Genocide

Genocide has emerged as one of the most important problems facing the international community. It stands alone in terms of the human suffering, loss, and death it engenders as well as the destruction of homes, property, and even cultures. Research suggests that during the 20th century, genocide and related crimes have killed more than four times as many people as all the international and civil wars combined. During the second half of the last century the pace and lethality of genocidal crimes increased dramatically and the world was witness to genocides in such places as Cambodia, Bosnia, and Rwanda. The new century is not starting out well if the genocide in the Darfur region of the Sudan is any indication. Since 2003 the Sudanese government has organized militia groups known as the Janjaweed to kill, terrorize, and displace thousands of members of non-Arabic tribes in the Darfur.

The term genocide was originally coined by Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin in 1944. He created it from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing). The word, therefore, is intended to describe the destruction of a group of people. While this might seem fairly clear, a great deal of confusion surrounds the meaning of the word genocide. One reason for this problem is that it is often difficult to distinguish between genocide and other forms of atrocities such as war crimes and human rights violations. Genocide, it is important to point out, is usually perpetrated during the middle of an ongoing conflict such as a civil war, and it is often hard to distinguish between massacres that are considered war crimes and others that might be part of a genocide. Unfortunately, international law defines these crimes broadly, with a great deal of conceptual overlap and ambiguity. Torture and medical experimentation, for example, are specifically listed as war crimes, yet both also occur frequently during genocides. During the Holocaust, for example, many infamous experiments were performed on unwilling victims. Do we consider these to be war crimes or genocide? In the same vein, do we merely perceive genocide as a type of human rights violation, or do we see it as a distinct and separate type of phenomenon? Additionally, because it is such a powerful and emotion-laden word, genocide has also often been used by social commentators and activists to describe such things as integration, bisex-uality, urban sprawl, and family planning, which often serves to further muddy the waters regarding the nature of genocide.

These definitional difficulties do not mean, however, that genocide cannot be accurately defined. According to the United Nations (UN) Genocide Convention of 1948, genocide is defined as follows:

This definition makes clear that genocide is about destroying entire populations. Mass killings and massacres, as horrible as they are, do not rise to the level of genocide unless they are part of a larger program intended to destroy a group. In other words, genocide is a systematic attempt to exterminate an entire population group. According to the UN definition, genocide is also more than just murder, and can include a variety of policies and behaviors, many of which are not immediately lethal. Forcing sterilization, imposing measures intended to prevent births within a group, and sending children to boarding schools [Page 292]where they are forbidden to speak their language or practice their beliefs are all potentially genocidal. Although these practices do not involve overt acts of violence against individuals, they are, nonetheless, considered genocide because their intent is to destroy a group. While the individuals are left alive, the ties that bind them together as a people are obliterated.

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