Course: Genocide and Group Hostility
Module 1: Genocide
How is genocide defined in international law, and what distinguishes genocide from other mass atrocities?
There are major differences in political context, distinctive features, and scope of the exterminations that are referred to as genocide. Nevertheless, there are some common features. Genocide is the intended extermination of people belonging to an ethnic, religious, racial or national group, because of their identity. Such intent distinguishes genocide from other mass atrocities (ethnic cleansing, war crimes, and crimes against humanity).
What is Genocide?
How is genocide defined in international law? And what distinguishes this definition from other definitions of the term genocide?
According to the UN Genocide Convention of 1948, “genocide” refers to violent crimes committed against a group – in whole or in part – with the intent to destroy it based on its religious, national or ethnic identity. As an international crime, signatory nations agreed to “undertake to prevent and punish” every genocide. Acts that can amount to genocide, as specified by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, include:
- 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;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The Holocaust is a term for the genocide of the Jews in Europe by Nazi Germany during World War II (1939-1945). Romani people, homosexuals, disabled people and political dissidents were also systematically killed by the Nazi regime.
In line with the Nazi racial ideology, the “final solution” to the “Jewish Question” meant to exterminate Jewish people and their culture in Europe and beyond.
Approximately six million Jews were killed in a systematic, bureaucratic, and well-organized genocide. Many, especially among Jewish people and Hebrew speakers, prefer to use the term Shoah, a biblical Hebrew word, instead of Holocaust.
Per its definition, identifying genocide as such requires genocidal intent to be recognized. Without proof of the intent to destroy a group “in whole or in part” solely because of their identity, the acts of mass violence in question fall closer to other atrocity crimes, like crimes against humanity.
There have been many definitions of genocide proposed throughout the years. They can mainly be distinguished between legal, sociological, political, and popular definitions, according to genocide scholar Ernesto Verdeja. In short:
- The legal definition of the Genocide Convention was coined by major world powers in response to the Holocaust. So, it was aimed to prevent such atrocities from happening again while avoiding their own mistreatment of various groups. Because of realpolitik, the words chosen for this definition are extremely specific, with only few groups being recognizable as victims.
- Sociological definitions of genocides are usually broader, including victim groups beyond the few outlined in the definition. The intent to commit genocide is also considered more vaguely.
- Political definitions, instead, are used to rally consensus and encourage specific responses, often with the goal of prevention or intervention. As Verdeja states, “many international organizations and governments will use the term genocide when what they really mean is large-scale violence against civilians.”
- Popular definitions, finally, focus on the emotional aspect that accompanies mass violence. When acts of violence are committed, the general public tends to highlight their evilness and immorality, calling for intervention so that they can be stopped.
Genocide vs. Other Mass Atrocities
Under international law and as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, mass atrocities encompass distinct classifications of crimes: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. What separates genocide from these other mass atrocities?
According to the Rome Statute of the ICC, what separates mass atrocities from other violent crimes is the scale of their perpetration and the shocking and inhumane violence and rhetoric that they entail.
- Crimes against humanity
Crimes against humanity include known acts “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population”, such as murder, enslavement, deportation, torture, sexual violence and slavery, apartheid, and persecution. Most atrocities can often fall under the meaning of “persecution”, which could amount to genocide if the intent to destroy a group, in whole or in part, is demonstrated.
- War crimes
War crimes can include violations of the laws and customs applicable in international armed conflict, such as breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949. Individual responsibility for war crimes can be established if violations against members of a group take place in the context of an (international or non-international) armed conflict, regardless of whether the victims are combatant or non-combatant.
- Ethnic cleansing
While not recognized as an independent crime under international law, ethnic cleansing is considered to include coercive practices meant to render an area ethnically homogeneous by removing members of ethnic or religious groups. If the necessary criteria are met, these acts may amount to one of the recognized atrocity crimes. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm, spelling out the normative responsibility to protect people from atrocities and prevent them, expanded the concept of ‘atrocity crimes’ to include ethnic cleansing in the 2005 World Summit Outcome Document.
Key Cases
In the last 30 years, multiple genocides have been carried out, despite the international community’s promise of “never again” made after the Holocaust. Although atrocity crimes have been perpetrated globally, legal prosecution of the crime of “genocide” has only been carried out with international tribunals in few cases, such as for Bosnia-Herzegovina/Srebrenica and Rwanda. Even so, there are also examples of national tribunals for accountability after genocide, such as Rwanda’s national court system.
