Genocide
Senior 6 · General and Religious Studies
Genocide
Lesson 1 of 5
25 min
Read these three imagined cases. In each one, many people die.
All three are grave crimes. Only one of them is genocide in international law. By the end of this lesson you should be able to say which, and to prove it with the words of the law. The answer does not depend on how many people died. It depends on why they were killed and what the killers intended.
Important
Source A: Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948)
"In the present Convention, genocide means 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."
The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on 9 December 1948, in Paris. It entered into force on 12 January 1951. Rwanda acceded to it on 16 April 1975, and by 2026 it had 154 states parties (UN Treaty Collection).
Definition
Genocide: any of the five acts listed in Article II of the Genocide Convention, committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. The word was formed in 1944 by the lawyer Raphael Lemkin from the Greek genos (race, people) and the Latin -cide (killing).
Protected group: one of the four kinds of group named in Article II: national, ethnical, racial or religious. Example: in its 1998 judgment against Jean-Paul Akayesu, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) found that the Tutsi were a group protected by the Convention.
Special intent (Latin dolus specialis): the purpose of destroying the group itself. It is more than intending to kill individuals; the killer must aim at the group through its members.
"As such": the victims are chosen because they belong to the group, not for something they did as individuals.
Genocide ideology (Rwandan law): a public act, in speech, writing, images or any other way, that shows an ideology supporting or calling for the destruction, in whole or in part, of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group (Law N° 59 of 2018, Article 4).
Lawyers break a crime into the parts that a court must prove. Article II has three parts, shown in Figure 1. If any one is missing, the crime is not genocide, though it may still be another serious crime.
The five acts in Article II are wider than killing. Each describes a way in which a group can be destroyed:
| Act in Article II | What it covers | Why it destroys a group |
|---|---|---|
| (a) Killing members of the group | Murder of people because they belong to the group | The group loses its members directly |
| (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm | Torture, mutilation, sexual violence, terror that leaves lasting trauma | Survivors are broken in body or mind |
| (c) Inflicting conditions of life calculated to destroy | Taking away food, water, shelter or medical care; forced marches; expulsion into deserts | The group dies slowly, without a single killing order |
| (d) Measures to prevent births | Forced sterilisation, separation of men and women, forbidding marriage | The group cannot renew itself |
| (e) Forcibly transferring children | Taking children away to be raised as members of another group | The group loses its future generation and identity |
Two features stand out. First, there is no minimum number of victims: the words "in whole or in part" mean that intending to destroy a substantial part of a group, such as its members in one region, can be enough. Second, genocide can be committed in peace or in war; Article I of the Convention says so plainly.
The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (1998) lists four core international crimes: genocide (Article 6), crimes against humanity (Article 7), war crimes (Article 8) and aggression. Article 6 repeats the definition in the Convention word for word. Compare the first three, and a phrase that is often confused with them:
| Genocide | Crimes against humanity | War crimes | "Ethnic cleansing" | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who is targeted | Members of a protected group, because of that membership | Any civilian population | Civilians, prisoners, the wounded, protected property | A group removed from an area |
| Mental element | Intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part | Knowledge that the act is part of a widespread or systematic attack | Intent to commit the act, in breach of the laws of war | Aim of making an area "pure" of a group |
| Is a war needed? | No | No | Yes, an armed conflict | No |
| Defined in a treaty? | Yes: Convention, Article II; Rome Statute, Article 6 | Yes: Rome Statute, Article 7 | Yes: Geneva Conventions; Rome Statute, Article 8 | No; a description, not a separate crime |
Return to the three cases at the start. Case 1 may be a war crime if the attack was aimed at civilians or was disproportionate. Case 2 is not genocide under the Convention, because a political party is not a protected group, but murder or persecution on that scale can be a crime against humanity. Case 3 has all three elements: acts of killing, a plan to destroy the community, and victims chosen as members of a religious group. It is genocide.
Warning
Three common mistakes
From 7 April to July 1994, Tutsi in Rwanda were hunted and killed because they were Tutsi; Hutu who opposed the killing or protected Tutsi were also murdered. International and Rwandan law have each recorded what happened:
Hutu, Tutsi and Twa are social categories that Rwandans shared in one language, one culture and one country. The organisers of the genocide treated "Tutsi" as a group to be destroyed, and the ICTR judged the case on that basis.
Definition
Genocide denial: a public act intended to claim that a genocide did not happen or was not genocide, to distort its facts in order to mislead, or to claim that it was not planned. Example: the false claim of a "double genocide" in Rwanda (Law N° 59 of 2018, Article 5).
Minimisation of genocide: deliberately playing down a genocide's gravity, consequences or methods, or giving false figures for its victims (Article 6).
Tip
Act, intent, group. When a question asks you to "define genocide" or decide whether an event was genocide, test it against the three boxes of Figure 1 in this order, and quote the words of Article II for each: the act ("killing members of the group"), the intent ("to destroy, in whole or in part") and the group ("national, ethnical, racial or religious ... as such"). An answer that only says "the mass killing of a people" scores little.
Important
Discuss. Political groups were left out of the Convention in 1948, partly because some states feared that their own treatment of opponents would be called genocide. Should political groups be added today? Give one argument for adding them and one for keeping the definition narrow and precise.
The British Academy: "Genocide and international law", a 10-minute talk by Professor Philippe Sands of University College London. Listen for why the law protects groups through the crime of genocide and individuals through crimes against humanity, and why the difference matters in court.
Practice
Sources and credits
Written by Ganzaa: the three cases, Figure 1, the tables, the analysis and the exercises.
