Stripping Humanity: Dehumanisation of Victims and Perpetrators in Gross Human Rights Violations Tested in the Bosnian Case
Stripping Humanity: Dehumanisation of Victims and Perpetrators in Gross Human Rights Violations Tested in the Bosnian Case

Summary/Abstract: The essay examines the role of dehumanisation in the context of gross human rights violations, especially focusing on the Bosnian War. This psychological manoeuvre exists in every human society, however I argue that it particularly plays a crucial role in the case of mass violence. By stripping away the humanity of a targeted group, the perpetrators in fact lose moral constraints against violence and cruel behaviours toward the dehumanised victims are no longer inhibited. In the following pages, thus, after having provided a working definition of what does it mean to dehumanise, I will briefly investigate how dehumanisation concretely operates in the most atrocious abuses. Consequently I will consider how are the victims affected both at symbolic and physical level, namely in the way they are represented as well as treated. To conclude I will argue that dehumanisation is not a one-way phenomenon: it impacts perpetrators as well, depriving them of their personal agency and empathy and turning them into deathly tools without a will. The aim of this brief research is to suggest that, in the aftermath of mass violence, beside the reconstruction of infrastructures and institutions, also rehumanisation is absolutely necessary to rebuild a society afflicted by interpersonal devastation.

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