Domicide as Legitimating Narrative: A Conversation with Balakrishnan Rajagopal

Every juristic tradition has at least one point in common: they seek to distinguish between lawful and unlawful behaviours, usually extrapolating a normative parallel between right and wrong or, with ecclesiastical fervour, between good and bad. Tied up with this narrative are notions of accountability (for wrongdoers) and restoration (for those wronged). Of course, morality almost always morphs into moralisation, converting restoration into retribution. Together, these components give rise to varied corpuses of criminal law. 

What does a society seek to achieve when it labels something a crime? At its core, the designation aims to proscribe certain behaviours—imposing penalties for violations thereof. This is sensible, ensuring what we now refer to as due process. However, beyond this transactional function of law-making—or crime-making—lies an existential dimension (or dilemma). Through its laws, perhaps criminal laws more than any other, a society defines itself, delineating the contours of its identity. We are is declared through we do not tolerate or we condemn. Hackneyed and facile examples of widely accepted criminal actions are plenty: theft, kidnapping, and murder. More problematic, of course, are contexts that deviate from the pantomime villain variety: when theft is driven by famine, a child is removed from an abusive parent, or a life is taken in an anti-colonial struggle. In those instances, the naming of crimes is fraught with complexity, confronting both morality and moralisers in equal measure.

This complexity only deepens when crime-making transcends borders and enters the international realm. Here, transactional logic often overshadows the existential, as civilisational differences complicate collective notions of morality and identity. Yet, international crimes—genocide, apartheid, and war crimes being the obvious topical ones—exist, raising the prospect of collective norms, maybe even a communal existence. In cases of international crimes, do the goals mirror those of municipal frames of criminal law—accountability, restoration, retribution, all of the above—or do they aim at something else?

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We posed this question to Balakrishnan Rajagopal, the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing. For those unaware, Rajagopal is advocating for the recognition of domicide as a crime against humanity. As he explained, international crimes serve multifarious purposes that extend beyond the simple mechanics of prosecution, enforcement, or courtroom justice—familiar canards among those who question the value of an international criminal legal framework. The act of naming a crime, he asserts, is fundamentally about creating “a narrative of legitimacy” that validates the experiences of the oppressed while concurrently delegitimising the predations of their oppressors. 

Take apartheid, for example: when the General Assembly declared it a crime against humanity in 1966, it was never only about prosecuting the likes of Botha or de Klerk, though these outcomes would surely have been welcome by their victims. Rather, it was a powerful cri de guerre pointed at the souls of colonial empires and colonial states. Henceforth, their practices of systematised racial oppression were unacceptable, immoral, and, now, unlawful, establishing a new normative standard in international relations (even if South Africa then and Israel now defy it). Naming apartheid as an international crime also breathed solidarity into resistance movements, recognising their struggle as one that demanded international action—an existential declaration of human unity if there ever was one.

Domicide, we must acknowledge, is an ugly word. It fuses the beautiful concept of domus— home—with the vile latin suffix caedere or to kill. The term’s repulsiveness is deliberate, articulated to name an abomination: the mass killing of homes. It is hard to fathom the moral decay that would lead a society to pursue, even celebrate the widespread destruction of housing as a tactic of war or a policy position. As Rajagopal explains, to kill a home is not to annihilate a structure but to murder both a sanctuary and a sense of sanctity. It is to rip apart a community, to fracture familial and social bonds, to collapse friendships and memories, dreams and futures, forever buried within mounds of broken concrete, twisted steel, and severed limbs. Unlike genocide, where intent is (made) difficult to establish, with domicide, the motivation is indisputable, targeting the very foundations of a society’s existence, rendering that existence not just undesirable but impossible. Domicide thus appears as an act of depraved cynicism, destroying existence even if life itself persists.

With no small paradox, the concept of domicide encapsulates the essence of existential law, aspiring to legislate a protective moat around existence itself. In this sense, Rajagopal’s advocacy is both a gesture of solidarity and an act of insurgency, challenging the limits of how international law conceives acts of calculated destruction. Where existing legal frameworks reduce homes to “civilian objects”, a saccharine term derived from the worst excesses of military logic, Rajagopal urges recognition of the home’s enabling role as both a precursor to and an embodiment of human dignity.

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Rajagopal’s commitment to resistance-cum-transformation forms of international law has been a consistent theme throughout his scholarly trajectory. International Law from Below was a seismic text, compelling readers to rethink the locus of international lawmaking. Like other TWAIL scholars of the time and since, Rajagopal exposed international law’s complicity in perpetuating systemic inequalities. In his own unique way, however, he ushered international legal scholarship away from state-centric, even Eurocentric perspectives, underscoring the agency of social movements and their transformative potential. He rejected the great men (or women) of history genre of legal scholarship; to him, the stories that inspired were not to be found in Geneva or the Hague or in ivory towers but among the communities struggling for emancipation. He argued that critical scholarship demanded more than abstract optimism about international law’s potential, but ethnographic investigations into anti-colonial praxis and the ways resistance redefines both the contours and possibilities of international law. His current advocacy for domicide as a crime against humanity exemplifies this intellectual insurgency, deploying legal innovation to counter wanton acts of existential destruction. 

As apartheid did two generations ago, domicide highlights the power of legitimating narratives. During our conversation, Rajagopal recounted his encounters with displaced Palestinian families, forced out of Gaza by Israel’s indiscriminate and, as the ICJ and Amnesty International declared, genocidal assault. Now scattered in cities such as Cairo, these families are less concerned with the technical legal classification of domicide; this will not restore their existence. Instead, they yearn for recognition that the destruction of their homes was cataclysmic—indeed, domicide was not incidental to genocide but central to an assault on their very existence as a people. By advocating for domicide’s recognition as a standalone international crime, Rajagopal—known affectionately as Raj—offers legal language that matches the gravity of their experience. In evoking caedere, he reminds us that international law serves not simply to facilitate a prosecution record (though Netanyahu and Gallant’s victims would welcome this as well) but to create a “culture of aversion” toward existential violence, though maybe revulsion is the sentiment we should target.

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Some readers will be surprised to learn that Rajagopal’s 2022 report on domicide was received to sweeping acclaim from Western states when first presented at the UNGA. His initial intervention examined Russia’s actions against Ukraine to make the case and the West saw this proposed crime as another stick with which to beat Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet, just one year later, the same Western states balked at Rajagopal’s condemnation of Israel’s domicidal actions, laying bare the political contingencies that shape narratives of (il)legitimacy in international law.

Recognition of domicide would be an invaluable addition to the growing compendium of acts that warrant international criminalisation. Any scholar serious about preventing genocide should remain vigilant about the stratagems genocidaires deploy to end existence. To name domicide is not simply to accrue another legal category, but to strengthen a broader project designed to validate the experiences of those whose homes and sanctuaries have been obliterated. Raj’s advocacy ensures that international law is not reduced to the language of military necessity or property rights or rebuilding costs. Instead, he demands we recognise that legal inaction often marches lockstep with calculated violence, serving as a grotesque accomplice when it is manipulated to conceal domicide. 

Ultimately, when legal scholarship and praxis are grounded in solidarity with oppressed communities and amplify legitimating narratives of resistance, scholars and Special Rapporteurs like Raj carve out new possibilities for justice in international law. In doing so, existence itself lives to resist another day. 

You can listen to the podcast here (apple) and here (youtube). You can also view the videocast here (youtube). It will be available on spotify in the days ahead.

Many thanks to Jinan Bastaki for her contributions to the conversation.

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim on Unsplash