I. Unit Framing: The Worst Things People Have Done to Each Other

Unit 10.10 covers the worst things people have done to each other in the modern era. The major genocides of the twentieth century killed tens of millions of people. The unit's task is to help Maria understand these atrocities, identify their common patterns, and trace the international human rights framework that emerged in response to them. This is the most emotionally difficult material in the course. It is also some of the most important.

The Regents has a specific enduring issue category for human rights violations and another for the desire for human rights. These categories essentially carve out the territory of this unit. The Regents asks Maria to recognize genocide and other atrocities when they appear in documents, identify which atrocity is being described, explain the historical context, and discuss the international responses. The Holocaust (covered in detail in Unit 10.5) is the foundational case; this unit adds several others.

Maria should approach this material with seriousness but without despair. The twentieth century produced unprecedented atrocities, but it also produced unprecedented efforts to prevent them. The Holocaust forced the international community to create new legal categories (genocide, crimes against humanity), new institutions (UN, International Criminal Court), and new doctrines (responsibility to protect). The story of the twentieth century is not just the story of atrocity; it is also the story of the long, incomplete, but real development of an international human rights framework.

Strategic insight: The Regents tests this unit through document-based questions presenting accounts of specific atrocities. Maria's task is usually to identify the atrocity, explain its historical context, identify the international response, and connect it to the enduring issue of human rights. Strong answers acknowledge both the scale of the atrocity and the systematic nature of the response. The unit also produces material for cause-and-effect questions, comparison questions (Holocaust to other genocides), and turning-point questions (when did the international community first recognize genocide as a category? When did intervention become an accepted norm?).

Essential question for this unit: What were the major human rights violations of the modern era, what conditions produced them, and how has the international community responded?