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{{Short description|Intentional destruction of a people}}{{Other uses}}{{pp-vandalism|small=yes}}{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2020}}{{Genocide}}Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people{{Efn|Usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group.}} in whole or in part.In 1948, the United Nations Genocide Convention defined genocide as any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". These five acts were: killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Victims are targeted because of their real or perceived membership of a group, not randomly.{{harvnb|United Nations|2019}}; {{harvnb|Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide|2014}}; {{harvnb|Voice of America|2016}}Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide art. 2, 78 U.N.T.S. 277, 9 December 1948.The Political Instability Task Force estimated that 43 genocides occurred between 1956 and 2016, resulting in about 50 million deaths.BOOK,weblink Economic Aspects of Genocides, Other Mass Atrocities, and Their Prevention, Charles H., Anderton, Jurgen, Brauer, Jurgen Brauer, Oxford University Press, 2016, 978-0-19-937829-6, The UNHCR estimated that a further 50 million had been displaced by such episodes of violence up to 2008. Genocide, especially large-scale genocide, is widely considered to signify the epitome of human evil.{{harvnb|Towner|2011|pp=625–638}}; {{harvnb|Lang|2005|pp=5–17}}: "On any ranking of crimes or atrocities, it would be difficult to name an act or event regarded as more heinous. Genocide arguably appears now as the most serious offense in humanity's lengthy—and, we recognize, still growing—list of moral or legal violations."; {{harvnb|Gerlach|2010|p=6}}: "Genocide is an action-oriented model designed for moral condemnation, prevention, intervention or punishment. In other words, genocide is a normative, action-oriented concept made for the political struggle, but in order to be operational it leads to simplification, with a focus on government policies."; {{harvnb|Hollander|2012|pp=149–189}}: "... genocide has become the yardstick, the gold standard for identifying and measuring political evil in our times. The label 'genocide' confers moral distinction on its victims and indisputable condemnation on its perpetrators." Genocide has been referred to as the "crime of crimes".BOOK, Schabas, William A., William Schabas,weblink Genocide in International Law: The Crimes of Crimes, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 0-521-78262-7, 1st, 9, 92, 227, en, BOOK, Straus, Scott, Scott Straus,weblink Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022, 978-0-2280-0951-1, Graziosi, Andrea, 223, 240, en, Sysyn, Frank E., WEB, Rugira, Lonzen, 2022-04-20, Why Genocide is "the crime of crimes",weblink 2024-04-11, Pan African Review, en-US,

Etymology

File:Raphael Lemkin, Photograph 6 (cropped).jpg|thumb|Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in 1944. His analysis of atrocities inflicted on the Poles were adopted by the UN Genocide Convention as its criteria for determining "genocidal intentgenocidal intentFile:După trecerea unui convoi între Birzula și Grozdovca.jpg|thumb|Aftermath of the 1941 Odessa massacre, in which Jewish deportees were killed outside Brizula (now Podilsk) during the Holocaustthe HolocaustFile:Auschwitz Resistance 280 cropped.jpg|thumb|upright=1.15|Members of the burn corpses of Jews in pits at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, an extermination campextermination campPolish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the term genocide in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,BOOK, Power, Samantha,weblink A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, Harper Perennial, 2003, 978-0-06-054164-4, New York, 22–29, registration, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Latin suffix ("act of killing").{{sfn|Lemkin|2008|p=79}}WEB, Stanton, Gregory H., What is genocide?,weblink Genocide Watch, Gregory Stanton, . In Axis Rule, Lemkin documents his research of Nazi occupation policies in Europe, and records a case study of the occupation of Poland. Lemkin asserted that Nazi atrocities against Poles consisted of five policies which exposed their "intent to destroy" the Polish nation. These included i) mass-killings of Poles ii) inflicting "serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group" iii) planned deterioration of living conditions "calculated to bring about their destruction" iv) implementation of various "measures intended to prevent births within the group" such as promotion of abortions, burdening pregnant women, etc. v) forced transfer of Polish children to German families. Each of these five markers, according to Lemkin, revealed the Nazi plan to eliminate the Polish identity with certainty. These five criteria were adopted by the 1948 Genocide Convention (CPPCG) as its proof for the concept of genocidal intent.BOOK, Kiernan, Lower, Naimark, Straus, Ben, Wendy, Norman, Scott, Ben, Wendy, Norman, Scott, Kiernan, Lower, Naimark, Straus, The Cambridge World History of Genocide, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 978-1-108-48707-8, 3: Genocide in the Contemporary Era, 1914–2020, University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom, 368, 369, 15: The Nazis and the Slavs - Poles and Soviet Prisoners of War, 10.1017/9781108767118, Before the term was coined, there had been various ways of describing such events. Some languages already had words for such killings, including German (, {{lit|murder of a people}}) and Polish (, {{lit|killing of a people or nation}}).BOOK, Polenlieder, Der künftige Held, Polish songs, The future hero, de, August, Graf von Platen, August Graf von Platen, 1831, Die nur des Mords noch pflegen, und nicht der Schlacht, Des Völkermords!, Who only cultivate murder and not battle, genocide!, (NB. Uses the term for the first time.REF, Böttcher, Berger, Krolop, Zimmermann, 1985, A, )BOOK, Geflügelte Worte, de, Winged words, Kurt, Böttcher, Karl Heinz, Berger, Kurt, Krolop, Christa, Zimmermann, 4, Edition Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany, 1985, 466, (NB. The editors cite August Graf von Platen to have used the term in his 1831 ode.REF, Graf von Platen, 1831, B, )MAGAZINE, Polen 1772 bis 1945, de, Michael, Imhof, Wochenschau, 5, September–October 1996, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 177–193, 183, Der letzte Act dieser Eroberung, die viel verschrieene Theilung Polens, war nicht, wie man sie genannt hat, ein Völkermord, sondern weiter nichts als die Proclamation eines bereits erfolgten Todes, nichts als die Bestattung einer längst in der Auflösung begriffenen Leiche, die nicht mehr geduldet werden durfte unter den Lebendigen., The final act of this conquest, the much-decried partition of Poland, was not, as it has been called, a genocide, but nothing more than the proclamation of a death that had already taken place, nothing more than the burial of a corpse long in the process of dissolution, which no longer could be tolerated among the living., (NB. Imhof cites Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Jordan with having used the term in a discussion at the Frankfurter Paulskirche on 24 July 1848.){{harvnb|Tomaszewski|2006|p=xiii}}; {{harvnb|Huttenbach|2005|pp=443–445}} After reading about the 1921 assassination of Talat Pasha, the main architect of the Armenian genocide, by Armenian Soghomon Tehlirian, Lemkin asked his professor why there was no law under which Talat could be charged.BOOK, William, Schabas, William Schabas, Genocide in international law: the crimes of crimes, Cambridge University Press, 2000, 9780521787901, 25,weblink Lemkin's interest in the subject dates to his days as a student at Lvov University, when he intently followed attempts to prosecute the perpetration of the massacres of the Armenians., Google Books, BOOK, Ihrig, Stefan, Stefan Ihrig, (Justifying Genocide: Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler), 2016, Harvard University Press, 978-0-674-50479-0, 371, BOOK, Irvin-Erickson, Douglas, Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Raphael Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide, 2016, University of Pennsylvania Press, 978-0-8122-9341-8, 36–37, He later explained that "as a lawyer, I thought that a crime should not be punished by the victims, but should be punished by a court."BOOK, Hosfeld, Rolf, Rolf Hosfeld, Ein Völkermordprozess wider Willen, de, An Unintended Genocide Trial, Johannes Lepsius – Eine deutsche Ausnahme: Der Völkermord an den Armeniern, Humanitarismus und Menschenrechte, Johannes Lepsius — A German Exception: The Armenian Genocide, Humanitarianism, and Human Rights, 248–257, {{ill, Wallstein Verlag, de, |date=2013 |isbn=978-3-8353-2491-6 |chapter-url=http://www.lepsiushaus-potsdam.de/uploads/images/Publikationen/Konferenzen/V%C3%B6lkerrecht%202011/vortrag-rolf-hosfeld-ein-vc3b6lkermordprozess-wider-willen.pdf |access-date=13 June 2022 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220613173713weblink |archive-date=13 June 2022}} In 1941, when describing the "methodical, merciless butchery" of "scores of thousands" of Russians by Nazi troops during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill spoke of "a crime without a name".SPEECH,weblink Churchill, Winston, Winston Churchill, 24 August 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill's Broadcast to the World About the Meeting With President Roosevelt, British Library of Information, ibiblio, Lemkin's Axis Rule in Occupied Europe describes the implementation of Nazi policies in occupied Europe and mentions earlier mass killings.WEB, Coining a Word and Championing a Cause: The Story of Raphael Lemkin, ushmm.org, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Holocaust Encyclopedia.,weblink 22 October 2017, live,weblink 13 June 2022, Lemkin's memoirs detail early exposure to the history of Ottoman attacks against Armenians (which most scholars believe constitute genocide), antisemitic pogroms, and other histories of group-targeted violence as key to forming his beliefs about the need for legal protection of groups., Lemkin defined genocide as follows:{{blockquote|"New conceptions require new terms. By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group."{{sfn|Lemkin|2008|p=79}}|author=Raphael Lemkin|title="Axis Rule in Occupied Europe"|source=Chapter IX: Genocide, p. 79}}The preamble to the 1948 Genocide Convention notes that instances of genocide have taken place throughout history;WEB, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 2 May 2008,weblink 22 October 2008, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20080502140534weblink">weblink 2 May 2008, it was not until Lemkin coined the term and the prosecution of perpetrators of the Holocaust at the Nuremberg Trials that the United Nations defined the crime of genocide under international law in the Genocide Convention. It was several years before the term was widely adopted by the international community. When the Nuremberg trials revealed the inadequacy of phrases like "Germanization", "crimes against humanity" and "mass murder", scholars of international law reached agreement that Lemkin's work provided a conceptual framework for Nazi crimes. A 1946 headline in The New York Times announced that "Genocide Is the New Name for the Crime Fastened on the Nazi Leaders";NEWS, Kaempffert, Waldemer, Science in Review; Genocide Is the New Name for the Crime Fastened on the Nazi Leaders Origin of the Word Cultural Debt of Nations, 20 October 1946, The New York Times, E-13,weblink 4 December 2021, live,weblink 13 June 2022, BOOK, Schaller, Dominik J., Jürgen, Zimmerer, :de:Jürgen Zimmerer, The Origins of Genocide: Raphael Lemkin as a historian of mass violence, Routledge, the word was used in indictments at the Nuremberg trials, held from 1945, but solely as a descriptive term, not yet as a formal legal term.WEB, What Is Genocide?, Holocaust Encyclopedia, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 24 June 2014,weblink 13 June 2022, live,weblink 13 June 2022, The so-called Polish Genocide Trials of Arthur Greiser and Amon Leopold Goth in 1946 were the first trials in which judgments included the term.BOOK, Premiel, Kim C., Stiller, Alexa, 2012, Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals: Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography (War and Genocide), Berghahn Books, 110,

