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Few concepts carry the weight and power of the term genocide. The word's profound significance is bound to its unique role as a moral and legal marker of the very worst type of human behavior. Morally, genocide refers to acts of horrific violence such as mass murder, state terror, and other strategies of brutal repression. The term names an ethical boundary beyond which a government forfeits its legitimacy and society descends into barbarism. Legally, genocide refers to the intentional destruction of a group as such, a crime so severe that it demands immediate and total condemnation. As the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the subject stated, "Genocide is the ultimate crime and the gravest violation of human rights it is possible to commit."

The term genocide has a highly specific origin, rooted in two related sources: the invention of the word in 1943 by Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin; and its definition, several years later, as an international crime through the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The concept of genocide was a direct response to the Holocaust and the extraordinary destruction and brutality of World War II.

Lemkin created the term genocide, out of the Greek word genos, referring to race or tribe, and the Latin term cide, meaning murder. He defined genocide as a coordinated strategy to destroy a group of people, a process that could be accomplished through total annihilation as well as strategies that eliminate key elements of the group's basic existence, including language, culture, and economic infrastructure. Lemkin believed the Nazis' systematic eradication of various peoples represented an irreparable harm to global society and a special challenge to existing conceptions of criminal law. He created the concept as a means of mobilizing the international community to take strong, coordinated action to prevent the recurrence of such vicious, destructive violence.

The text of the Genocide Convention was approved by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, and entered into force on January 12, 1951. The Convention defines genocide and obligates those states that accept the treaty to take serious actions to prevent its occurrence and punish those responsible. Article II of the Convention defines the crime as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Genocide Convention was the first of a series of international treaties that, taken together, form the modern system of fundamental rights and freedoms. While the brutal acts that define genocide were not new, the Convention's formal evocation of the crime as a foundational concept within the human rights system represented an act of great historic significance. The Convention remains the premier document for defining genocide and, by 2003, 135 nations had accepted its legal obligations. The Convention's definition has been reinforced through its repetition in relevant domestic legislation and in the statutes of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), and the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The crime of genocide is widely accepted as a norm of jus cogens ("compelling" or "higher" law that transcends the limitations of individual national laws and which no country can violate with impunity). For this reason, genocide is prohibited even in those states that have not adopted the Convention, is not bound by statutes of limitations, and is subject to universal jurisdiction. In 1996 the International Court of Justice (ICJ) issued provisional measures in a case in which Bosnia and Herzegovina claimed that Yugoslavia was committing genocide. The ICJ also accepted jurisdiction over the merits of the case and stated clearly that the two countries were obligated to prevent and punish genocide, regardless of the nature of the conflict, the status of the new states, and key issues of territorial integrity.

The crime of genocide is composed of three essential elements: acts, intent, and victim group. There are five enumerated acts that are distinct in nature, yet unified as strategies. Three of these are aimed at destroying an existing group: killing, causing serious harm, and/or creating destructive conditions. The other two specified acts are aimed at ruining the possibility of the group's continued existence: preventing reproduction and the forcible removal of children. The issue of intent is complex, but is generally understood to limit claims of genocide to those cases where political violence is purposefully directed toward the destruction of a group. This political objective may be presented as official policy, or it may be expressed through the coordinated and systematic nature of state-sponsored terror. The issue of intent is one of the more contentious elements of the crime and is often discussed as a key limitation to successful prosecutions. The group victim requirement defines genocide as a unique crime that is directed not against individuals per se, but instead targets victims because of their membership in a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The definition is often criticized for its exclusion of political and social groups, for these, too, are often the targets of severe political violence.

Each element of the legal definition of genocide raises an array of troubling questions, many of which run counter to general moral understandings of the term. For example, one might have a case of genocide involving few casualties (as with the forced transfer of children) or a situation of extraordinary brutality that does not meet the definition (as with the mass murder of political opponents or others who are not targeted for their membership in one of the four protected groups). To address these issues, scholars have interpreted the crime to cover most forms of state-sponsored mass killing. Helen Fein, for instance, has suggested a "sociological definition," whereas Israel W. Charny calls for a "humanistic definition," and Leo Kuper suggests a broader understanding of the crime be developed, in order to address problems arising from the technical nature of the Convention's language. Others have suggested the need to create new terms. For instance, R. J. Rummel has coined the word democide to refer to all forms of mass state murder, and others have offered auto-genocide to deal with mass murder where both the perpetrators and victims are members of the same group.

Despite the existence of a global promise to prevent and punish genocide, the second half of the twentieth century presented many cases of extreme violence that could be termed genocide alongside limited international action. It was not until 1998 that the world witnessed the first international prosecution and conviction for genocide, in the Akayesu case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. This historic decision was followed by a number of additional cases in the same court and at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, allowing for the evolution of a new jurisprudence of genocide. These shifts have heightened an international commitment to understanding genocide as a crime of such severity that it can be prosecuted anywhere, regardless of ordinary jurisdictional limitations. Similarly, there is a growing concern for developing strategies and policy interventions that recognize the special status of victims of genocide and seek to address their social, economic, and political needs.

Genocide is iconic in its representation of the complex nature of modernity. The concept of genocide—from its genesis in the aftermath of the Holocaust to the present day—binds acts of unforgivable brutality to a global promise that extreme political violence will no longer be tolerated within an emerging international order premised on the protection of fundamental human rights.

SEE ALSO Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide; Explanation; Holocaust; International Court of Justice; International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda; International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia; Lemkin, Raphael; Political Theory; Psychology of Perpetrators; Psychology of Survivors; Psychology of Victims; Sociology of Perpetrators; Sociology of Victims

Daniel Rothenberg