Genocide and Its Features
Senior 1 · History and Citizenship
Genocide and Its Features
Lesson 3 of 5
24 min
Killing, torture or forcing people from their homes are grave crimes in any situation. International law gives them different names depending on why and when they are committed. Figure 3 shows how a court decides which name fits.
| Point of comparison | Genocide | Crimes against humanity | War crimes | Ethnic cleansing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Key element | intent to destroy a protected group, in whole or in part, as such | a widespread or systematic attack on civilians | a serious breach of the laws of war | forcing a group out of an area to make it "ethnically pure" |
| Who is protected | national, ethnical, racial or religious groups | any civilian population, including political groups | civilians, prisoners, the wounded, and others not fighting | the group that is expelled |
| When | in war or in peace | in war or in peace | only during an armed conflict | usually during conflict |
| Legal basis | Genocide Convention (1948); Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998), article 6 | first charged at Nuremberg (1945); Rome Statute, article 7 | Geneva Conventions (1949); Rome Statute, article 8 | not a separate crime in any treaty; judged as one of the other three |
| Examples | the Herero and Nama genocide, the Holocaust, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi | apartheid, which the Rome Statute lists as a crime against humanity | using children under 15 as soldiers (ICC verdict against Thomas Lubanga, 2012) | the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, where the term became widely used |
Worked example: using the flowchart
Classify each imaginary case. Work down Figure 3 and stop at the first "yes", then check whether a later test also applies.
Definition
Crime against humanity: a grave act such as murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, torture, persecution or apartheid, committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population (Rome Statute, article 7).
Definition
War crime: a serious violation of the laws of war during an armed conflict, such as attacking civilians, killing prisoners or using children under 15 as soldiers (Geneva Conventions of 1949; Rome Statute, article 8).
Definition
Ethnic cleansing: the forced removal of a group from an area to make it inhabited by one group only. A United Nations Commission of Experts described it in 1993 as "rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area".
Definition
Atrocity crimes: the umbrella term used by the United Nations for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, together with ethnic cleansing.
Definition
International Criminal Court (ICC): a permanent court in The Hague, set up by the Rome Statute of 1998, which tries individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes when national courts cannot or will not.
Important
Some people say "genocide" whenever they hear of mass killing. Why is it important to use the right legal name? Is it ever harmful to call a crime "genocide" when it is not, or to refuse the word when it is? Give reasons.
Tip
Three quick questions: Why? (to destroy a group, so genocide) · Against whom, how widely? (civilians on a large scale, so a crime against humanity) · When? (in war, breaking its rules, so a war crime).
United Nations: "How to Prevent Genocide: a conversation with war crimes expert, Theodor Meron". Judge Meron, who survived the Holocaust as a child in Nazi-occupied Poland and later served as a judge of the UN international criminal tribunals, explains why the lessons of the past matter. Listen for the reasons he gives for trying these crimes in court.
Practice
Sources and credits
This lesson adapts CC BY-SA material and is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