Prohibited acts

The Genocide Convention establishes five prohibited acts that, when committed with the requisite intent, amount to genocide. Genocide is not just defined as wide scale massacre-style killings that are visible and well-documented. International law recognizes a broad range of forms of violence in which the crime of genocide can be enacted.WEB, Sareta, Ashraph,weblink Beyond Killing: Gender, Genocide, & Obligations Under International Law 3, Global Justice Center 2018,

Killing members of the group Article II(a)

While mass killing is not necessary for genocide to have been committed, it has been present in almost all recognized genocides. A near-uniform pattern has emerged throughout history in which men and adolescent boys are singled out for murder in the early stages,{{citation needed|reason=UNHCR etc support that this happened in these cases, not that this is near-uniform pattern|date=October 2019}} such as in the genocide of the Yazidis by Daesh,UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), "They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis", paras. [32–41], A/HRC/32/CRP.2, 15 June 2016. the Ottoman Turks' attack on the Armenians,JOURNAL, Vahakn, Dadrian, The Secret Young Turk Ittihadist Conference and the Decision for World War I Genocide of the Armenians, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 7, 2, 173, at [164], 1994, 10.1093/hgs/7.2.173, and the Burmese security forces' attacks on the Rohingya.REPORT, Amnesty International, 'We Will Destroy Everything:' Military Responsibility for Crimes Against Humanity in Rakhine State, Myanmar, June 2018, ; Fortify Rights & US Holocaust Memorial Museum, "'They Tried to Kill Us All' Atrocity Crimes against Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine State, Myanmar", Nov. 2017. Men and boys are typically subject to "fast" killings, such as by gunshot.Prosecutor v. Karadžić, Case No. IT-95-5/18-T, Trial Judgment, Int’l Crim. Trib. for the Former Yugoslavia, 24 March 2016 Women and girls are more likely to die slower deaths by slashing, burning, or as a result of sexual violence.HRW, "Leave None to Tell the Story", at [215]; HRW, "Shattered Lives", at [39]. The jurisprudence of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), among others, shows that both the initial executions and those that quickly follow other acts of extreme violence, such as rape and torture, are recognized as falling under the first prohibited act.Prosecutor v. Semanza, Case No. ICTR-97-20-T, Trial Judgment, para. [320], 15 May 2003; Prosecutor v. Ntagerura, Case No. ICTR-99-46-T, Trial Judgment, para. [664], 24 February 2004,A less settled discussion is whether deaths that are further removed from the initial acts of violence can be addressed under this provision of the Genocide Convention. Legal scholars have posited, for example, that deaths resulting from other genocidal acts including causing serious bodily or mental harm or the successful deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction should be considered genocidal killings.

Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Article II(b)

This second prohibited act can encompass a wide range of non-fatal genocidal acts.BOOK, Direct Killing is Not the Only Way to Commit Genocide ... : Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group...The drafters appreciated that there is more than one way (i.e. killing) to perpetuate genocide., 37–68 (45–46), Samuel, Totten, Henry, Theriault, The Complexities Inherent in the UNCG, The United Nations Genocide Convention: An Introduction, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 2019, 978-1487524081, In practice, this could include deaths from the deliberate infection of Tutsi women with HIV/AIDS through rape in the Rwandan genocide or from the abuse and denial of food inflicted by ISIL on Yazidi sex slaves by ISIL's use of sexual slavery. To date, neither has been prosecuted as such. The ICTR and International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) have held that rape and sexual violence may constitute the second prohibited act of genocide by causing both physical and mental harm. In its landmark Akayesu decision, the ICTR held that rapes and sexual violence resulted in "physical and psychological destruction".Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Judgment, 2 September 1998, para. 731. Sexual violence is a hallmark of genocidal violence, with most genocidal campaigns explicitly or implicitly sanctioning it. It is estimated that 250,000 to 500,000 women were raped in the three months of the Rwandan genocide, many of whom were subjected to multiple rapes or gang rape.JOURNAL, Stephanie K., Wood, A Woman Scorned for the "Least Condemned" War Crime: Precedent and Problems with Prosecuting Rape as a Serious Crime in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, 13, 274, Columbia Journal of Gender & Law, 299–301, 2004, In Darfur, a systemic campaign of rape and often sexual mutilation was carried outHuman Rights Watch, Darfur in Flames: Atrocities in Western Sudan, at 26–29 (2004). and in Burma public mass rapes and gang rapes were inflicted on the Rohingya by Burmese security forces.WEB, Grant, Shubin, Elena, Sarver, Kristin, Smith, Discrimination to Destruction: A Legal Analysis of Gender Crimes Against the Rohingya, Global Justice Center, 2018,weblink 28 August 2021, Sexual slavery was documented in the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks and Daesh's genocide of the Yazidi.UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, paras. 32–41, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/32/CRP.2, 15 June 2016.Torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, when committed with the requisite intent, are also genocide by causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group. The ICTY found that both experiencing a failed execution and watching the murder of one's family members may constitute torture.Prosecutor v. Karadžić, Case No. IT-95-5/18-T, Trial Judgment, para. [545], Int’l Crim. Trib. for the Former Yugoslavia, 24 March 2016, para. 5664; Patricia Viseur Sellers, "Genocide Gendered: The Srebrenica Cases", The Fifth Annual Katherine B. Fite Lecture, Proceedings of the Ninth International Humanitarian Law Dialogs, 30 Aug. – 1 September 2015. The Syrian Commission of Inquiry (COI) also found that enslavement, removal of one's children into indoctrination or sexual slavery, and acts of physical and sexual violence rise to the level of torture, as well. While it was subject to some debate, the ICTY and, later, the Syrian COI held that under some circumstances deportation and forcible transfer may also cause serious bodily or mental harm.Popović, Case No. IT-05-88-T, para. [846]; Tolimir, IT-05-88/2-A, para. [209]; Karadžić, IT-95-5/18-T, para. [545]; UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes Against the Yazidis, paras. 32–41, U.N. Doc. A/HRC/32/CRP.2, 15 June 2016.

Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction Article II(c)

File:"Trail of the hide hunters." Buffalo lying dead in snow, 1872 - NARA - 520094.jpg|thumb|As part of the Native American genocide, the U.S. federal government promoted bison hunting for various reasons, including as a way of destroying the means of survival of Plains Indians to pressure them to remain on Indian reservationIndian reservationThe third prohibited act is distinguished from the genocidal act of killing because the deaths are not immediate (or may not even come to pass), but rather create circumstances that do not support prolonged life. Due to the longer period of time before the actual destruction would be achieved, the ICTR held that courts must consider the duration of time the conditions are imposed as an element of the act.Kayishema and Ruzindana, (Trial Chamber), 21 May 1999, para. 548 In the 19th century the United States federal government supported the extermination of bison, which Native Americans in the Great Plains relied on as a source of food. This was done for various reasons, primarily to pressure them onto reservations during times of conflict. Some genocide experts describe this as an example of genocide that involves removing the means of survival.BOOK, Duke University Press, 9780822376149, Colonial Genocide in Indigenous North America, 2014, Hinton, Alexander, Woolford, Andrew, Benvenuto, Jeff, 292, The ICTR provided guidance into what constitutes a violation of the third act. In Akayesu, it identified "subjecting a group of people to a subsistence diet, systematic expulsion from homes and the reduction of essential medical services below minimum requirement"Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Judgment, 2 September 1998, para. 506. as rising to genocide. In Kayishema and Ruzindana, it extended the list to include: "lack of proper housing, clothing, hygiene and medical care or excessive work or physical exertion" among the conditions. It further noted that, in addition to deprivation of necessary resources, rape could also fit within this prohibited act.{{citation needed|date=March 2023}} In August 2023, founding chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Luis Moreno Ocampo published a report presenting evidence that Azerbaijan was committing genocide against the ethnic Armenians of Artsakh Nagorno-Karabakh under Article II(c) of the Genocide Convention by placing their historic land under a comprehensive blockade, cutting all access to food, medical supplies, electricity, gas, internet, and stopping all movement of people to and from Armenia.WEB,weblink REPORT ARMENIA – Luis Moreno Ocampo,

Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group Article II(d)

{{See also|Compulsory sterilization}}The fourth prohibited act is aimed at preventing the protected group from regenerating through reproduction. It encompasses acts affecting reproduction and intimate relationships, such as involuntary sterilization, forced abortion, the prohibition of marriage, and long-term separation of men and women intended to prevent procreation. Rape has been found to violate the fourth prohibited act on two bases: where the rape was committed with the intent to impregnate a woman and thereby force her to carry a child of another group (in societies where group identity is determined by patrilineal identity) and where the person raped subsequently refuses to procreate as a result of the trauma.Prosecutor v. Akayesu, Case No. ICTR-96-4-T, Judgment, 2 September 1998, para. 507. Accordingly, it can take into account both physical and mental measures imposed by the perpetrators.

Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group Article II(e)

{{See also|Forced assimilation}}The final prohibited act is the only prohibited act that does not lead to physical or biological destruction, but rather to destruction of the group as a cultural and social unit. It occurs when children of the protected group are transferred to the perpetrator group. Boys are typically taken into the group by changing their names to those common of the perpetrator group, converting their religion, and using them for labor or as soldiers.BOOK, Antonie, Holslag, Exposed Bodies: A Conceptual Approach to Sexual Violence during the Armenian Genocide, Genocide and Gender in the Twentieth Century: A Comparative Study, 96–97, Bloomsbury, 2015, Girls who are transferred are not generally converted to the perpetrator group, but instead treated as chattel, as played out in both the Yazidi and Armenian genocides.

