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Genocide is violence that targets individuals because of their membership of a group and aims at the destruction of a people. Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term, defined genocide as "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" by means such as "the disintegration of its political and social institutions, of its culture, linguicide, national feelings, religion, and its economic existence". During the struggle to ratify the Genocide Convention, powerful countries restricted Lemkin's definition to exclude their own actions from being classified as genocide, ultimately limiting it to any of five "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group". While there are many scholarly definitions of genocide, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Genocide Convention.
Genocide has occurred throughout human history, even during prehistoric times, but it is particularly likely in situations of imperial expansion and power consolidation. It is associated with and settler colonies, as well as with both and repressive governments in the twentieth century. The colloquial understanding of genocide is heavily influenced by the Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims being targeted for their ethnic identity rather than for any political reason.
Genocide is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil and is often referred to as the "crime of crimes"; consequently, events are often denounced as genocide.
According to Lemkin, the central definition of genocide was "the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group" in which its members were not targeted as individuals, but rather as members of the group. The objectives of genocide "would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups". These were not separate crimes but different aspects of the same genocidal process. Lemkin's definition of nation was sufficiently broad to apply to nearly any type of human collectivity, even one based on a trivial characteristic. He saw genocide as an inherently colonial process, and in his later writings analyzed what he described as the colonial genocides occurring within European overseas territories as well as the Soviet and Nazi empires. Furthermore, his definition of genocidal acts, which was to replace the national pattern of the victim with that of the perpetrator, was much broader than the five types enumerated in the Genocide Convention. Lemkin considered genocide to have occurred since the beginning of human history and dated the efforts to criminalize it to the Spanish critics of colonial excesses Francisco de Vitoria and Bartolomé de Las Casas. The 1946 judgement against Arthur Greiser issued by a Polish court was the first legal verdict that mentioned the term, using Lemkin's original definition.
In order to criminalize peacetime genocide, Lemkin brought his proposal to criminalize genocide to the newly established United Nations in 1946. Opposition to the convention was greater than Lemkin expected due to states' concerns that it would lead their own policies—including treatment of indigenous peoples, European colonialism, racial segregation in the United States, and Soviet nationalities policy—to be labeled genocide. Before the convention was passed, powerful countries (both Western powers and the Soviet Union) secured changes in an attempt to make the convention unenforceable and applicable to their Cold War' actions but not their own. Few formerly colonized countries were represented and "most states had no interest in empowering their victims– past, present, and future".
The result severely diluted Lemkin's original concept; he privately considered it a failure. Lemkin's anti-colonial conception of genocide was transformed into one that favored colonial powers. Among the violence freed from the stigma of genocide was the destruction of political groups, which the Soviet Union is particularly blamed for blocking. Although Lemkin credited women's NGOs with securing the passage of the convention, the gendered violence of forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce was left out. Additionally omitted was ethnic cleansing—which had been carried out by the Soviet Union and its allies, condoned by the Western powers, against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe.
]] Two years after passing a resolution affirming the criminalization of genocide, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Genocide Convention on 9 December 1948. It came into effect on 12 January 1951 after 20 countries ratified it without reservations. The convention defines genocide as:
A dolus specialis "intent to destroy" is the mens rea requirement of genocide. The issue of what it means to destroy a group "as such" and how to prove the required intent has been difficult for courts to resolve. The legal system has also struggled with how much of a group can be targeted before triggering the Genocide Convention. The two main approaches to intent are the purposive approach, where the perpetrator expressly wants to destroy the group, and the knowledge-based approach, where the perpetrator understands that destruction of the protected group will result from his actions. Intent is the most difficult aspect for prosecutors to prove; the perpetrators often claim that they merely sought the removal of the group from a given territory, instead of destruction as such, or that the genocidal actions were collateral damage of military activity.
Attempted genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, incitement to genocide, and complicity in genocide are criminalized. The convention does not allow the retroactive prosecution of events that took place prior to 1951. Signatories are also required to prevent genocide and prosecute its perpetrators. Many countries have incorporated genocide into their municipal law, varying to a lesser or greater extent from the convention. The convention's definition of genocide was adopted verbatim by the ad hoc international criminal tribunals and by the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The crime of genocide also exists in customary international law and is therefore prohibited for non-signatories.
International courts have found a small number of events as constituting genocide, such as the Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica genocide.
