Selective silence
The United Nations and the Anfal campaign
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21059786 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jiyan Taher Ahmed (0009-0005-2862-6931, Cyprus International University, corresponding author), Şevki Kıralp (0000-0003-1969-2257, Cyprus International University) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-15 |
| Publication date | 2026-06-24 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Third World Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0143-6597 • E-ISSN: 1360-2241 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01436597.2026.2688893 |
| OpenAlex | W7165789944 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 16 |
This article conceptualises selective silence as an institutional outcome through which the United Nations avoids recognising genocide when such recognition would conflict with dominant power interests. The article uses the Anfal campaign against the Kurds in Iraq as a critical case to argue that UN non-recognition was the result of four recurring institutional mechanisms: agenda prioritisation, reluctance to investigate, substitution of humanitarian action for security measures, and avoidance of legal declarations that could trigger enforcement obligations. As such, the article disputes commonly accepted explanations for the UN’s non-intervention during the Anfal campaign, which claim that non-intervention was due to insufficient information, normative absence, or isolated moral failure. The analysis demonstrates how early exclusion of Anfal from actionable atrocity categories produced a path-dependent legacy of non-recognition that persisted beyond the Cold War and survived subsequent normative reforms, including the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). By locating failure at the level of recognition rather than response, the article contributes to critical debates on global governance, institutional accountability, and the structural limits of humanitarian norms in a power-stratified international system
Enforcement · Genocide · Human rights · Humanitarian intervention · Normative · Power (physics) · Responsibility to Protect · Security council · Silence · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · International Law and Human Rights
Reframing Legalization, Compliance and Rule by Law as Law as Practice
Collective Memory in Post-Genocide Societies
The Iran-Iraq War
Anfal and Halabja Genocide
The United Nations and genocide
The Responsibility to Protect Debate
The Kurds as parties to and victims of conflicts in Iraq
Crossing the desert – the ICRC in Iraq
Policy-specific human rights shaming
New evidence that naming and shaming influences state human rights practices
The Kurdish genocide in Iraq
TheAnfaltrial against Saddam Hussein
| Highly cited | No |
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