Domicide is defined as the intentional destruction of home, inherently a violation of the human right to home.
My co-authored book with Dr. Bree Akesson, From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home (Rutgers University Press, 2022) examines domicide – the intentional destruction of homes – in eight temporally and spatially unique cases. We develop an inductive typology of, and causal pathway to extreme domicide in this wide-ranging study. Beginning with a conceptual discussion of “home,” we explore the biopsychosocial impacts of loss of home on individuals and families. We then examine the human right to home and argue there is a weak overlapping consensus against domicide in international humanitarian law and human rights laws and norms. The cases examined in this book are: the Cherokee Trail of Tears (1838-1839), episodic violence against Chechens (1944-1956 and 1994-2009), the Occupation of Palestine (1945-present), the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya (1952-1960), the Division of Cyprus (1974), Genocide in Bosnia (1992-1995), the Syrian Civil War (2011-present), and Genocide of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (2012-present). Processes of home demolitions, assimilations, and enforced vacancies and their biopsychosocial effects upon targeted populations are central to understanding the many types of domicide.
We offer new understandings on the violation of the right to home and posit on international and domestic legal mechanisms that can be created and augmented to strengthen existing frameworks to prevent and punish domicide. Importantly, our recommendations influenced the UN Special Rapporteur to the Right to Adequate Housing to argue for the criminalization of domicide in international law (A/77/190) and we were invited to present to the UN General Assembly on the possible criminalization of domicide in Fall 2022.
My co-authored book with Dr. Bree Akesson, From Bureaucracy to Bullets: Extreme Domicide and the Right to Home (Rutgers University Press, 2022) examines domicide – the intentional destruction of homes – in eight temporally and spatially unique cases. We develop an inductive typology of, and causal pathway to extreme domicide in this wide-ranging study. Beginning with a conceptual discussion of “home,” we explore the biopsychosocial impacts of loss of home on individuals and families. We then examine the human right to home and argue there is a weak overlapping consensus against domicide in international humanitarian law and human rights laws and norms. The cases examined in this book are: the Cherokee Trail of Tears (1838-1839), episodic violence against Chechens (1944-1956 and 1994-2009), the Occupation of Palestine (1945-present), the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya (1952-1960), the Division of Cyprus (1974), Genocide in Bosnia (1992-1995), the Syrian Civil War (2011-present), and Genocide of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar (2012-present). Processes of home demolitions, assimilations, and enforced vacancies and their biopsychosocial effects upon targeted populations are central to understanding the many types of domicide.
We offer new understandings on the violation of the right to home and posit on international and domestic legal mechanisms that can be created and augmented to strengthen existing frameworks to prevent and punish domicide. Importantly, our recommendations influenced the UN Special Rapporteur to the Right to Adequate Housing to argue for the criminalization of domicide in international law (A/77/190) and we were invited to present to the UN General Assembly on the possible criminalization of domicide in Fall 2022.
Photo: Ağdam, Nagorno-Karabakh.
Source: Andrew R. Basso, 2015.
Source: Andrew R. Basso, 2015.
