Genocide Meaning: The Definition in Law and in Everyday Use

Genocide definition in international law

The treaty known as the Genocide Convention, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 9, 1948, defines genocide as certain acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. The acts are:

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

The key element is intent. Mass killing alone is not enough for the legal label; there must be proof of a specific aim to destroy the group itself. This is why courts often find it hard to prove.

Genocide meaning and the origin of the word

Genocide is a young word. A Polish Jewish lawyer coined it in a book published in 1944, while the Second World War was still being fought. He joined the Greek genos, meaning race, kind or tribe, with the Latin ending -cide, meaning killing, as in homicide. He wanted a single term for crimes aimed at erasing whole peoples, which existing law did not name.

The term was used at postwar trials and then written into the 1948 convention, which came into force in 1951. The Holocaust, the murder of about six million Jews by Germany's wartime regime, was central to why the word and the law were created. You can read more on the holocaust meaning page.

How the word is used today

In courts and treaties, genocide is a strict legal term. International tribunals have applied it to events such as the killings in Rwanda in 1994 and at Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995.

In everyday speech, writing and protest, people sometimes use the word more widely to describe mass violence, forced removal or the destruction of a culture. Related terms include cultural genocide, used for efforts to erase a group's language, religion or traditions, and ethnic cleansing, which usually means forcing a group out of an area. Ethnic cleansing is not a separate crime in the convention, though it can overlap with genocide or with crimes against humanity. Terms like these are collected with other legal and civic words.

Disputes over using the label

Because the word carries such moral and legal weight, its use is often disputed. Reasons include:

• Intent is hard to prove. Some say the evidence of intent is clear in a given case; others say the violence, though terrible, was aimed at winning a war or controlling land rather than destroying a group.
• The list of groups is narrow. Political and social groups are not protected by the convention, and some scholars argue they should be.
• Legal versus moral use. Some people use the word as a moral judgment before any court has ruled; others prefer to wait for a legal finding.
• Recognition by governments. Official recognition of past events as genocide varies from country to country and can be a sensitive diplomatic issue.

A careful writer states who is using the term and on what basis, for example "a UN commission concluded" or "critics describe it as".

Examples in sentences

• The tribunal found the former commander guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity.
• Our history teacher explained that genocide requires intent to destroy a group, not just large numbers of deaths.
• Survivors of genocide often spend years seeking recognition and justice.
• To define genocide for her essay, Priya quoted the five acts listed in the 1948 treaty.
• The museum exhibit traces how propaganda helped prepare the ground for genocidal violence.

Genocide and close terms compared