Crime

Pre-criminalization view

Before genocide was made a crime against national law, it was considered a sovereign right. When Lemkin asked about a way to punish the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide, a law professor told him: "Consider the case of a farmer who owns a flock of chickens. He kills them and this is his business. If you interfere, you are trespassing."JOURNAL, Goldsmith, Katherine, The Issue of Intent in the Genocide Convention and Its Effect on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: Toward a Knowledge-Based Approach, Genocide Studies and Prevention, 2010, 5, 3, 238–257, 10.3138/gsp.5.3.238,weblink As late as 1959, many world leaders still "believed states had a right to commit genocide against people within their borders", according to political scientist Douglas Irvin-Erickson.BOOK, Irvin-Erickson, Douglas, Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Raphael Lemkin and the Concept of Genocide, 2016, University of Pennsylvania Press, 978-0-8122-9341-8, en, Introduction,

International law

File:Rwandan Genocide Murambi skulls.jpg|thumb|Human skulls at the Murambi Genocide Memorial Centre in RwandaRwandaFile:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story p314.jpg|thumb|Armenian genocideArmenian genocideAfter the Holocaust, which had been perpetrated by Nazi Germany during World War II, Lemkin successfully campaigned for the universal acceptance of international laws defining and forbidding genocides. In 1946, the first session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that affirmed genocide was a crime under international law and enumerated examples of such events (but did not provide a full legal definition of the crime). In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) which defined the crime of genocide for the first time.BOOK, Rubinstein, W. D.,weblink Genocide: A History, London, Pearson Education, 2004, 308, 978-0-582-50601-5, Google Books, {{blockquote|text=Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, results in great losses to humanity in the form of cultural and other contributions represented by these human groups, and is contrary to moral law and the spirit and aims of the United Nations. Many instances of such crimes of genocide have occurred when racial, religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part.|sign=|source=UN Resolution 96(1), 11 December 1946}}The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948{{sfn|Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide|2014}} and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). It contains an internationally recognized definition of genocide which has been incorporated into the national criminal legislation of many countries and was also adopted by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). Article II of the Convention defines genocide as:{{blockquote|... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:{{plainlist|

• (a) Killing members of the group;
• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.}}|sign=|source=}}

Incitement to genocide is recognized as a separate crime under international law and an inchoate crime which does not require genocide to have taken place to be prosecutable.WEB, Incitement to Genocide in International Law,weblink United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 9 May 2020, The first draft of the convention included political killings; these provisions were removed in a political and diplomatic compromise following objections from many diverse countries, and originally promoted by the World Jewish Congress and Raphael Lemkin's conception, with some scholars popularly emphasizing in literature the role of the Soviet Union,BOOK, Schabas, William A., William A. Schabas, 2009, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, 2nd, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 160, 9780521719001, Rigorous examination of the travaux fails to confirm a popular impression in the literature that the opposition to inclusion of political genocide was some Soviet machination. The Soviet views were also shared by a number of other States for whom it is difficult to establish any geographic or social common denominator: Lebanon, Sweden, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Iran, Egypt, Belgium, and Uruguay. The exclusion of political groups was in fact originally promoted by a non-governmental organization, the World Jewish Congress, and it corresponded to Raphael Lemkin's vision of the nature of the crime of genocide., a permanent United Nations Security Council member. The Soviets argued that the convention's definition should follow the etymology of the term,BOOK, Rummel, Rudolph, 1990,weblink Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917, 1st paperback, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Transaction Publishers, 9781560008873, Power Kills, BOOK, Staub, Ervin, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 8, 978-0-521-42214-7,weblink 1992, Google Books, and Joseph Stalin in particular may have feared greater international scrutiny of the country's political killings, such as the Great Purge.BOOK, Gellately, Robert, Kiernan, Ben, The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2003, 978-0-521-52750-7, 267,weblink registration, ... where Stalin was presumably anxious to avoid his purges being subjected to genocidal scrutiny., Lemkin, who coined genocide, approached the Soviet delegation as the resolution vote came close to reassure the Soviets that there was no conspiracy against them; none in the Soviet-led bloc opposed the resolution, which passed unanimously in December 1946.JOURNAL, Weiss-Wendt, Anton, December 2005, Hostage of Politics: Raphael Lemkin on 'Soviet Genocide', Journal of Genocide Research, Routledge, 7, 4, 551–559, 10.1080/14623520500350017, 144612446, 1462-3528, Other nations, including the United States,BOOK, Bachman, Jeffrey S., 2017,weblink The United States and Genocide: (Re)Defining the Relationship with Genocide, E-book, London, Routledge, 9781351692168, Google Books, feared that including political groups in the definition would invite international intervention in domestic politics.By 1951, Lemkin was saying that the Soviet Union was the only state that could be indicted for genocide, his concept of genocide, as outlined in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, covering Stalinist deportations as genocide by default, and differing in many ways from the adopted Genocide Convention. From a 21st-century perspective, it was such a broad coverage that it would include any grossly human rights violation as genocide, and that many events deemed by Lemkin genocidal did not amount to genocide. As the Cold War began, this change was the result of Lemkin's turn to anti-communism in an attempt to convince the United States to ratify the Genocide Convention.

Intent

Under international law, genocide has two mental (mens rea) elements: the general mental element and the element of specific intent (dolus specialis). The general element refers to whether the prohibited acts were committed with intent, knowledge, recklessness, or negligence. For most serious international crimes, including genocide, the requirement is that the perpetrator act with intent. The Rome Statute defines intent as meaning to engage in the conduct and, in relation to consequences, as meaning to cause that consequence or being "aware that it will occur in the ordinary course of events".WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090710221430weblink">weblink 10 July 2009, live, Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, July 1998, International Criminal Court, The specific intent element defines the purpose of committing the acts: "to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such". The specific intent is a core factor distinguishing genocide from other international crimes, such as war crimes or crimes against humanity.WEB, 12 January 1951, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,weblink 20 March 2024, United Nations,

"Intent to destroy"

In 2007, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) noted in its judgement on Jorgic v. Germany case that, in 1992, the majority of legal scholars took the narrow view that "intent to destroy" in the CPPCG meant the intended physical-biological destruction of the protected group, and that this was still the majority opinion. But the ECHR also noted that a minority took a broader view, and did not consider biological-physical destruction to be necessary, as the intent to destroy a national, racial, religious or ethnic group as a social unit was enough to qualify as genocide.WEB, European Court of Human Rights,weblink Judgement in Jorgic v. Germany (Application no. 74613/01), paragraphs 18, 36, 74, In the same judgement, the ECHR reviewed the judgements of several international and municipal courts. It noted that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice had agreed with the narrow interpretation (that biological-physical destruction was necessary for an act to qualify as genocide). The ECHR also noted that at the time of its judgement, apart from courts in Germany (which had taken a broad view), that there had been few cases of genocide under other Convention states' municipal laws, and that "There are no reported cases in which the courts of these States have defined the type of group destruction the perpetrator must have intended in order to be found guilty of genocide."WEB, European Court of Human Rights,weblink Judgement in Jorgic v. Germany (Application no. 74613/01), paragraphs 43–46, In the case of "Onesphore Rwabukombe", the German Federal Court of Justice adhered to its previous judgement, and did not follow the narrow interpretation of the ICTY and the ICJ.BGH, Urteil v. 21 May 2015 – 3 StR 575/14, analysed with respect to genocidal intent in by JOURNAL, La Revue des Droits de l'Homme, Natascha, Kersting, La poursuite pénale du génocide rwandais devant les juridictions allemandes: L'intention de détruire dans l'affaire "Onesphore Rwabukombe", The Criminal Prosecution of the Rwandan Genocide before the German Courts: The Intent to Destroy in the "Onesphore Rwabukombe" Case, fr,weblink October 2016, 10.4000/revdh.2539, free,

"In whole or in part"

The phrase "in whole or in part" has been subject to much discussion by scholars of international humanitarian law.WEB,weblink What is Genocide?,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070505161753weblink">weblink 5 May 2007, McGill Faculty of Law (McGill University), In the Ruhashyankiko report of the United Nations it was once argued that the killing of only a single individual could be genocide if the intent to destroy the wider group was found in the murder,Ruhashyankiko, Nicodème (1978). "Study of the question of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide". p. 14, paragraph 49–54. Retrieved 27 December 2021 – via Digital Library. yet official court rulings have since contradicted this. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Trial Chamber I – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2001) ICTY8 (2 August 2001)WEB,weblink Prosecutor v. Dario Kordic & Mario Cerkez – Trial Chamber III – Judgment – en IT-95-14/2 [2001] ICTY 8 (26 February 2001), worldlii.org, that Genocide had been committed. In Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Appeals Chamber – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2004) ICTY 7 (19 April 2004)WEB,weblink The Prosecutor v. Limaj et al. – Decision on Prosecution's Motion to Amend the Amended Indictment – Trial Chamber – en IT-03-66 [2004] ICTY 7 (12 February 2004), worldlii.org, 22 October 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140823231159weblink">weblink 23 August 2014, paragraphs 8, 9, 10, and 11 addressed the issue of in part and found that "the part must be a substantial part of that group. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough to have an impact on the group as a whole." The Appeals Chamber goes into details of other cases and the opinions of respected commentators on the Genocide Convention to explain how they came to this conclusion.The judges continue in paragraph 12, "The determination of when the targeted part is substantial enough to meet this requirement may involve a number of considerations. The numeric size of the targeted part of the group is the necessary and important starting point, though not in all cases the ending point of the inquiry. The number of individuals targeted should be evaluated not only in absolute terms but also in relation to the overall size of the entire group. In addition to the numeric size of the targeted portion, its prominence within the group can be a useful consideration. If a specific part of the group is emblematic of the overall group or is essential to its survival, that may support a finding that the part qualifies as substantial within the meaning of Article 4 [of the Tribunal's Statute]."WEB,weblink The Prosecutor v. Limaj et al. – Decision on Prosecution's Motion to Amend the Amended Indictment – Trial Chamber – en IT-03-66 [2004] ICTY 7 (12 February 2004), worldlii.org, 22 October 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20140823231159weblink">weblink 23 August 2014, See Paragraph 6: "Article 4 of the Tribunal's Statute, like the Genocide Convention, covers certain acts done with "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such"., Statute of the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991, U.N. Doc. S/25704 at 36, annex (1993) and S/25704/Add.1 (1993), adopted by Security Council on 25 May 1993, Resolution 827 (1993).In paragraph 13 the judges raise the issue of the perpetrators' access to the victims: "The historical examples of genocide also suggest that the area of the perpetrators' activity and control, as well as the possible extent of their reach, should be considered. ... The intent to destroy formed by a perpetrator of genocide will always be limited by the opportunity presented to him. While this factor alone will not indicate whether the targeted group is substantial, it can—in combination with other factors—inform the analysis."