On 25 January 2010, Iraqi official Ali Hassan al-Majid (1st cousin of Saddam Hussein) was executed by hanging after being convicted of committing genocide by using chemical weapons against Iraq's Kurdish population during the 1997–1998 Al-Anfal campaign. "The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds". A Middle East Watch Report: Human Rights Watch 1993." Chemical Ali in his own words", Human Rights Watch. Retrieved 24 June 2007 The first head of state to be convicted of genocide was Khieu Samphan in 2018 for the Cambodian genocide.
Although it is widely recognized that punishment of the perpetrators cannot be of an order with their crimes, the trials often serve other purposes such as attempting to shape public perception of the past.
Cultural genocide or ethnocide—actions targeted at the reproduction of a group's language, culture, or way of life—was part of Raphael Lemkin's original concept, and its proponents in the 1940s argued that it, along with physical genocide, were two mechanisms aiming at the same goal: destruction of the targeted group. Because cultural genocide clearly applied to some colonial and assimilationist policies, several states with overseas colonies threatened to refuse to ratify the convention unless it was excluded. Most genocide scholars believe that both cultural genocide and structural violence should be included in the definition of genocide, if committed with intent to destroy the targeted group. Although included in Lemkin's original concept and by some scholars, political groups were also excluded from the Genocide Convention. The result of this exclusion was that perpetrators of genocide could redefine their targets as being a political or military enemy, thus excluding them from consideration.
The overlap of law and history leads to contrasting perspectives on genocide. The law focuses on serious acts, limiting genocide to physical and biological aspects, necessitating intent to destroy a group, and protecting only defined classes of groups. Historians, however, explore the broader complexities of genocides, including long-term processes and various motives, without strict legal definitions.
The word genocide inherently carries a value judgement as it is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil. In the past, violence that could be labeled genocide was sometimes celebrated—although it always had its critics. The idea that genocide sits on top of a hierarchy of atrocity crimes—that it is worse than crimes against humanity or war crimes—is controversial among scholars and it suggests that the protection of groups is more important than of individuals. Historian A. Dirk Moses argues that the prioritization of genocide causes other atrocities to not be considered in study and response.
Most genocides were not planned long in advance, but emerged through a process of gradual radicalization, often escalating to genocide following resistance by those targeted. A study found six justificatory mechanisms: dehumanization, guilt attribution, threat construction, destruction of nonviolence alternatives, virtuetalk of violence and Time preference. Genocide perpetrators often fear—usually irrationally—that if they do not commit atrocities, they will suffer a similar fate as they inflict on their victims. Despite perpetrators' utilitarian goals, ideological factors are necessary to explain why genocide seems to be a desirable solution to the identified security problem. Noncombatants are harmed because of the collective guilt ascribed to an entire people—defined according to race but targeted because of its supposed security threat. Other motives for genocide have included theft, land grabbing, and revenge.
War is often described as the single most important enabler of genocide providing the weaponry, ideological justification, polarization between allies and enemies, and cover for carrying out extreme violence. A large proportion of genocides occurred under the course of imperial expansion and power consolidation. Although genocide is typically organized around pre-existing identity boundaries, it has the outcome of strengthening them. Although many scholars have emphasized the role of ideology in genocide, there is little agreement in how ideology contributes to violent outcomes; others have cited rational explanations for atrocities.
How ordinary people can become involved in extraordinary violence under circumstances of acute conflict is poorly understood. The foot soldiers of genocide (as opposed to its organizers) are not demographically or psychologically aberrant.; ; ; People who commit crimes during genocide are rarely true believers in the ideology behind genocide, although they are affected by it to some extent alongside other factors such as obedience, diffusion of responsibility, and conformity. Other evidence suggests that ideological propaganda is not effective in inducing people to commit genocide and that for some perpetrators, the dehumanization of victims, and adoption of nationalist or other ideologies that justify the violence occurs after they begin to perpetrate atrocities often coinciding with escalation. Although genocide perpetrators have often been assumed to be male, the role of women in perpetrating genocide—although they were historically excluded from leadership—has also been explored. People's behavior changes under the course of events, and someone might choose to kill one genocide victim while saving another. Anthropologist Richard Rechtman writes that in circumstances where atrocities such as genocides are perpetrated, many people refuse to become perpetrators.
