Genocide

The colloquial understanding of genocide is heavily influenced by the Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims targeted for their ethnic identity rather than for any political reason.

[10][11] Lemkin's coinage combined the Greek word γένος (genos, "race, people") with the Latin suffix -caedo ("act of killing").

[12] His response to Nazi criminality was sharply different from that of another international law scholar, Hersch Lauterpacht, who argued that it was essential to protect individuals from atrocities, whether or not they were targeted as members of a group.

[14] Lemkin's definition of nation was sufficiently broad to apply to nearly any type of human collectivity, even one based on a trivial characteristic.

[16] The 1946 judgement against Arthur Greiser issued by a Polish court was the first legal verdict that mentioned the term, using Lemkin's original definition.

[23][24][20] Although Lemkin credited women's NGOs with securing the passage of the convention, the gendered violence of forced pregnancy, marriage, and divorce was left out.

[25] Additionally omitted was the forced migration of populations—which had been carried out by the Soviet Union and its satellites, condoned by the Western Allies, against millions of Germans from central and Eastern Europe.

[33][34] Intent is the most difficult aspect for prosecutors to prove;[35][36] the perpetrators often claim that they merely sought the removal of the group from a given territory, instead of destruction as such,[37] or that the genocidal actions were collateral damage of military activity.

[44] Despite political pressure to charge "Soviet genocide", the United States government refused to ratify the convention fearing countercharges.

[47] On 25 January 2010, Iraqi official Ali Hassan al-Majid (1st cousin of Saddam Hussein) was executed by hanging after being convicted of committing genocide by using chemical weapons against Iraq's Kurdish population during the 1997–1998 Al-Anfal campaign.

[11] Although it is widely recognized that punishment of the perpetrators cannot be of an order with their crimes, the trials often serve other purposes such as attempting to shape public perception of the past.

[64] Likewise, genocide is distinguished from violent and coercive forms of rule that aim to change behavior rather than destroy groups.

[67] Many of the more sociologically oriented definitions of genocide overlap that of the crime against humanity of extermination, which refers to large-scale killing or induced death as part of a systematic attack on a civilian population.

Historians, however, explore the broader complexities of genocides, including long-term processes and various motives, without strict legal definitions.

Ethnic cleansing—the forced expulsion of a population from a given territory—has achieved widespread currency, although many scholars recognize that it frequently overlaps with genocide, even where Lemkin's definition is not used.

[86] The idea that genocide sits on top of a hierarchy of atrocity crimes—that it is worse than crimes against humanity or war crimes—is controversial among scholars[87] and it suggests that the protection of groups is more important than of individuals.

The colloquial understanding of genocide is heavily influenced by the Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims targeted because of racism rather than for any political reason.

[93] Most are ultimately caused by its perpetrators perceiving an existential threat to their own existence, although this belief is usually exaggerated and can be entirely imagined.

[94][95][96] Particular threats to existing elites that have been correlated to genocide include both successful and attempted regime change via assassination, coups, revolutions, and civil wars.

[99][100] Despite perpetrators' utilitarian goals,[101] ideological factors are necessary to explain why genocide seems to be a desirable solution to the identified security problem.

[5] War is often described as the single most important enabler of genocide[103] providing the weaponry, ideological justification, polarization between allies and enemies, and cover for carrying out extreme violence.

[101] Genocides are usually driven by states[108][109] and their agents, such as elites, political parties, bureaucracies, armed forces, and paramilitaries.

[130] Cultural destruction, such as that practised at Canadian boarding schools for indigenous children, is often dependent on controlling the victims at a specific location.

[136] According to rational choice theory, it should be possible to intervene to prevent genocide by raising the costs of engaging in such violence relative to alternatives.

[139] Intervention to prevent genocide has often been considered a failure[140][141] because most countries prioritize business, trade, and diplomatic relationships:[142][139] as a consequence, "the usual powerful actors continue to use violence against vulnerable populations with impunity".

[140] Although military intervention to halt genocide has been credited with reducing violence in some cases, it remains deeply controversial[144] and is usually illegal.

[145] Researcher Gregory H. Stanton found that calling crimes genocide rather than something else, such as ethnic cleansing, increased the chance of effective intervention.

[151][152] 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—is a common feature of ancient warfare as described in written sources.

Rather than labor or economic surplus, the settlers want to acquire land from indigenous people[159] making genocide more likely than with classical colonialism.

[172] Consequently, victims of atrocities often label their suffering genocide as an attempt to gain attention to their plight and attract foreign intervention.