What is Genocide

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What is Genocide?
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Genocide Where is it defined

• The crime of genocide is defined in international
  law in the Convention on the Prevention and
  Punishment of Genocide.

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Genocide A definition

• Article II In the present Convention, genocide
  means
• killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm
  to members of a group. It also means preventing
  births within the group or forcibly transferring
  children of the group to another group.

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Genocide a definition continued

• Article III the following acts shall be
  punishable
• a) Genocide
• b) Conspiracy to commit genocide
• c) Direct and public incitement to commit
  genocide
• d) attempt to commit genocide
• e) Complicity in genocide

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Who defined the term genocide?

• Raphael Lemkin, a legal scholar, began to try and
  define the horrible acts of attempting to
  eradicate a group.
• Lemkin followed the case of a young Armenian who
  had murdered the Turkish minister of the interior
  in Berlin in 1920 because he believed the
  minister was responsible for the killing of
  Armenians

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• Lemkin asked is it a crime for Tehlirian to
  kill a man, but it is not a crime for his
  oppressor to kill more than a million men?
• Lemkin created the word genocide as a way to
  give a name to the terrible crime against the
  Jews of Europe by the Nazis.

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• The Genocide Convention was adopted by the
  United Nations General Assembly on 12.09.1948.
  The Convention entered into force on 01.12.1951.
  More than 130 nations have ratified the Genocide
  Convention and over 70 nations have made
  provisions for the punishment of genocide in
  domestic criminal law. The text of Article II of
  the Genocide Convention was included as a crime
  in Article 6 of the 1998 Rome Statute of the
  International Criminal Court (ICC).

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Genocide Key Terms

• The crime of genocide has 2 key elements
• 1. Intent
• 2. Action

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Intent

• Intent is different from motive.
• Intent is if the perpetrators commit acts
  intended to destroy a group, or part of the
  group.
• In whole or in part is important for it does
  not have to be the whole group
• (An individual criminal may be guilty of genocide
  even if he kills only one person, so long as he
  knew he was participating in a larger plan to
  destroy the group)

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Who does the law protect?

• 1. National Group set of individuals whose
  identity is defined by a common country of
  nationality or national origin
• 2. Ethnical Group set of individuals whose
  identity is defined by common cultural
  traditions, language or heritage
• 3. Racial Group set of individuals whose
  identity is defined by physical characteristics
• 4. Religious Group set of individuals whose
  identity is defined by common religious beliefs,
  creeds, doctrines, practices, or rituals

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In the word genocide

• Geno is from Greek meaning race or tribe and
  cide is derived from Latin meaning killing.

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Why have we defined Genocide so thoroughly?
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20th Century

• During the 20th Century 40 million people were
  killed in genocides.
• During the 20th Century nearly 50 million
  soldiers have been killed in wars and
  revolutions.
• Why has this happened?
• What has happened to the promise of never again?

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Our Plan

• We will work to define the term genocide
• As a class we will examine the stages of genocide
• We will examine various genocides and look at
  them as Case Studies to compare and contrast them
  with each other and with our understanding of the
  term genocide.