Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Ethnic Groups

Ethnicity is difficult to define. Its close analog, race, has been discarded by some as a useful subject of scientific research. Common ethnicity as a psychosocial reality constituting a community is now understood as a cultural attribute that links individual human beings, such as a common language, religion, social rituals and routines, and a feeling of togetherness. Donald L. Horowitz attributes this feeling of togetherness to a "strong sense of similarity, with roots in perceived genetic affinity, or early socialization, or both" (Horowitz, 2001, p. 47). The common bond of an ethnic group may have been intensified through a shared history of being victimized by others, as exemplified by the social pathology of anti-Semitism or the persecution suffered by the Roma and the Sinti.

Conflict is an essential part of human existence, be it inter-individual or inter-group. Although a large part of the twentieth century was dominated...