Hazel Cameron
Lecturer
Room: Rm 303 Arts Building
Office Hours Tuesdays 1-2 & 3-4 or by appointment
Tel: 01334 461936
Email: hc28@st-andrews.ac.uk
About
Hazel Cameron is a lecturer within the School of International Relations. She was awarded her PhD at the University of Liverpool in December 2009 and thereafter commissioned by the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) to undertake a scoping exercise of the prevalence of trafficking of unaccompanied asylum seeking children in Glasgow. She took up her current post at the University of St Andrews in February 2011. Her previous teaching experience was within the School of Law, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, the Department of Politics, University of Stirling and the Department of Applied Social Science also at the University of Stirling where she taught 'crimes of the powerful', and 'social science research methods'.
Hazel Cameron is affiliated to the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI), a community of scholars working to advance current understandings of state crime.The International State Crime Initiative is based at King's College London and partnered with University of Hull, University of Ulster and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative.
'About State Crime' www.statecrime.org
The most serious crimes in the modern world, on any reasonable definition, are acts that are largely committed, instigated or condoned by governments and their officials: for example, genocide, war crimes, torture and corruption. However, state crime is under-acknowledged by popular and academic authors. Calling these activities 'crimes' should be uncontroversial as they violate international and/or national criminal law. A purely legalistic definition of state crime, however, is unsatisfactory for at least three reasons:
• It would exclude some of the greatest mass violations of human rights of the past century, such as the Chinese famine of 1959-61 in which an estimated 30 million people died. They were victims of state incompetence, deception and extreme economic exploitation, and the Chinese government’s awareness of the unacceptability of its own actions is shown in the drastic measures it took to conceal the truth. But international criminal law does not appear to prohibit starving your own population in peacetime, unless the intention is to destroy a particular ethnic group.
• When two or more armed factions are committing atrocities in a territory they seek to control, it seems arbitrary to denote one side’s activities as ‘state crime’ and the other as something else.
• Criminal law is concerned mainly with individual liability. The study of state crime is more concerned with the role of organizations in committing, perpetrating or condoning crime.
ISCI takes the term ‘crime’ to include all violations of human rights that are ‘deviant’ in the sense that they infringe some socially recognized norm. Our understanding of ‘human rights’ reflects the broad principles underlying international law but we do not think that the precise scope of our inquiries as criminologists or social scientists should be determined by lawyers. We take ‘states’ to include all bodies that seek to achieve a monopoly of the legitimate use of force in some substantial territory, whether or not they are internationally recognized as states. ‘State crimes’ are crimes committed or condoned by the personnel of such organizations in pursuit of organizational goals. For example, if a single police officer force takes a bribe, that is not necessarily a state crime. But if the government turns a blind eye to bribery because it is the only way the police can achieve a reasonable income, or if bribery is part of an informal strategy for controlling the local drugs trade, then it is a state crime.
Teaching
IR2005: MA Theoretical approaches to International Relations (Lectures in Postcolonialism)
IR2006: MA Issues in International Relations (Lectures in Definitions and Theory of State Crime)
IR3035: MA Peace processes and violence
IR3050: MA State, Power, Crime
IR5151: M.Litt Issues in Peace and Conflict Studies
Research
Main research interests include state crime; global elite bystanders and international criminal law; state and corporate complicity in political violence; torture; genocide; war crimes; and crimes against humanity. Area of particular research interest is sub-Saharan Africa.
Hazel's current research is a study of 'Impunity in Harare', which focuses on state crimes within the borders of Zimbabwe committed by various actors during the period spanning the British self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia (1953 -1965); the period of independence, civil war and the government of Ian Smith in Rhodesia; post-independence Zimbabwe and the government of Robert Mugabe (1980-1999); economic challenges, hyperinflation, farm invasions, and electoral violence (1999-2008). A field trip to Zimbabwe in November/December2011 revealed visible ethnic tensions in Matabeleland arising from impunity and lack of recognition of the state crimes of Gukuruhundi 1983-1987.
Hazel has written a monograph of her doctoral research titled Britain's Hidden Role in the Rwandan Genocide which is a systematic and detailed socio-legal analysis of the policies of the British Government towards civil unrest in Rwanda throughout the 1990s, culminating in genocide in 1994.
Britain’s Hidden Role in the Rwandan Genocide: The Cat's Paw examines the role of the United Kingdom as a global elite bystander to the crime of genocide, and its complicity - in violation of international criminal laws - in the Rwandan genocide of 1994. As prevailing accounts confine themselves to the role and actions of the United States and the United Nations, the full picture of Rwanda’s genocide remained hidden. This book shows that it is the unravelling of the criminal role and actions of the British that illuminates a more detailed answer to the question of ‘why’ the genocide in Rwanda occurred. This book provides a systematic and detailed analysis of the policies of the British Government towards civil unrest in Rwanda throughout the 1990s that culminated in genocide. Utilising documentary evidence obtained as a result of Freedom of Information requests to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as material obtained through extensive interviews - with British government cabinet members, diplomats, Ambassadors to the United Nations Security Council, prisoners in Rwanda convicted of being leaders and organisers of genocide, and victims and survivors of genocide in Rwanda – one finds that the actions of the British government, both before and during the Rwandan genocide of 1994, were disassociated from human rights norms and clearly definable as complicity in genocide by omission. This account of the legal culpability of the powerful within the corridors of Parliament evidences that these behaviours cannot be conceptualised under existing notions of state crime and this research serves to illuminate the inadequacies and limitations of a concept of state crime in international law as it currently stands and will be of interest to anyone concerned with the misuse of state power.
Books
Cameron, H., (2012), Britain's Hidden Role in the Rwandan Genocide: The Cat's Paw, London, Routledge
Articles
Cameron, H., (2010), ‘The Hidden Role of Britain in Rwandan State Violence’, Criminal Justice Matters, 82
Cameron, H., (2012), 'British State Complicity in Genocide: Rwanda 1994' State Crime Journal, Volume 1, Issue 1
Book Chapters
Cameron, H., (2012), ‘International Actor’s and The Scramble for Congo’s Riches’, in Scarnecchia, T., and Flaschka, M.J., (eds), Politics of Instability: Sexual Violence, Political Corruption, and International Complicity in the Democratic Republic of Congo’, Kent, Kent State University Press
Administration
Sub-Honours Adviser to the Faculty of Arts
Collaborations and Studies Abroad Coordinator, School of International Relations
Affiliations
International State Crime Initiative (ISCI)
International Studies Association (ISA)
International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS)
Bar Human Rights Committee (BHRC)
Editorial Positions
Editorial Board Member of State Crime Journal, a Pluto publication
A sample State Crime Journal is available for DOWNLOAD.
State Crime is the first peer-reviewed, international journal that seeks to disseminate leading research on the illicit practices of states. The concept of state crime is not confined to legally recognised states but can include any authority that exerts political and military control over a substantial territory (e.g the FARC). The journal’s focus is a reflection of the growing awareness within criminology that state criminality is endemic and acts as a significant barrier to security and development. Contributions from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives are welcomed. Topics covered by the journal include, torture; genocide and other forms of government and politically organised mass killing; war crimes; state-corporate crime; state-organised crime; natural disasters exacerbated by government (in)action; asylum and refugee policy and practice; state terror; political and economic corruption; and resistance to state violence and corruption.
State Crime is published by Pluto Journals and you can subscribe HERE.
