

“There can be multiple intents. A military actor who has legitimate military goals can intend the genocide in order to accomplish those goals,” O’Brien said at the talk, hosted by the HHRJ. “It can be a means to a military end.”

Based on this reading of human rights law, O’Brien and Amnesty International published a report in December that argued Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza.

The report — based on more than 200 interviews, on-the-ground research, and 120 statements from Israel leaders — argues that Israel’s military effort to eradicate Hamas does not negate their genocidal intentions.

In order to claim that Israel’s actions constitute a genocide, Amnesty used guidelines established by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Those guidelines, published in 1951, define genocide as, in part, requiring the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”

While Amnesty was able to establish evidence of extreme Israeli violence in Gaza, O’Brien said the case “wouldn’t be material” without proof of intent.

“The issues that we have been engaging on have been around this question of intent and motive,” he said. “What was the intent in destroying the conditions of life, killing the population? And was it because they were Palestinians, or was it for another reason?”

According to O’Brien, Amnesty eventually established that Israel had “a disregard, and credibly, an intention to destroy the civilian population” in Gaza — a conclusion that allowed the organization to publish its findings.

In his Wednesday talk, O’Brien argued that many legal scholars have reached consensus that a body cannot defend genocide by claiming they “intended to do other things as well.”

“A genocidal intent threshold can be met in the middle of a conflict,” O’Brien said. “To remove the protections of the convention in conflict would be to eviscerate its value in human rights law.”

The report — the most downloaded in Amnesty’s history — has prompted backlash in the United States and Israel, O’Brien said. He added that critics often question Amnesty’s motivation for publishing the report.

Founded in 1961, Amnesty International is a non-governmental organization that researches and campaigns against human rights violations.

O’Brien said he hoped his talk would confirm the value of “free expression” and “reasonable debate” on difficult issues.

“The conversations that you choose to have around these issues are critically important for that context,” O’Brien said.

“But they’re also important for the ability to talk about rights and rights denied and how we move forward from here,” he added.

—Staff writer Elyse C. Goncalves can be reached at elyse.goncalves@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @e1ysegoncalves.
—Staff writer Elise A. Spenner can be reached at elise.spenner@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X at @EliseSpenner.