Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. The term was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Note: "ethnical", although unusual, is found in several dictionaries.
The preamble to the CPPCG states that "genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world", and it also states that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity." Genocide is widely considered to be the epitome of human evil,; : "On any ranking of crimes or atrocities, it would be difficult to name an act or event regarded as more heinous. Genocide arguably appears now as the most serious offense in humanity's lengthy—and, we recognize, still growing—list of moral or legal violations."; : "Genocide is an action-oriented model designed for moral condemnation, prevention, intervention or punishment. In other words, genocide is a normative, action-oriented concept made for the political struggle, but in order to be operational it leads to simplification, with a focus on government policies."; : "... genocide has become the yardstick, the gold standard for identifying and measuring political evil in our times. The label 'genocide' confers moral distinction on its victims and indisputable condemnation on its perpetrators." and has been referred to as the "crime of crimes". The Political Instability Task Force estimated that 43 genocides occurred between 1956 and 2016, resulting in 50 million deaths. The UNHCR estimated that a further 50 million had been displaced by such episodes of violence.
Definitions of genocide
The debate continues over what legally constitutes genocide. One definition is any conflict that the International Criminal Court has so designated. Mohammed Hassan Kakar argues that the definition should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator. He prefers the definition from Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, which defines genocide as "a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group so defined by the perpetrator."
In literature, some scholars have popularly emphasized the role that the Soviet Union played in excluding political groups from the international definition of genocide, which is contained in the Genocide Convention of 1948, and in particular they have written that Joseph Stalin may have feared greater international scrutiny of the political killings that occurred in the country, such as the Great Purge; however, this claim is not supported by evidence. The Soviet view was shared and supported by many diverse countries, and they were also in line with Raphael Lemkin's original conception, and it was originally promoted by the World Jewish Congress.
Historical genocides
Genocides before World War I
Raphael Lemkin applied the concept of genocide to a wide variety of events throughout human history. He and other scholars date the first genocides to prehistoric times. Ancient sources like the Hebrew Bible have been cited by some scholars as acts of genocide although this is criticised by biblical scholars who argue that such a description is anachronistic. Genocide in the ancient world often consisted of the massacre of men and the enslavement or forced assimilation of women and children—often limited to a particular town or city rather than applied to a larger group. Potential medieval examples are found in Europe, even though experts caution against applying a modern term like genocide to such events. Overall, premodern examples that can be considered genocide were relatively uncommon. Beginning in the early modern period, racial ideologies emerged as a more important factor.
According to Frank Chalk, Helen Fein, and Kurt Jonassohn, if a dominant group of people had little in common with a marginalized group of people, it was easy for the dominant group to define the marginalized group as a subhuman group; the marginalized group might be labeled a threat that must be eliminated.
The expansion of various European colonial powers, such as the British and Spanish Empires, and the subsequent establishment of colonies on indigenous territory frequently involved acts of genocidal violence against indigenous groups in the Americas (including Brazil, Paraguay, Canada, and the United States), Australia, Africa, and Asia. According to Lemkin, colonisation was in itself intimately connected with genocide. He saw genocide as a two-phase process: in the first, the indigenous population's way of life was destroyed; and in the second, the newcomers impose their way of life on the indigenous group.; ;
According to David Maybury-Lewis, imperial and colonial forms of genocide are enacted in two main ways, either through the deliberate clearing of territories of their original inhabitants to make them exploitable for purposes of resource extraction or colonial settlements, or through enlisting indigenous peoples as forced laborers in colonialist or imperialist projects of resource extraction. The designation of specific events as genocidal is often controversial.
During the 17th century Beaver Wars, the Iroquois destroyed several large tribal confederaciesincluding the Mohicans, Huron, Neutral, Erie, Susquehannock, and northern Algonquinswith extreme brutality. The exterminatory nature of the mode of warfare practised by the Iroquois caused some historians to label these events as acts of genocide.
