Genocide

Genocide is the systematic killing of substantial numbers of people on the basis of ethnicity, religion, political opinion, social status or other particularity. The most widely known example is the Holocaust of 6 million Jews during World War II; although the Nazis also killed millions of Christians and Gypsies. Lesser known in the West are Stalin's forced starvation of Ukrainian farmers, or Mao's murder of 20 to 60 million Chinese.

Genocide as a crime under international law

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951. It contains an internationally-recognized definition of genocide which was incorporated into the national criminal legislation of many countries, and was also adopted by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the treaty that established the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide 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:"

Related Topics:
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide - UN General Assembly - 9 December - 1948 - 12 January - 1951 - Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court - International Criminal Court

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:(a) Killing members of the group;

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:(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

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:(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

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:(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

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:(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

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The first draft of the Convention included political killings but that language was removed at the insistence of the Soviet Union. The exclusion of social and political groups as targets of genocide in this legal definition has been criticized. In common usage of the word, these target groups are often included.

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Common usage also sometimes equates genocide with state-sponsored mass murder, but genocide, as defined above, does not imply mass-murder (or any murder) nor is every instance of mass-murder necessarily genocide. Neither is the involvement of a government required. The word "genocide" is also sometimes used in a much broader sense, as in "slavery was genocide", but this usage diverges from the legal definition set out by the UN.

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Prosecution of genocide

All signatories to the above-mentioned convention are required to prevent and punish acts of genocide, both in peace and wartime, though some barriers make this enforcement difficult. In particular, some of the signatories — namely, Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia — signed with the proviso that no claim of genocide could be brought against them at the International Court of Justice without their consent. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/treaty1gen.htm Despite official protests from other signatories (notably Cyprus and Norway) on the ethics and legal standing of these reservations, the immunity from prosecution they grant has been invoked from time to time, as when the United States refused to allow a charge of genocide brought against it by Yugoslavia following the 1999 Kosovo War.

Related Topics:
Bahrain - Bangladesh - India - Malaysia - Philippines - Singapore - Vietnam - Yemen - Yugoslavia - International Court of Justice - Cyprus - Norway - Immunity - 1999 - Kosovo War

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It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish, for prosecution, since intent, demonstrating a chain of accountability, has to be established. Due to its gravity, genocide can be prosecuted by any state at any time under its universal jurisdiction. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily because the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.

Related Topics:
World War II - Customary international law - Peremptory norm - Conventional international law

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