Genocide

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• ◦ Bosnian genocide (1995) Genocides by
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Genocide is intentional action to destroy a people (usually defined as
an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group) in whole or in part. The
hybrid word "genocide" is a combination of the Greek word γένος
("race, people") and the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing").[1] The
term genocide was coined by Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis
Rule in Occupied Europe;[2][3]
The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in
1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in
whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group", including
the systematic harm or killing of its members, deliberately imposing
living conditions that seek to "bring about its physical destruction in
whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out
of the group to another group.[4][5]
The term has been applied to the Holocaust, and many other mass
killings including the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas,
the Armenian Genocide, the Greek genocide, the Assyrian genocide,
the Serbian genocide, the Holodomor, the Indonesian genocide,[6] the
Guatemalan genocide, the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, the
Cambodian genocide, and after 1980 the Bosnian genocide, the Anfal
genocide, the Darfur genocide, and the Rwandan genocide. Others
are listed in Genocides in history and List of genocides by death toll.
The Political Instability Task Force estimated that, between 1956 and
2016, a total of forty-three genocides took place, causing the death of
about 50 million people[7]. The UNHCR estimated that a further 50
million had been displaced by such episodes of violence up to 2008.[8]

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External links Origin of the term[edit]
Before 1944, various terms, including "massacre", "crimes against
humanity", and "extermination"[9] were used to describe intentional,
systematic killings. In 1941, Winston Churchill, when describing the
German invasion of the Soviet Union, spoke of "a crime without a
name".[10]
In 1944, Raphael Lemkin created the term genocide in his book Axis
Rule in Occupied Europe. The book describes the implementation of
Nazi policies in occupied Europe, and cites earlier mass killings.[11]
The term described the systematic destruction of a nation or
people,[12] and the word was quickly adopted by many in the
international community. The word genocide is the combination of the
Greek prefix geno- (γένος, meaning 'race' or 'people') and caedere
(the Latin word for "to kill").[13] The word genocide was used in
indictments at the Nuremberg trials, held from 1945, but solely as a
descriptive term, not yet as a formal legal term.[14]
According to Lemkin, genocide was "a coordinated strategy to
destroy a group of people, a process that could be accomplished
through total annihilation as well as strategies that eliminate key
elements of the group's basic existence, including language, culture,
and economic infrastructure". Lemkin defined genocide as follows:
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 the 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.[13]
The preamble to the 1948 Genocide Convention (CPPCG) notes that
instances of genocide have taken place throughout history.[15] But 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.[16]
Lemkin's lifelong interest in the mass murder of populations in the
20th century was initially in response to the killing of Armenians in
1915[17][2][18] and later to the mass murders in Nazi-controlled Europe.[3]
He referred to the Albigensian Crusade as "one of the most
conclusive cases of genocide in religious history".[19] He dedicated his
life to mobilizing the international community, to work together to
prevent the occurrence of such events.[20] In a 1949 interview, Lemkin
said "I became interested in genocide because it happened so many
times. It happened to the Armenians, then after the Armenians, Hitler
took action."[21]
As a crime[edit]
International law[edit]
Members of the Sonderkommando burn corpses of Jews in pits at Auschwitz II-
Birkenau, an extermination camp
After the Holocaust, which had been perpetrated by Nazi Germany
and its allies prior to and 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" that 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.[22]
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.
— UN Resolution 96(1), 11 December 1946
The CPPCG was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9
December 1948[4] 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:
... any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily harm, or harm to mental
health, 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.
The first draft of the Convention included political killings, but these
provisions were removed in a political and diplomatic compromise
following objections from some countries, including the USSR, a
permanent security council member.[23][24] The USSR argued that the
Convention's definition should follow the etymology of the term,[24] and
may have feared greater international scrutiny of its own mass
killings.[23][25] Other nations feared that including political groups in the
definition would invite international intervention in domestic politics.[24]
However leading genocide scholar William Schabas states: "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."[26]
The convention's purpose and scope was later described by the
United Nations Security Council as follows:
The Convention was manifestly adopted for humanitarian and
civilizing purposes. Its objectives are to safeguard the very existence
of certain human groups and to affirm and emphasize the most
elementary principles of humanity and morality. In view of the rights
involved, the legal obligations to refrain from genocide are recognized
as erga omnes.
When the Convention was drafted, it was already envisaged that it
would apply not only to then existing forms of genocide, but also "to
any method that might be evolved in the future with a view to
destroying the physical existence of a group".[27] As emphasized in the
preamble to the Convention, genocide has marred all periods of
history, and it is this very tragic recognition that gives the concept its
historical evolutionary nature.
The Convention must be interpreted in good faith, in accordance with
the ordinary meaning of its terms, in their context, and in the light of
its object and purpose. Moreover, the text of the Convention should
be interpreted in such a way that a reason and a meaning can be
attributed to every word. No word or provision may be disregarded or
treated as superfluous, unless this is absolutely necessary to give
effect to the terms read as a whole.[28]
Genocide is a crime under international law regardless of "whether
committed in time of peace or in time of war" (art. I). Thus,
irrespective of the context in which it occurs (for example, peacetime,
internal strife, international armed conflict or whatever the general
overall situation) genocide is a punishable international crime.
— UN Commission of Experts that examined violations of
international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former
Yugoslavia.[29]