"A national, ethnic, racial or religious group"

The drafters of the CPPCG chose not to include political or social groups among the protected groups. Instead, they opted to focus on "stable" identities, attributes that are historically understood as being born into and unable or unlikely to change over time. This definition conflicts with modern conceptions of race as a social construct rather than innate fact and the practice of changing religion, etc.JOURNAL, Agnieszka, Szpak, National, Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Groups Protected against Genocide in the Jurisprudence of the ad hoc International Criminal Tribunals, European Journal of International Law, 23, 155, 2012, 155–173, 10.1093/ejil/chs002, free, International criminal courts have typically applied a mix of objective and subjective markers for determining whether or not a targeted population is a distinct group. Differences in language, physical appearance, religion, and cultural practices are objective criteria that may show that the groups are distinct. However, in circumstances such as the Rwandan genocide, Hutus and Tutsis were often physically indistinguishable.BOOK, William A., Schabas, William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, 124–129, 2nd, 2009, In such a situation where a definitive answer based on objective markers is not clear, courts have turned to the subjective standard that "if a victim was perceived by a perpetrator as belonging to a protected group, the victim could be considered by the Chamber as a member of the protected group".Prosecutor v. Bagilishema (Case No. ICTR-95-1A-T), Judgment, 7 June 2001, para. 65. Stigmatization of the group by the perpetrators through legal measures, such as withholding citizenship, requiring the group to be identified, or isolating them from the whole could show that the perpetrators viewed the victims as a protected group.

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The convention came into force as international law on 12 January 1951 after the minimum 20 countries became parties. At that time however, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were parties to the treaty: France and the Republic of China. The Soviet Union ratified in 1954, the United Kingdom in 1970, the People's Republic of China in 1983 (having replaced the Taiwan-based Republic of China on the UNSC in 1971), and the United States in 1988.{{citation needed|date=February 2017}}William Schabas has suggested that a permanent body as recommended by the Whitaker Report to monitor the implementation of the Genocide Convention, and require states to issue reports on their compliance with the convention (such as were incorporated into the United Nations Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture), would make the convention more effective.BOOK, William A., Schabas, William A. Schabas, War crimes and human rights: essays on the death penalty, justice and accountability, Cameron May, 2008, 978-1-905017-63-8,weblink 791, Google Books, , {{isbn|1-905017-63-4}}

UN Security Council Resolution 1674

UN Security Council Resolution 1674, adopted by the United Nations Security Council on 28 April 2006, "reaffirms the provisions of paragraphs 138 and 139 of the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document regarding the responsibility to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity".Resolution Resolution 1674 (2006) {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110302102009weblink |date=2 March 2011}} The resolution committed the council to action to protect civilians in armed conflict.PRESS RELEASE,weblink Security Council passes landmark resolution – world has responsibility to protect people from genocide, Oxfam, 28 April 2006, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20101012101425weblink">weblink 12 October 2010, In 2008 the UN Security Council adopted resolution 1820, which noted that "rape and other forms of sexual violence can constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity or a constitutive act with respect to genocide".WEB,weblink Security Council Demands Immediate and Complete Halt to Acts of Sexual Violence Against Civilians in Conflict Zones, Unanimously Adopting Resolution 1820 (2008), United Nations, 22 October 2017,

Municipal law

Since the Convention came into effect in January 1951 about 80 United Nations member states have passed legislation that incorporates the provisions of CPPCG into their municipal law.WEB,weblink The Crime of Genocide in Domestic Laws and Penal Codes, Prevent Genocide International,

Other definitions of genocide

{{See also|Genocide definitions}}Writing in 1998, Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Björnson stated that the CPPCG was a legal instrument resulting from a diplomatic compromise. As such the wording of the treaty is not intended to be a definition suitable as a research tool, and although it is used for this purpose, as it has international legal credibility that others lack, other genocide definitions have also been proposed. They go on to say that none of these alternative definitions have gained widespread support,BOOK, Kurt, Jonassohn, Karin Solveig, Björnson, Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations in Comparative Perspective: In Comparative Perspective, Transaction Publishers, 1998, 0-7658-0417-4,weblink 133–135, Google Books, , {{ISBN|978-0-7658-0417-4}} they postulate that the major reason why no generally accepted genocide definition has emerged is because academics have adjusted their focus to emphasise different periods and have found it expedient to use slightly different definitions. For example, Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn studied all human history, while Leo Kuper and Rudolph Rummel concentrated on the 20th century, and Helen Fein, Barbara Harff, and Ted Gurr looked at post-World War II events.Yehuda Bauer, has argued that the present definition is problematic, contending that many of what are usually called genocides were not racially motivated. Bauer gave the Rwandan Genocide, where, Bauer argued, both the perpetrators and victims were of the same ethnicity, as an example. He argued that, because of this discrepancy, "clearly, the existing definition of genocide is inadequate and needs to be altered."JOURNAL, Bauer, Yehuda, 2023-01-22, Genocide and Genocide Prevention,weblink Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, 16, 3, 388–403, 10.1080/23739770.2022.2163791, 256223657, 2373-9770,

Cultural genocide and ethnocide

{{excerpt|Cultural genocide}}

Political and social groups

The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in the CPPCG legal definition has been criticized by some historians and sociologists, for example, M. Hassan Kakar in his book The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982BOOK, M. Hassan, Kakar,weblink Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion and the Afghan Response, 1979–1982, University of California Press, 1995, argues that the international definition of genocide is too restricted,BOOK, M. Hassan, Kakar, Afghanistan,weblink 4. The Story of Genocide in Afghanistan: 13. Genocide Throughout the Country, and that it should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator and quotes Chalk and Jonassohn: "Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator."BOOK, Frank, Chalk, Kurt, Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, Yale University Press, 1990, 0-300-04446-1, In turn some states such as Ethiopia,NEWS,weblink Court Sentences Mengistu to Death, BBC News, 26 May 2008,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20111113120151weblink">weblink 13 November 2011, France,WEB,weblink Code Pénal (France); Article 211–1 – génocide, Penal Code (France); Article 211–1 – genocide, fr, Prevent Genocide International, 31 January 2017, and SpainNEWS, Daly, Emma,weblink Spanish Judge Sends Argentine to Prison on Genocide Charge,weblink 21 October 2012, The New York Times, 30 June 2003, 23 June 2022, unfit, {{cbignore}}NEWS,weblink Profile: Judge Baltasar Garzon, BBC News, 7 April 2010, 30 January 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110208161921weblink">weblink 8 February 2011, include political groups as legitimate genocide victims in their anti-genocide laws.Some academics such as Norman Naimark and Anton Weiss-Wendt argue that the exclusion of political and social groups in the final 1948 version of the Genocide Convention was a consequence of Soviet lobbying. Though social and political groups were mentioned in initial drafts of the convention, the Soviet Union would not agree to become a signatory, unless they were omitted.NEWS, Legvold, Robert, 2010-11-01, Stalin's Genocides, en-US, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2010,weblink 2023-09-20, 0015-7120, WEB, Weiss-Wendt, Anton, The Soviet Union and the Gutting of the UN Genocide Convention,weblink 2023-09-20, academic.oup.com, The United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect states that the definition of genocide reached in the convention was the "result of a negotiating process and reflects the compromise reached among United Nations Member States."WEB, January 2019, THE CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE (1948),weblink September 14, 2023, United Nations, Harff and Gurr defined genocide as "the promotion and execution of policies by a state or its agents which result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a group ... [when] the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality".What is Genocide? {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070505161753weblink |date=5 May 2007 }} McGill Faculty of Law (McGill University) source cites Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr Toward empirical theory of genocides and politicides, International Studies Quarterly, 37:3, 1988 Harff and Gurr also differentiate between genocides and politicides by the characteristics by which members of a group are identified by the state. In genocides, the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality. In politicides the victim groups are defined primarily in terms of their hierarchical position or political opposition to the regime and dominant groups.Staff. There are NO Statutes of Limitations on the Crimes of Genocide! {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150728203923weblink |date=28 July 2015 }} On the website of the American Patriot Friends Network. Cites Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr "Toward empirical theory of genocides and politicides", International Studies Quarterly 37, 3 [1988]. Daniel D. Polsby and Don B. Kates Jr. state that "we follow Harff's distinction between genocides and 'pogroms', which she describes as 'short-lived outbursts by mobs, which, although often condoned by authorities, rarely persist'. If the violence persists for long enough, however, Harff argues, the distinction between condonation and complicity collapses."JOURNAL, Polsby, Daniel D., Daniel D. Polsby, Kates, Don B. Jr., Don Kates, Of Holocausts and Gun Control, Washington University Law Quarterly, 3 November 1997, 75, Fall, 1237,weblink 21 February 2011,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110720121601weblink">weblink 20 July 2011, dead, (cites Harff 1992, see other note)JOURNAL, Barbara, Harff, Barbara Harff, Recognizing Genocides and Politicides, Genocide Watch, 27, Helen, Fein, Helen Fein, 1992, 37, 38, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, According to Rudolph Rummel, genocide has three different meanings. The ordinary meaning is murder by the government of people due to their national, ethnic, racial, or religious group membership. The legal meaning of genocide refers to the international treaty, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). This also includes non-killings that in the end eliminate the group, such as preventing births or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group. A generalized meaning of genocide is similar to the ordinary meaning but also includes government killings of political opponents or otherwise intentional murder. It is to avoid confusion regarding what meaning is intended that Rummel created the term democide to distinguish from this third meaning.WEB, Democide Verses Genocide: Which is What?,weblink 22 October 2017, hawaii.edu, Highlighting the potential for state and non-state actors to commit genocide in the 21st century, for example, in failed states or as non-state actors acquiring weapons of mass destruction, Adrian Gallagher defined genocide as 'When a source of collective power (usually a state) intentionally uses its power base to implement a process of destruction in order to destroy a group (as defined by the perpetrator), in whole or in substantial part, dependent upon relative group size'.BOOK, Adrian, Gallagher, Genocide and Its Threat to Contemporary International Order, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013,weblink 37, 9781137280268, Google Books, The definition upholds the centrality of intent, the multidimensional understanding of destroying, broadens the definition of group identity beyond that of the 1948 definition yet argues that a substantial part of a group has to be destroyed before it can be classified as genocide.Other proposed definitions of genocide include social groups defined by gender, sexual orientation,JOURNAL, Feindel, Alycia T., 2005, Reconciling Sexual Orientation: Creating a Definition of Genocide that Includes Sexual Orientation,weblink Michigan State Journal of International Law, 13, 1–2, or gender identity.JOURNAL, Park, Andrew, 2019, Yogyakarta Plus 10: A Demand for Recognition of SOGIESC,weblink North Carolina Journal of International Law, 44, 2, THESIS, Isaksson, Hanna, The most controversial crime of international concern? An analysis of gender-based persecution under international criminal law, 2020, Master, Örebro University,weblink