The Rwanda genocide directed against the Tutsi
The genocide in Rwanda took place between April and June 1994 and occurred all over the country. The Hutu government, representing the majority population in the country, launched a planned genocide against the minority Tutsi population. Ethnic conflicts between the Hutu and Tutsi have a long history and go back to the time before Rwanda’s independence in 1959.
In 100 days between April and June 1994, between 500,000 and one million people were systematically killed. Most were Tutsi, but also the minority Twa and politically moderate Hutu became victims of the genocide.
The mass killings were planned and organized by the Hutu-dominated authorities and institutions. However, throughout the country, many of the perpetrators were ordinary people who killed their friends, neighbours and others in their local community. After the genocide, both the government and the population have contributed to ethnic reconciliation and reconstruction.
The UN and the international community were heavily criticized for not having stopped the mass killings. In 2000, the UN Security Council took responsibility for not having done so. In 2014, UN member states recognized that the killings were classified as genocide.
The Srebrenica genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina
In the 1990s, the Balkan region of Europe was the stage of war and widespread mass violence targeting multiple ethnic groups. Much of this violence has since been recognized as atrocity crimes, and in Srebrenica it amounted to genocide.
In July 1995, approximately 8,000 Muslim men and boys were systematically massacred by Serbian soldiers in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. This was later defined as genocide by international courts, and the generals responsible were convicted.
In Srebrenica, on July 1995, approximately 8,000 Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) men and boys were killed within two weeks by Bosnian Serb military forces. The massacre was in line with political goals of ethnically and religiously homogeneous states in the area, where, in addition to Bosniaks, Serbs (mostly Orthodox Christians), and Croats (mostly Catholics) lived.
The massacre in Srebrenica was later defined as genocide by international courts, and the generals responsible were convicted. The massacre was decisive in provoking the NATO intervention that led to the Dayton Agreement which ended the Bosnian War in 1995.
Forces in both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia deny that a genocide took place. This is, for example, reflected in curricula and school teaching materials. Denial that a genocide took place is also familiar from debates about the Holocaust and other mass atrocities.
The Yazidi Genocide in Iraq
Genocide involves the intent to destroy a religious, ethnic, or national group. The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria (2016) emphasized in the report “They Came to Destroy: ISIS Crimes against the Yazidis” that ISIS tried to destroy the Yazidi as a religious group, and has accordingly identified the Yazidi as victims of genocide.
In August 2014, more than 6,000 Yazidi men and boys were massacred in the Sinjar region in northern Iraq. Women and children were captured, raped and sold as sex slaves. The Islamic State (IS) believed the Yezidis were heretics and devil worshippers who had to be killed or converted to Islam.
The IS terror also affected other religious groups. However, no other group than the Yezidi was singled out and persecuted so systematically, with the stated intention of extermination because of their faith. The UN commission of inquiry referred to the Yazidi case as a genocide.
Genocide or other mass atrocities?
Because of the strict definition within the Genocide Convention, and the political challenges related to establishing accountability mechanisms, only a few genocides have ever been identified as such by courts. In recent years, cases like Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya people and Israel’s destruction in the Gaza Strip have illuminated some of the weaknesses of this definition. The International Court of Justice’s provisions for these cases will be discussed further in Module 3 – Prevention.
An ICJ decision on the duty to prevent genocide does not automatically imply that a genocide is actually happening. A ruling on the question of whether atrocities fall within the definition of genocide requires a longer and more thorough legal process. We will address this further in Module 4 – Restoration.
The case of Rohingyas from Myanmar – ICJ
In 2019, The Gambia initiated a trial against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice, accusing Myanmar of violating the Genocide Convention in their treatment of the Rohingya people and requesting provisional measures of protection from the ICJ. The ICJ in 2020 ruled that Myanmar should take measures to prevent genocide from happening to the Rohingya.
The Rohingya people are an ethnic group rooted in the north of Myanmar’s Rakhine state, but officially considered stateless since the 1980s by the Burmese government. Rohingyas have faced decades of discrimination and persecution.
Myanmar’s military forces and extremist groups have increased their violence towards Rohingya people since 2016, with thousands of killings and widespread sexual violence. Since 2017, more than 700 000 Rohingyas fled to the Cox’s Bazaar refugee camp in Bangladesh, the largest in the world, to escape from violence.