Genocides from World War I through World War II
In 1915, one year after the outbreak of World War I, the concept of crimes against humanity was introduced into international relations for the first time, when the Allies of World War I sent a letter to the government of the Ottoman Empire, a member of the Central Powers, to protest against the late Ottoman genocides that were taking place within the empire, among them, the Armenian genocide, the Assyrian genocide, the Greek genocide, and the Great Famine of Mount Lebanon.1915 declaration: ; ; : Status: Ordered to be Reported by the Yeas and Nays: 40 – 7. The Holocaust, the Nazi genocide of six million European Jews from 1941 to 1945 during the Second World War, is the most studied genocide, and it is also a prototype of genocide; one of the most controversial questions among comparative scholars is the question of the Holocaust's uniqueness, which led to the in West Germany during the 1980s, and whether there exist historical parallels, which critics believe trivializes it. It is considered to be the "worst case" paradigm of genocide.
Action of Imperial Japan in the 1930s and '40s have been described as genocide;Carmichael, Cathie; Maguire, Richard (2015). The Routledge History of Genocide. Routledge. p. 105. ISBN 9780367867065. see Japanese war crimes for more detailed information.
Genocide studies started as a side academic field of Holocaust studies, whose researchers associated genocide with the Holocaust and believed that Lemkin's definition of genocide was too broad. In 1985, the United Nations' (UN) Whitaker Report cited the massacre of 100,000 to 250,000 Jews in more than 2,000 pogroms which occurred as part of the White Terror during the Russian Civil War as an act of genocide; it also suggested that consideration should be given to ecocide, ethnocide, and cultural genocide.
Genocides from 1946 through 1999
The Genocide Convention was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951. After the necessary 20 countries became parties to the convention, it came into force as international law on 12 January 1951; however, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council were parties to the treaty, which caused the Convention to languish for over four decades. During the Cold War era, mass atrocities were committed by communist regimes, as well as by anti-communist/capitalist regimes, among them the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–66, the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, the Cambodian genocide, the Guatemalan genocide and the East Timor genocide. International courts have found a small number of events as constituting genocide, such as the Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica genocide. The Rwandan genocide also gave an extra impetus to genocide studies in the 1990s.
Genocides after 2000
In 2021, David Alton, Helen Clark, and Michael Lapsley wrote that the reasons for the Rwandan genocide and the reasons for the atrocities which were committed during the Yugoslav Wars have been analyzed in-depth, and they also wrote that genocide prevention has been extensively discussed in the 21st century.
A group of 34 non-governmental organizations and 31 individuals, calling themselves African Citizens, referred to the Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide report prepared by a panel headed by former Botswana president Quett Masire for the Organisation of African Unity, which later became the African Union. African Citizens highlighted the sentences, commenting: "Indisputably, the most important truth that emerges from our investigation is that the Rwandan genocide could have been prevented by those in the international community who had the position and means to do so. ... The world failed Rwanda. ... [The United Nations] simply did not care enough about Rwanda to intervene appropriately." Chidi Odinkalu, former head of the National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria, was among those involved with African Citizens.
On 20 November 2021, Genocide Watch predicted genocide in Ethiopia, in the context of the war in Tigray and also the violence across the Oromia, and the Benishangul-Gumuz (Metekel) regions that worsened since 2018. On 21 November, Odinkalu called for genocide prevention, stating: "We need to focus on an urgent programme of Genocide Prevention advocacy on Ethiopia NOW. It may be too late in 2 weeks, guys." On 26 November, African Citizens and Alton, Clark, and Lapsley also called for the predicted genocide to be prevented.
The Rohingya genocide is an ongoing genocide of the Muslim Rohingya people consisting of arson, rape, ethnic cleansing, and infanticide by the Burmese military. The genocide has so far consisted of two phases so: the first was a military crackdown that occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, and the second has been occurring since August 2017.
The Chinese government has engaged in a series of human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang. Legislatures in several countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, have passed non-binding motions describing China's actions as genocide. The United States officially denounced China's treatment of Uyghurs as a genocide.
On 16 September 2025, a United Nations commission found that Israel is committing genocide in the Gaza strip.
International prosecution Ad hoc tribunals
In 1951, only two of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) were parties to the convention, namely France and the Republic of China. The treaty was ratified by the Soviet Union in 1954, the United Kingdom in 1970, the People's Republic of China in 1983 (having replaced the Taiwan-based Republic of China on the UNSC in 1971), and the United States in 1988. In the 1990s, the international law on the crime of genocide began to be enforced.