Democide

Democide, a term devised by American political scientist Rudolph Rummel, describes "the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command."JOURNAL, Harff, Barbara, 1996, Death by Government by R. J. Rummel, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, MIT Press, 27, 1, 117–119, 10.2307/206491, 206491, BOOK, Harff, Barbara, 2017,weblink The Comparative Analysis of Mass Atrocities and Genocide, Gleditish, N. P., R.J. Rummel: An Assessment of His Many Contributions, 37, SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice, New York, Springer, 111–129, 10.1007/978-3-319-54463-2_12, free, 9783319544632, WEB,weblink Democide Verses Genocide: Which is What?, hawaii.edu, 22 October 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180325222825weblink">weblink 25 March 2018, This definition covers any murder of any number of persons by any government, including government mandated forced labor, concentration camps, extrajudicial summary killings, civil wars, and mass deaths due to government neglect such as government induced famines like Holodomor. Rummel estimates that in the 20th century, democide resulted in over 262 million deaths.BOOK, Rummel, Rudolph, Rudolph Rummel, 2003, 1997,weblink Statistics of Mexican Democide: Estimates, Calculations, and Sources, Statistic of Democide: Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900, hardback, Charlottesville, Virginia; New Brunswick, New Jersey, Center for National Security Law, School of Law, University of Virginia; Transaction Publishers, Rutgers University, 9783825840105, 31 August 2021, Power Kills, Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer agreed with Rummel that democide was a more appropriate term in more cases to describe mass atrocities than genocide due to the more inclusive definition of democide versus genocide.WEB,weblink Rethinking the Holocaust, 2001, February 19, 2023, The New York Times,

Mass Categorical Violence

Others argue that the term "genocide" cannot be used for all instances of mass killings, instead being restricted to a select few cases, with the Holocaust being first and foremost.BOOK,weblink Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022, 978-0-2280-0951-1, Graziosi, Andrea, 15, en, Sysyn, Frank E., Another proposition is by political scientist Scott Straus, who puts forward "Mass Categorical Violence", or MCV, in which case the term "genocide" would be its extreme subcategory, which would include examples such as the Holodomor, Armenian Genocide, and the Holocaust, with the pinnacle of the genocide subcategory being the "intended total liquidation of a specific population", in which the Holocaust would rank as the "peak of the MCV class and of its genocide subcategory", but at the same time would constitute a category of its own due to its "extraordinary absolute features".BOOK,weblink Genocide: The Power and Problems of a Concept, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2022, 978-0-2280-0951-1, Graziosi, Andrea, 16–17, en, Sysyn, Frank E.,

Transgender genocide

In 2013 some international trans activists introduced the term 'transcide' to describe the elevated level of killings of trans people globally. A coalition of NGOs from South America and Europe started the "Stop Trans Genocide" campaign.NEWS, Morgan, Joe, 15 November 2013, 238 trans people, at least, murdered worldwide this past year,weblink 22 June 2022, Gay Star News, 13 May 2021,weblink dead, WEB, 13 November 2013, Transgender Europe: TDOR 2013,weblink 22 June 2022, Transgender Europe, The term "trancide" follows an earlier term, gendercide.BOOK, Brown, Haley Marie, The forgotten murders: Gendercide in the twenty-first century and the destruction of the transgender body, Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide, 184–195, Routledge, 2021, Legal scholars have argued that the definition of genocide should be expanded to cover transgender people, because they are victims of institutional discrimination, persecution, and violence.JOURNAL, Eichert, David, 2021, Expanding the Gender of Genocidal Sexual Violence: Towards the Inclusion of Men, Transgender Women, and People Outside the Binary,weblink UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs, 25, 2, JOURNAL, Purnomo, Anandy Satrio, 2020, The Urgency to Include Gender as Protected Group Under the Crime of Genocide,weblink Padjadjaran Journal of International Law, 4, 1, 79–93, 10.23920/pjil.v4i1.344, 235049254, free, JOURNAL, Kritz, Brian, 2014, The global transgender population and the International Criminal Court,weblink Yale Human Rights and Development Law Journal, 17, Brian Kritz argued that existing law should be extended to protect transgender people. Similar arguments have been made regarding extending the legal definition of "crimes against humanity."JOURNAL, Moore, Charles Barrera, 2017, Embracing Ambiguity and Adopting Propriety: Using Comparative Law to Explore Avenues for Protecting the LGBT Population under Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,weblinkweblink 22 June 2022, live, Minnesota Law Review, 101, 157, 1287, JOURNAL, Hagopian, Andrew Summer, 2016, Persecution and Protection of Sexual and Gender Minorities under Article 7(1)(h) of the Rome Statute,weblink SOAS Law Journal, 3, 55, Aside from legal studies, transgender genocide has been examined by scholars of queer studies, hate studies, and other fields.JOURNAL, Kidd, Jeremy D., Witten, Tarynn M., 2008, Transgender and transsexual identities : the next strange fruit – hate crimes, violence and genocide against the global trans-communities,weblink Journal of Hate Studies, 6, 3, 20.500.12389/21379,

International prosecution

By ad hoc tribunals

File:Nuon Chea - 5 December 2011.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge's chief ideologist, before the Cambodian Genocide TribunalCambodian Genocide TribunalAll signatories to the CPPCG are required to prevent and punish acts of genocide, both in peace and wartime, though some barriers make this enforcement difficult. In particular, some of the signatories—namely, Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, and former Yugoslavia—signed with the proviso that no claim of genocide could be brought against them at the International Court of Justice without their consent.WEB,weblink unhchr.ch, unhchr.ch, 22 October 2017, Despite official protests from other signatories (notably Cyprus and Norway) on the ethics and legal standing of these reservations, the immunity from prosecution they grant has been invoked from time to time, as when the United States refused to allow a charge of genocide brought against it by former Yugoslavia following the 1999 Kosovo War.WEB,weblink See for example the submission by Agent of the United States, Mr. David Andrews to the ICJ Public Sitting, 11 May 1999,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070817233454weblink">weblink 17 August 2007, )It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish for prosecution because a chain of accountability must be established. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily when the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.WEB, Nations, United, The Role of the International Criminal Court in Ending Impunity and Establishing the Rule of Law,weblink 2023-10-10, United Nations, en,

Nuremberg Tribunal (1945–1946)

File:Ww2 170.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|The Nazi leaders at the Palace of Justice, NurembergPalace of Justice, NurembergThe Nazi leaders who were prosecuted shortly after World War II for taking part in the Holocaust, and other mass murders, were charged under existing international laws, such as crimes against humanity, as the crime of "genocide' was not formally defined until the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG). Nevertheless, the recently coined termOxford English Dictionary: 1944 R. Lemkin Axis Rule in Occupied Europe ix. 79 "By 'genocide' we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group." appeared in the indictment of the Nazi leaders, Count 3, which stated that those charged had "conducted deliberate and systematic genocide—namely, the extermination of racial and national groups—against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people, and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others."Oxford English Dictionary "Genocide" citing Sunday Times 21 October 1945

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (1993–2017)