Forced displacement is a common feature of many genocides, with the victims often transported to another location where their destruction is easier for the perpetrators. In some cases, victims are transported to sites where they are killed or deprived of the necessities of life. People are often killed by the displacement itself, as was the case for many Armenian genocide victims. Cultural destruction, such as that practised at Canadian boarding schools for indigenous children, is often dependent on controlling the victims at a specific location. Destruction of cultural objects, such as religious buildings, is common even when the primary method of genocide is not cultural. Cultural genocide, such as residential schools, is particularly common during settler-colonial consolidation.
Men, particularly young adults, are disproportionately targeted for killing before other victims in order to stem resistance. Although diverse forms of sexual violence—ranging from rape, forced pregnancy, forced marriage, sexual slavery, mutilation, forced sterilization—can affect either males or females, women are more likely to face it. The combination of killing of men and sexual violence against women is often intended to disrupt reproduction of the targeted group.
Almost all genocides are brought to an end either by the military defeat of the perpetrators or the accomplishment of their aims.
Responsibility to protect is a doctrine that emerged around 2000, in the aftermath of several genocides around the world, that seeks to balance state sovereignty with the need for international intervention to prevent genocide. However, disagreements in the United Nations Security Council and lack of political will have hampered the implementation of this doctrine. Although military intervention to halt genocide has been credited with reducing violence in some cases, it remains deeply controversial and is usually illegal. Researcher Gregory H. Stanton found that calling crimes genocide rather than something else, such as ethnic cleansing, increased the chance of effective intervention. Perhaps for this reason, states are often reluctant to recognize crimes as genocide while they are taking place.
Although all empires rely on violence, often extreme violence, to establish their own existence,: "Violence was inherent to imperial formation; at times it could be unleashed as extreme and genocidal violence." they may also seek to preserve and rule the conquered rather than eradicate them.: "Imperial rule could display its potential to limit violence." Such "non-genocides" might include policies of integration (via enslavement or otherwise), or of exile. Although the desire to exploit populations could disincentivise extermination, imperial rule could lead to genocide if resistance emerged.: "As the imperial powers aimed to avoid any appearance of weakness and to ensure that rebellion did not set a precedent that could shake the empire to its foundations, responses to resistance were often extreme. Once challenged, the empire and the settlers on the ground tended to respond with extreme cruelty, resorting repeatedly to exemplary, excessive, and corrupting wrathful violence." Ancient and medieval genocides were often committed by empires. Unlike traditional empires, settler colonialism—particularly the settlement of Europeans outside of Europe—is characterized by militarized populations of settlers in remote areas beyond effective state control. Rather than labor or economic surplus, settlers want to acquire land from indigenous people making genocide more likely than with classical colonialism. While the lack of law enforcement on the frontier ensured impunity for settler violence, the advance of state authority enabled settlers to consolidate their gains using the legal system.
Genocide was committed on a large scale during both . The prototypical genocide, the Holocaust, involved such large-scale logistics that it reinforced the impression that genocide was the result of civilization drifting off course and required both the "weapons and infrastructure of the modern state and the radical ambitions of the modern man". Scientific racism and nationalism were common ideological drivers of many twentieth century genocides. After the horrors of World War II, the United Nations attempted to proscribe genocide via the Genocide Convention. Despite the promise of "never again" and the international effort to outlaw genocide, the practice has continued to occur repeatedly into the twenty-first century.
Much of the qualitative research on genocide has focused on the testimonies of victims, survivors, and other eyewitnesses. Studies of genocide survivors have examined rates of depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder, and post-traumatic growth. While some have found negative results, others find no association with genocide survival. There are no consistent findings that children of genocide survivors have worse health than comparable individuals. Most societies are able to recover demographically from genocide, but this is dependent on their position early in the demographic transition.
Because genocide is often perceived as the "crime of crimes", it grabs attention more effectively than other violations of international law. Consequently, victims of atrocities often label their suffering genocide as an attempt to gain attention to their plight and attract foreign intervention. Although remembering genocide is often perceived as a way to develop tolerance and respect for human rights, the charge of genocide often leads to increased cohesion among the targeted people—in some cases, it has been incorporated into national identity—and stokes enmity towards the group blamed for the crime, reducing the chance of reconciliation and increasing the risk of future occurrence of genocide. Some genocides are commemorated in memorials or museums.
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