AP 24.1074 What is Genocide?

gen·o·cide (noun)
the deliberate killing of a large group of people, especially those of a particular ethnic group or nation.

Posted Mar 21, 2022

The United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention of Genocide in 1948. Its historical origins and provisions – as well as the failures to prevent genocide in recent decades – illuminate the challenges facing the world today. In the face of prevailing risk, the United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Adama Dieng, calls for all people to take a stand against this crime.

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GENOCIDE PREVENTION The US Holocaust Memorial Museum teaches that the Holocaust was preventable and that by heeding warning signs and taking early action, individuals and governments can save lives. With this knowledge, the Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide works to do for the victims of genocide today what the world failed to do for the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s

THE GENOCIDE WATCH Genocide Watch exists to predict, prevent, stop, and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder. Our purpose is to build an international movement to prevent and stop genocide.

Genocide is a term created during the Holocaust and declared an international crime in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The Convention defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a. Killing members of the group;
b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The specific “intent to destroy” particular groups is unique to genocide. A closely related category of international law, crimes against humanity, is defined as widespread or systematic attacks against civilians.