{{see also|Bosnian genocide|List of Bosnian genocide prosecutions}}File:Srebrenica massacre memorial gravestones 2009 1.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|right|The cemetery at the Srebrenica-Potočari Memorial and Cemetery to Genocide Victims ]]The term Bosnian genocide is used to refer either to the killings committed by Serb forces in Srebrenica in 1995,Staff. Bosnian genocide suspect extradited, BBC, 2 April 2002 or to ethnic cleansing that took place elsewhere during the 1992–1995 Bosnian War.WEB,weblink Fifth Section: Case of Jorgic v. Germany: Application no. 74613/01, European Court of Human Rights, 12 July 2007, 5 February 2017, : see § 47., In 2001, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judged that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre was an act of genocide.The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia found in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Trial Chamber I – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2001) ICTY8 (2 August 2001) that genocide had been committed. (see paragraph 560 for name of group in English on whom the genocide was committed{{who|date=March 2014}}{{clarify|date=March 2014}}). It was upheld in Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic – Appeals Chamber – Judgment – IT-98-33 (2004) ICTY 7 (19 April 2004) On 26 February 2007, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), in the Bosnian Genocide Case, upheld the ICTY's earlier finding that the massacre in Srebrenica and Zepa constituted genocide, but found that the Serbian government had not participated in a wider genocide on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war, as the Bosnian government had claimed.NEWS, Max, Arthur, Court: Serbia Failed to Prevent Genocide,weblink 13 March 2021, San Francisco Chronicle, 26 February 2007,weblink 10 August 2007, dead, On 12 July 2007, European Court of Human Rights when dismissing the appeal by Nikola Jorgić against his conviction for genocide by a German court (Jorgic v. Germany) noted that the German courts wider interpretation of genocide has since been rejected by international courts considering similar cases.ECHR Jorgic v. Germany. § 42 citing Prosecutor v. Krstic, IT-98-33-T, judgment of 2 August 2001, §§ 580ECHR Jorgic v. Germany Judgment, 12 July 2007. § 44 citing Prosecutor v. Kupreskic and Others (IT-95-16-T, judgment of 14 January 2000), § 751. On 14 January 2000, the ICTY ruled in the Prosecutor v. Kupreskic and Others case that the killing of 116 Muslims in order to expel the Muslim population from a village amounted to persecution, not genocide.PRESS RELEASE,weblink ICJ press release 2007/8,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20100213065153weblink">weblink 13 February 2010, 26 February 2007, The ECHR also noted that in the 21st century "Amongst scholars, the majority have taken the view that ethnic cleansing, in the way in which it was carried out by the Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to expel Muslims and Croats from their homes, did not constitute genocide. However, there are also a considerable number of scholars who have suggested that these acts did amount to genocide, and the ICTY has found in the Momcilo Krajisnik case that the actus reus of genocide was met in Prijedor "With regard to the charge of genocide, the Chamber found that in spite of evidence of acts perpetrated in the municipalities which constituted the actus reus of genocide".WEB,weblink dead, Case Information Sheet: Momčilo Krajišnik, Communications Service of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia,weblink 25 July 2021, 28 August 2021, About 30 people have been indicted for participating in genocide or complicity in genocide during the early 1990s in Bosnia. To date, after several plea bargains and some convictions that were successfully challenged on appeal two men, Vujadin Popović and Ljubiša Beara, have been found guilty of committing genocide, Zdravko Tolimir has been found guilty of committing genocide and conspiracy to commit genocide, and two others, Radislav Krstić and Drago Nikolić, have been found guilty of aiding and abetting genocide. Three others have been found guilty of participating in genocides in Bosnia by German courts, one of whom Nikola Jorgić lost an appeal against his conviction in the European Court of Human Rights. A further eight men, former members of the Bosnian Serb security forces were found guilty of genocide by the State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (See List of Bosnian genocide prosecutions).Slobodan Milošević, as the former President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia, was the most senior political figure to stand trial at the ICTY. He died on 11 March 2006 during his trial where he was accused of genocide or complicity in genocide in territories within Bosnia and Herzegovina, so no verdict was returned. In 1995, the ICTY issued a warrant for the arrest of Bosnian Serbs Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić on several charges including genocide. On 21 July 2008, Karadžić was arrested in Belgrade, and later tried in The Hague accused of genocide among other crimes.NEWS, Staff, 5 November 2009,weblink Q&A: Karadzic on trial, BBC News, 28 January 2010, On 24 March 2016, Karadžić was found guilty of genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity, 10 of the 11 charges in total, and sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment.NEWS,weblinkweblink 2 January 2022, limited, live, Radovan Karadzic, a Bosnian Serb, Gets 40 Years Over Genocide and War Crimes, The New York Times, 24 March 2016, 24 March 2016, Simons, Marlise, {{cbignore}}WEB,weblink Karadzic sentenced to 40 years for genocide, 24 March 2016, CNN, 26 March 2016, Mladić was arrested on 26 May 2011 in Lazarevo, Serbia,NEWS, Staff, 26 May 2011,weblink Q&A: Ratko Mladic arrested: Bosnia war crimes suspect held, BBC News, 28 May 2011, and was tried in The Hague. The verdict, delivered on 22 November 2017 found Mladić guilty of 10 of the 11 charges, including genocide and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.NEWS, Bowcott, Owen, Borger, Julian, Ratko Mladić convicted of war crimes and genocide at UN tribunal,weblink 22 November 2017, The Guardian, 22 November 2017,

International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (1994–present)

{{See also|Rwandan genocide}}File:Photographs of Genocide Victims - Genocide Memorial Center - Kigali - Rwanda.jpg|thumb|Photographs of Rwandan genocide victims displayed at the Genocide Memorial Center in KigaliKigaliThe International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda during the genocide which occurred there during April 1994, commencing on 6 April. The ICTR was created on 8 November 1994 by the Security Council of the United Nations in order to judge those people responsible for the acts of genocide and other serious violations of the international law performed in the territory of Rwanda, or by Rwandan citizens in nearby states, between 1 January and 31 December 1994.So far, the ICTR has finished nineteen trials and convicted twenty-seven accused persons. On 14 December 2009, two more men were accused and convicted for their crimes. Another twenty-five persons are still on trial. Twenty-one are awaiting trial in detention, two more added on 14 December 2009. Ten are still at large.These figures need revising they are from the ICTR page which says see www.ictr.org The first trial, of Jean-Paul Akayesu, began in 1997. Akayesu was the first person ever to be convicted of the crime of genocide. In October 1998, Akayesu was sentenced to life imprisonment. Jean Kambanda, interim Prime Minister, pleaded guilty.Trials for deeds committed during the Rwandan genocide have also occurred in national courts, including Désiré Munyaneza, who in 2009 became the first man to be arrested and convicted in Canada on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity,NEWS, Austen, Ian, 2009-05-22, Canadian Judge Convicts Rwandan in Genocide, en-US, The New York Times,weblink 2023-02-25, 0362-4331, and Yvonne Ntacyobatabara Basebya, who in 2013 became the first Dutch citizen to be convicted for incitement to genocide.WEB, The Prosecutor v. Yvonne Basebya,weblink 2023-02-25, International Crimes Database,

Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (from 2003)

File:Photos of victims in Tuol Sleng prison (2).JPG|thumb|Rooms of the Tuol Sleng Genocide MuseumTuol Sleng Genocide MuseumFile:Skulls from the killing fields.jpg|right|thumb|Skulls in the Choeung EkChoeung EkThe Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, Kang Kek Iew, Ta Mok and other leaders, organized the mass killing of ideologically suspect groups. The total number of victims is estimated at 1.7 million Cambodians between 1975 and 1979, including deaths from slave labour.Cambodian Genocide Program, Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area StudiesOn 6 June 2003 the Cambodian government and the United Nations reached an agreement to set up the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) which would focus exclusively on crimes committed by the most senior Khmer Rouge officials during the period of Khmer Rouge rule of 1975–1979.WEB,weblink A/RES/57/228B: Khmer Rouge trials, United Nations Assistance to the Khmer Rouge Trials (UNAKRT), 22 May 2003, 11 December 2010, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070703061139weblink">weblink 3 July 2007, The judges were sworn in early July 2006.MAGAZINE, Doyle, Kevin,weblink Putting the Khmer Rouge on Trial, Time (magazine), Time, 26 July 2007,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070930050429weblink">weblink 30 September 2007, NEWS, MacKinnon, Ian,weblink Crisis talks to save Khmer Rouge trial, The Guardian, 7 March 2007, WEB,weblink The Khmer Rouge Trial Task Force,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090317105511weblink">weblink 17 March 2009, Royal Cambodian Government, The genocide charges related to killings of Cambodia's Vietnamese and Cham minorities, tens of thousands of whom are estimated to have been killedWEB,weblink Case 002, The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 2014, 6 February 2017,weblink 23 December 2016, dead, NEWS,weblink Former Khmer Rouge leaders begin genocide trial, BBC News, 30 July 2014, 6 February 2017, The investigating judges were presented with the names of four suspects charged with genocide on 18 July 2007.NEWS, Andrew, Buncombe, Judge quits Cambodia genocide tribunal, The Independent,weblink London, 11 October 2011, live,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20111014122215weblink">weblink 14 October 2011,

• Nuon Chea, a former prime minister, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity on 15 September 2010. His trial started on 27 June 2011WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110410093149weblink">weblink 10 April 2011, live, Case File No.: 002/19-09-2007-ECCC-OCIJ: Closing Order, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 15 September 2010, 6 February 2017, and ended on 7 August 2014, with a life sentence imposed for crimes against humanity.NEWS,weblink McKirdy, Euan, Top Khmer Rouge leaders found guilty of crimes against humanity, sentenced to life in prison, CNN, 9 August 2014, 6 February 2017,
• Khieu Samphan, a former head of state, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity on 15 September 2010. His trial began on 27 June 2011. and also ended on 7 August 2014, with a life sentence imposed for crimes against humanity.
• Ieng Sary, a former foreign minister, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity on 15 September 2010. His trial started on 27 June 2011, and ended with his death on 14 March 2013. He was never convicted.
• Ieng Thirith, a former minister for social affairs and wife of Ieng Sary, was indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity on 15 September 2010. Proceedings against her were suspended pending a health evaluation.WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120916043522weblink">weblink 16 September 2012, live, 002/19-09-2007: Decision on immediate appeal against Trial Chamber's order to release the accused Ieng Thirith, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, 13 December 2011, 16 February 2017, In September 2012, she was released from prison due to advanced Alzheimer's disease; she died on 22 August 2015 at the age of 83 from complications of the disease.NEWS,weblink Ieng Thirith, sister-in-law of late Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, dies in Cambodia, The Straits Times, 22 August 2015,

By the International Criminal Court

Since 2002, the International Criminal Court can exercise its jurisdiction if national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute genocide, thus being a "court of last resort," leaving the primary responsibility to exercise jurisdiction over alleged criminals to individual states. Due to the United States concerns over the ICC, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.WEB,weblink Statement by Carolyn Willson, Minister Counselor for International Legal Affairs, on the Report of the ICC, in the UN General Assembly, 28 February 2006, 3 March 2016,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160303165124weblink">weblink dead,  {{small|(123 KB)}} 23 November 2005

