Genocide is without doubt one the most heinous crimes humanity has ever known. In the 20th century alone, over 200 million people lost their lives as a result. The crime is distinguished from other international crimes of violence against humans, such as War Crimes, or Crimes Against Humanity by the intention of the perpetrators to destroy a particular group.
The term was coined by the Polish-Jewish jurist Raphael Lemkin, a survivor of the Holocaust, who described genocide as “the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group”.
In the wake of the Holocaust, Lemkin successfully campaigned for the universal acceptance of international laws defining and forbidding genocide. In 1946, the first session of the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that “affirmed” that genocide was a crime under international law, but did not provide a legal definition of the crime. In 1948, the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which legally defined the crime of genocide for the first time.
The crime of genocide is currently defined in the Convention 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 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”
However, while the International Criminal Court has adopted this as the working definition, the debate over the scope and meaning of the terms continues. In particular the phrase, “intent to destroy, in whole or in part”, has been subject to much discussion by scholars of international humanitarian law. Controversy abounds as to when the targeted part is substantial enough to meet this requirement.
For further information, please see the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide: http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html