In 2018, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reported that Myanmar’s government organized and planned the intentional eradication of the Rohingya people. For this reason, Burmese officials could be potentially charged for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The case of Palestine/Israel – ICJ
In 2023, South Africa alleged that Israel had committed and was committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, and initiated a case at the International Court of Justice. In 2024, the ICJ ruling advanced provisional measures urging Israel to prevent genocide and protect civilians from further atrocities. This case will be further presented in Module 3 – Prevention.
Gender and Genocide
While not mentioned in the legal definition of genocide, gender is an important factor that can affect the motivations, perpetration, and consequences of genocides. How does it influence the ways in which certain groups are mobilized and attacked during genocides?
The term “gender” denotes the social, cultural, and psychological aspects of one’s identity as opposed to sex, which is considered concretely physical and biological. While it is often used as a buzzword and a synonym for “women” in conflict, security, genocide, and atrocity prevention studies, gender encompasses multiple identities and the socio-cultural system they inhabit.
As conflicts and mass violence have always been affected by gender dynamics, US philosophy professor Mary Anne Warren coined the term “gendercide” to refer to “the deliberate extermination of persons of a particular sex (or gender).”
Gendered violence and killings are often a component of a wider genocide and are carried out with the intent to destabilize or eradicate populations, but gendercide can also manifest outside the scope of genocide. Warren’s website gendercide.org provides multiple case studies where she argues that “gendercide” has taken place (including Rwanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina).
Gender-based violence targeting women, for example, often includes sexual violence and mass rapes with the goal of forced impregnation or stigmatization. At the same time, gendercide also accounts for the sex-selective killing of newborn girls, widespread in communities where daughters are considered inferior to sons.
Gendercide targeting men, instead, typically manifests in the intentional killing of “battle-age men”, with younger boys being targeted due to their potential future as enemy combatants. An example of male gendercide beyond traditional conflict is the Srebrenica genocide, where almost 8’000 men and boys were targeted and killed.
It is worth noting that, while Warren argues that the term gendercide can help with nuanced and complex analyses of genocides, others argue that it may obscure ways in which genocides are perpetrated, as proposed by Henry Theriault. According to this perspective, “gendercide” analyzes genocides only by their results, partially ignoring the intersecting factors and motivations which provoked them.
Sexual- and gender-based violence is central to genocide as a strategy to destroy a group. On December 7th 2018, the Global Justice Center launched an in-depth legal analysis of the role of gender in genocide. Read the full report here.
An often overlooked gendered consequence of sexual violence in conflicts and mass atrocities are children born of war (CBOW). We will explore this in more detail in Module 4 – Restoration.
Women and children affected by genocide - Lamyia's story
Lamiya
Questions for reflection and discussion
- What distinguishes genocide from other mass atrocities according to the UN Genocide Convention?
- What role has gender played in past genocides? How can a gender perspective shed light on the consequences of genocide?
- How do debates over the classification of atrocities in Myanmar and Gaza shape our understanding of the international legal definition of genocide, for instance in relation to the evidence of intent?
- Case study discussion: When looking at the cases presented above, to what extent and in what ways the facts presented for each case seem to qualify them as a genocide according to the Genocide Convention article 2? If not genocide, do they comply with the definition of other mass atrocities? Discuss with all resources you have available, making a list of arguments for and against identifying it as a genocide.
Additional Resources
Genocide and other mass atrocities
- ICHR topic page: Understanding Genocide and Mass Atrocities
- Website: Mass Atrocity Responses
- Hinton, Alexander Laban. 2012. “Critical Genocide Studies.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 7 (1). (link)
- Jones, Adam. 2024. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. 4th ed. London; New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
- Weiss-Wendt, Anton. 2018. A Rhetorical Crime. Rutgers University Press. (link)
Gender
- ICHR topic page: Gender and Genocide
- Connellan, Mary Michele. 2018. “The Problem of ‘Protecting Vulnerable Groups.’ Rethinking Vulnerability for Mass Atrocity and Genocide Prevention.” In A Gendered Lens for Genocide Prevention. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. (link)
- Joeden-Forgery, Elisa. 2012. “Gender and the Future of Genocide Studies and Prevention.” Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal 7 (1). (link)
- Jones, Adam. 2008. “Gender and Genocide.” In The Historiography of Genocide, 228–52. Palgrave Macmillan. (link)
Case studies