Darfur, Sudan

File:Darfur report - Page 6 Image 1.jpg|thumb|upright|A mother with her sick baby at Abu Shouk IDP camp in North DarfurNorth DarfurThere has been much debate over categorizing the situation in Darfur as genocide.JOURNAL, Jafari, Jamal, Paul Williams (professor), Paul, Williams, 2005,weblink Word Games: The UN and Genocide in Darfur, Jurist, The ongoing conflict in Darfur, Sudan, which started in 2003, was declared a "genocide" by United States Secretary of State Colin Powell on 9 September 2004 in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.NEWS,weblink Powell Declares Killing in Darfur 'Genocide',weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20040911045335weblink">weblink 11 September 2004, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS, 9 September 2004, Since that time however, no other permanent member of the UN Security Council has done so. In fact, in January 2005, an International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur, authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 1564 of 2004, issued a report to the Secretary-General stating that "the Government of Sudan has not pursued a policy of genocide."WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20050203053955weblink">weblink 3 February 2005, live, Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur to the United Nations Secretary-General,  {{small|(1.14 MB)}}, 25 January 2005, at 4 Nevertheless, the Commission cautioned that "The conclusion that no genocidal policy has been pursued and implemented in Darfur by the Government authorities, directly or through the militias under their control, should not be taken in any way as detracting from the gravity of the crimes perpetrated in that region. International offences such as the crimes against humanity and war crimes that have been committed in Darfur may be no less serious and heinous than genocide."In March 2005, the Security Council formally referred the situation in Darfur to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, taking into account the Commission report but without mentioning any specific crimes.WEB,weblink Security Council Resolution 1593 (2005), dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20050529082238weblink">weblink 29 May 2005,  {{small|(24.8 KB)}} Two permanent members of the Security Council, the United States and China, abstained from the vote on the referral resolution.PRESS RELEASE,weblink Security Council Refers Situation in Dafur, Sudan, to Prosecutor of International Criminal Court, UN Press Release SC/8351, 31 March 2005, As of his fourth report to the Security Council, the Prosecutor has found "reasonable grounds to believe that the individuals identified [in the UN Security Council Resolution 1593] have committed crimes against humanity and war crimes," but did not find sufficient evidence to prosecute for genocide.WEB,weblink Fourth Report of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to the Security Council pursuant to UNSC 1593 (2005), dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20070614011746weblink">weblink 14 June 2007,  {{small|(597 KB)}}, Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, 14 December 2006.In April 2007, the Judges of the ICC issued arrest warrants against the former Minister of State for the Interior, Ahmad Harun, and a Militia Janjaweed leader, Ali Kushayb, for crimes against humanity and war crimes.WEB,weblink Statement by Mr. Luis Moreno Ocampo, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to the United Nations Security Council pursuant to UNSCR 1593 (2005),weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20080813022926weblink">weblink 13 August 2008, International Criminal Court, 5 June 2008, On 14 July 2008, prosecutors at the International Criminal Court (ICC), filed ten charges of war crimes against Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir: three counts of genocide, five of crimes against humanity and two of murder. The ICC's prosecutors claimed that al-Bashir "masterminded and implemented a plan to destroy in substantial part" three tribal groups in Darfur because of their ethnicity.On 4 March 2009, the ICC issued a warrant of arrest for Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan as the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I concluded that his position as head of state does not grant him immunity against prosecution before the ICC. The warrant was for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It did not include the crime of genocide because the majority of the Chamber did not find that the prosecutors had provided enough evidence to include such a charge.PRESS RELEASE,weblink ICC issues a warrant of arrest for Omar Al Bashir, President of Sudan (ICC-CPI-20090304-PR394),weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090327105217weblink">weblink 27 March 2009, ICC press release, 4 March 2009, Later the decision was changed by the Appeals Panel and after issuing the second decision, charges against Omar al-Bashir include three counts of genocide.WEB,weblinkweblink 18 October 2017, Situation in Darfur, Sudan: The Prosecutor v. Omar Hassan Ahmad Al Bashir, International Criminal Court, 12 July 2010, 28 August 2021, live,

Examples

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 192-208, KZ Mauthausen, Sowjetische Kriegsgefangene.jpg|thumb|Naked Soviet POWs held by the Nazis in Mauthausen concentration camp. Political scientist Adam Jones wrote: "[T]he murder of at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs is one of the least-known of modern genocides; there is still no full-length book on the subject in English."BOOK, Jones, Adam, 2017, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, 3rd, London, Routledge, 377, 9781138823846, {{', Next to the Jews in Europe,' wrote Alexander Werth', 'the biggest single German crime was undoubtedly the extermination by hunger, exposure and in other ways of ... Russian war prisoners.' Yet the murder of at least 3.3 million Soviet POWs is one of the least-known of modern genocides; there is still no full-length book on the subject in English. It also stands as one of the most intensive genocides of all time: 'a holocaust that devoured millions,' as Catherine MerridaleCatherine MerridaleThe concept of genocide can be applied to historical events. The preamble of the CPPCG states that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity." Revisionist attempts to challenge or affirm claims of genocide are illegal in some countries. Several European countries ban the denial of the Holocaust and the denial of the Armenian genocide, while in Turkey referring to the Armenian genocide, Greek genocide, and Sayfo, and to the period of mass starvation during the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon affecting Maronites, as genocides may be prosecuted under Article 301.NEWS,weblink Pair guilty of 'insulting Turkey', BBC News, 11 October 2007, 4 December 2021, Historian William Rubinstein argues that the origin of 20th-century genocides can be traced back to the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government in parts of Europe following World War I, commenting:{{blockquote|The 'Age of Totalitarianism' included nearly all of the infamous examples of genocide in modern history, headed by the Jewish Holocaust, but also comprising the mass murders and purges of the Communist world, other mass killings carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies, and also the Armenian genocide of 1915. All these slaughters, it is argued here, had a common origin, the collapse of the elite structure and normal modes of government of much of central, eastern and southern Europe as a result of the First World War, without which surely neither Communism nor Fascism would have existed except in the minds of unknown agitators and crackpots.BOOK, Rubinstein, William, 2004,weblink Genocide: A History, London, Pearson Education, 7, 0-582-50601-8, Google Books, }}According to Esther Brito, the way in which states commit genocide has evolved in the 21st century and genocidal campaigns have attempted to circumvent international systems designed to prevent, mitigate, and prosecute genocide by adjusting the duration, intensity, and methodology of the genocide. Brito states that modern genocides often happen on a much longer time scale than traditional ones – taking years or decades – and that instead of traditional methods of beatings and executions less directly fatal tactics are used but with the same effect. Brito described the contemporary plights of the Rohingya and Uyghurs as examples of this newer form of genocide.WEB, Brito, Esther, The Changing Face of Genocide: From Mass Death to Mass Trauma,weblink thediplomat.com, The Diplomat, 23 April 2022, The abuses against West Papuans in Indonesia have also been described as a slow-motion genocide.WEB, Jones, Rochelle, 22 October 2015, West Papuan women left isolated and beset by violence under Indonesian rule,weblink The Guardian, en, WEB, Webb-Gannon, Camellia, Elmslie, Jim, Kareni, Ronny, 27 May 2021, West Papua is on the verge of another bloody crackdown,weblink The Conversation (website), The Conversation, en, University of Wollongong, WEB, Jed Smith, 25 April 2017, The West Papuan Warriors Are A Rugby League Team Trying To Stop A Genocide,weblink Vice.com, en, WEB, NAJ Taylor, 19 October 2011, West Papua: A history of exploitation,weblink Al Jazeera Media Network, Al Jazeera, en, WEB, 9 March 2016, Slow-motion genocide for West Papua ethnic minorities and Christians,weblink Asianews.it, en,

Stages, risk factors, and prevention

Study of the risk factors and prevention of genocide was underway before the 1982 International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide during which multiple papers on the subject were presented.JOURNAL, Nelson, F. Burton, 'Christian Confrontations with the Holocaust': 1934: Pivotal Year of the Church Struggle, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1989, 4, 3, 283–297 [284], 10.1093/hgs/4.3.283, In 1996 Gregory Stanton, the president of Genocide Watch, presented a briefing paper called "The 8 Stages of Genocide" at the United States Department of State.Gregory Stanton. The 8 Stages of Genocide, Genocide Watch, 1996 In it he suggested that genocide develops in eight stages that are "predictable but not inexorable".The FBI has found somewhat similar stages for hate groups.The Stanton paper was presented to the State Department, shortly after the Rwandan Genocide and much of its analysis are based on why that genocide occurred. The preventative measures suggested, given the briefing paper's original target audience, were those that the United States could implement directly or indirectly by using its influence on other governments.{{citation needed|date=January 2023}} In 2012, he added two additional stages, discrimination and persecution.WEB, Stanton, Gregory, The Ten Stages of Genocide,weblink Genocide Watch, 2020,weblink 14 May 2020, dead, {| class="wikitable"! style="width:10%;" | Stage! style="width:45%;" | Characteristics! style="width:45%;" | Preventive measures! 1.Classification| People are divided into "us and them".

Racial integration>transcend... divisions."

! 2.Symbolization| "When combined with hatred, symbols may be forced upon unwilling members of pariah groups..."| "To combat symbolization, hate symbols can be legally forbidden as can hate speech".!3.Discrimination|"Law or cultural power excludes groups from full civil rights: segregation or apartheid laws, denial of voting rights".|"Pass and enforce laws prohibiting discrimination. Full citizenship and voting rights for all groups."! 4.Dehumanization| "One group denies the humanity of the other group. Members of it are equated with animals, vermin, insects, or diseases."| "Local and international leaders should condemn the use of hate speech and make it culturally unacceptable. Leaders who incite genocide should be banned from international travel and have their foreign finances frozen."! 5.Organization| "Genocide is always organized... Special army units or militias are often trained and armed..."| "The U.N. should impose arms embargoes on governments and citizens of countries involved in genocidal massacres, and create commissions to investigate violations"! 6.Polarization| "Hate groups broadcast polarizing propaganda..."| "Prevention may mean security protection for moderate leaders or assistance to human rights groups...Coups d'état by extremists should be opposed by international sanctions."! 7.Preparation| "Victims are identified and separated out because of their ethnic or religious identity..."| "At this stage, a Genocide Emergency must be declared. ..."!8.Persecution|"Expropriation, forced displacement, ghettos, concentration camps".|"Direct assistance to victim groups, targeted sanctions against persecutors, mobilization of humanitarian assistance or intervention, protection of refugees."! 9.Extermination| "It is 'extermination' to the killers because they do not believe their victims to be fully human".| "At this stage, only rapid and overwhelming armed intervention can stop genocide. Real safe areas or refugee escape corridors should be established with heavily armed international protection."! 10.Denial| "The perpetrators... deny that they committed any crimes..."| "The response to denial is punishment by an international tribunal or national courts"Other authors have focused on the structural conditions leading up to genocide and the psychological and social processes that create an evolution toward genocide. Ervin Staub showed that economic deterioration and political confusion and disorganization were starting points of increasing discrimination and violence in many instances of genocides and mass killing. They lead to scapegoating a group and ideologies that identified that group as an enemy. A history of devaluation of the group that becomes the victim, past violence against the group that becomes the perpetrator leading to psychological wounds, authoritarian cultures and political systems, and the passivity of internal and external witnesses (bystanders) all contribute to the probability that the violence develops into genocide.BOOK, Staub, Ervin, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 978-0-521-42214-7,weblink 1992, Google Books, Intense conflict between groups that is unresolved, becomes intractable and violent can also lead to genocide.Staub, Ervin (2011). Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict, and Terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press.{{page needed|date=April 2012}} In 2006, Dirk Moses criticised genocide studies due to its "rather poor record of ending genocide".WEB, 18 October 2017,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20171018082403weblink">weblink 22 December 2006, Dirk, Moses, Social Science Research Council, Why the Discipline of "Genocide Studies" Has Trouble Explaining How Genocides End?,weblink

