This article reconceptualizes genocide through the lens of forced displacement and legal erasure, discussing how exile and statelessness are not simply consequences of mass atrocity, but can be seen as ongoing forms of genocidal intent. By analyzing the Rwandan and Sudanese genocides through secondary analysis, the article demonstrates how administrative containment, racial identity erasure, and legal exclusion constitute structured, organized forms of violence that take place even after the immediate mass killing has ceased. By employing sociologist Orlando Patterson’s construct of social death, the article demonstrates how the displacement of the population impacts the progressive loss of their political and legal personhood. They are not only expelled physically but also wholly erased bureaucratically and symbolically by way of prolonged disconnection from citizenship, rights, and acknowledgment. A comparative table that maps the indicators of “genocidal continuation” across both studies found somewhat similar patterns for encampment, identity erasure, and state exclusion. These findings highlight the importance of temporally and spatially reconceptualizing genocide beyond event-based frameworks to include these prolonged harms and injustices created through law, policy, and inaction on behalf of the international community.

Genocide, statelessness, forced migration, social death, Rwanda, Darfur

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