See also

{{div col|colwidth=14em}}

• Outline of Genocide studies
• Allport's Scale
• Countervalue
• Cultural genocide
• Death squad
• Democide
• Ethnocide
• Gendercide
• Genocide education
• Genocide of indigenous peoples
• Mass atrocity crimes
• Omnicide
• Policide
• Political cleansing of population
• Religious cleansing
• Utilitarian genocide

{{div col end}}

Research

{{div col|colwidth=28em}}

• Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights
• International Association of Genocide Scholars

{{div col end}}

Notes

{{Notelist}}

References

{{reflist}}

Bibliography

• BOOK, Gerlach, Christian, Christian Gerlach, Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World, Cambridge University Press, 978-1-139-49351-2, 6,weblink 2010, Google Books,
• JOURNAL, Hollander, Paul, Paul Hollander, Perspectives on Norman Naimark's Stalin's Genocides, Journal of Cold War Studies, 1 July 2012, 14, 3, 149–189, 10.1162/JCWS_a_00250, 57560838,
• JOURNAL, Huttenbach, Henry R., Lemkin Redux: in quest of a word, Journal of Genocide Research, 2005, 7, 4, 443–445, 10.1080/14623520500349837, 216141999,
• BOOK, Lang, Berel, Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide, 2005, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 978-0-230-55483-2, 5–17,weblink en, The Evil in Genocide, 10.1057/9780230554832_1,
• BOOK, Lemkin, Raphael, Axis rule in occupied Europe: laws of occupation, analysis of government, proposals for redress, Lawbook Exchange, Clark, New Jersey, USA, 2008, 978-1-58477-901-8,
• WEB, Office of the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, 2014,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160130033138weblink">weblink 30 January 2016, live, Legal definition of genocide, United Nations, 22 February 2017,
• BOOK, Tomaszewski, Irene, Irene Tomaszewski, Inside a Gestapo Prison: The Letters of Krystyna Wituska, 1942–1944, 2006, Wayne State University Press, 978-0-8143-3887-2,weblink en, xiii, In a letter dated October 3, 1943, Krystyna Wituska described the German atrocities in Poland … Wituska used the German word , in Polish . Both words had been in use long before the war, and, while not endowed with the full meaning Lemkin was to give it, the meaning went beyond "mass murder." The root word, , can mean "people" but also "nation." In one angry passage, Wituska specifically wrote about Poles and Jews; it is clear she meant not just the murder of many people but the murder of a people.,
• JOURNAL, Towner, Emil B., 2011, Quantifying Genocide: What Are We Really Counting (On)?,weblink JAC, 31, 3/4, 625–638, 41709663, 2162-5190,
• WEB, United Nations, United Nations, 2019, Genocide Background,weblink 20 April 2023, United Nations Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect,weblink 17 April 2023,
• WEB, Voice of America, 15 March 2016,weblink What Is Genocide?, Voice of America, 22 October 2017,weblink 11 August 2017,

Further reading

{{See also|Bibliography of Genocide studies}}{{div col|colwidth=20em}}

Articles

• (in Spanish) Aizenstatd, Najman Alexander. "Origen y Evolución del Concepto de Genocidio". Vol. 25 Revista de Derecho de la Universidad Francisco Marroquín 11 (2007). {{ISSN|1562-2576}} weblink
• (in Spanish) Marco, Jorge. "Genocidio y Genocide Studies: Definiciones y debates", en: Aróstegui, Julio, Marco, Jorge y Gómez Bravo, Gutmaro (coord.): "De Genocidios, Holocaustos, Exterminios...", Hispania Nova, 10 (2012). Véase weblink
• Krain, M. (1997). "State-Sponsored Mass Murder: A Study of the Onset and Severity of Genocides and Politicides." Journal of Conflict Resolution 41(3): 331–360.

Books

• BOOK, Andreopoulos, George J., 1994, Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, University of Pennsylvania Press, 978-0-8122-3249-3,
• BOOK, Bloxham, Donald, Moses, A. Dirk, The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, Interdisciplinary Contributions about Past & Present Genocides, Oxford University Press, Second, 2013, 978-0-19-967791-7,
• BOOK, Chalk, Frank, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, Kurt, Jonassohn, 1990, Yale University Press, 978-0-300-04446-1,weblink
• BOOK, Charny, Israel W., Encyclopedia of Genocide, Israel Charny, 1999, ABC-Clio Inc, 978-0-87436-928-1,weblink
• BOOK, Conversi, Daniele, 2005, Genocide, ethnic cleansing, and nationalism, Delanty, Gerard, Kumar, Krishan, Handbook of Nations and Nationalism, 1, London, SAGE Publications, 978-1-4129-0101-7, 319–333,
• BOOK, Gellately, Robert, Robert Gellately, Kiernan, Ben, Ben Kiernan, July 2003, The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective,weblink Cambridge University Press, 978-0-521-52750-7, registration,
• BOOK, Harff, Barbara, Early Warning of Communal Conflict and Genocide: Linking Empirical Research to International Responses, August 2003, Westview Press, 978-0-8133-9840-2,
• BOOK, Horowitz, Irving, Taking Lives: Genocide and State Power, Irving Louis Horowitz, 2001, Transaction Publishers, 978-0-7658-0094-7, 5th,
• BOOK, Horvitz, Leslie Alan, Encyclopedia of War Crimes & Genocide, 2, Christopher, Catherwood, 978-0-8160-8083-0, New York, Facts on File, 2011, Revised,weblink
• BOOK, Jonassohn, Kurt, Genocide and Gross Human Rights Violations, Karin, Björnson, 1998, Transaction Publishers, 978-1-56000-314-4,
• BOOK, Jones, Adam, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction, Adam Jones (Canadian scholar), 2010, Routledge, 978-0-415-48619-4,
• BOOK, Kiernan, Ben, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur, Ben Kiernan, 2007, Yale University Press, 978-0-300-10098-3, registration,weblink
• BOOK, Laban, Alexander, Genocide: An Anthropological Reader, 2002, Blackwell Publishing, 978-0-631-22355-9,
• BOOK, Levene, Mark, 2005, Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, New York, Palgrave Macmillan,
• Lewy, Guenter (2012). Essays on Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention. University of Utah Press. {{ISBN|978-1-60781-168-8}}.
• JOURNAL, Rosenfeld, Gavriel D., Gavriel David Rosenfeld, 1999, The Politics of Uniqueness: Reflections on the Recent Polemical Turn in Holocaust and Genocide Scholarship, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 13, 1, 28–61,weblink 10.1093/hgs/13.1.28,
• BOOK, Rotberg, Robert I., From Massacres to Genocide: The Media, Public Policy, and Humanitarian Crises, Thomas G., Weiss, 1996, Brookings Institution Press, 978-0-8157-7590-4,
• BOOK, Rosenbaum, Alan S., Is the Holocaust unique?: perspectives on comparative genocide., Routledge, 2018,
• BOOK, Rummel, R.J., Death by Government: Genocide and Mass Murder in the Twentieth Century, R.J. Rummel, 1994, Transaction Publishers, 978-1-56000-927-6,weblink
• BOOK, Sagall, Sabby, Final Solutions: Human Nature, Capitalism and Genocide, Pluto Press, 2013, 309, 978-0-7453-2653-5,
• BOOK, Sands, Philippe, East West Street: on the origins of "Genocide" and "Crimes Against Humanity", Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2016, 978-0-385-35071-6,
• BOOK, Schabas, William A., William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes, Cambridge University Press, 2009, 978-0-521-71900-1, 2,
• BOOK, Schabas, William A., Cambridge Companion to International Criminal Law, William Schabas, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 978-1-107-05233-8,
• Schmid, A. P. (1991). Repression, State Terrorism, and Genocide: Conceptual Clarifications. State Organized Terror: The Case of Violent Internal Repression. P. T. Bushnell. Boulder, Colorado, USA: Westview Press. 312 p.{{ISBN?}}
• BOOK, Shaw, Martin, What is Genocide?, 2007, Polity Press, Cambridge, 978-0-7456-3182-0,
• Overcoming Evil: Genocide, violent conflict and terrorism. New York: Oxford University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-19-538204-4}}
• BOOK, Totten, Samuel, Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts, William S., Parsons, Israel W. Charny, Israel W., Charny, 2008, Routledge, 978-0-415-99085-1, 3rd,
• BOOK, Valentino, Benjamin A., (Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the 20th Century), 2004, Cornell University Press, 978-0-8014-3965-0,
• BOOK, Weitz, Eric D., A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation,weblink registration, Princeton University Press, 2003, 360, 978-0-691-12271-7,

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External links

{{Wiktionary}}{{Commons category|Genocide}}

Documents

• WEB,weblink Voices of the Holocaust, British Library,
• WEB,weblink Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) – full text, Genocide Convention,
• WEB,weblink Whitaker Report,
• WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20211119061311weblink">weblink 19 November 2021, live, 8 Stages of Genocide, Gregory H., Stanton, Gregory H. Stanton,

Research institutes, advocacy groups, and other organizations

• WEB,weblink Institute for the Study of Genocide,
• WEB,weblink International Association of Genocide Scholars,
• WEB,weblink International Network of Genocide Scholars (INoGS),
• WEB,weblink United to End Genocide, merger of Save Darfur Coalition and the Genocide Intervention Network, 3 March 2017, 7 May 2021,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20210507161218weblink">weblink dead,
• WEB,weblink Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
• WEB,weblink Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation,
• WEB,weblink Global Forum Against the Crime of Genocide, 12-13 December 2022, Yerevan, Armenia,
• WEB,weblink Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 12 December 2023, University of Minnesota,
• WEB,weblink Genocide Studies Program, Yale University,
• WEB,weblink Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies, Concordia University,
• WEB,weblink Minorities at Risk Project, University of Maryland,
• WEB,weblink Budapest Centre for Mass Atrocities Prevention,

{{genocide topics}}{{international Criminal Law}}{{religious persecution}}{{Population}}{{authority control}}