Genocide - Definitions

1. What does genocide mean?

Genocide is the deliberate attempt to kill a group of people who are identified and separated because of their race, ethnic nature or belief. Over the past century, in every generation, people have been targeted for destruction. It has occurred in every continent and in all kinds of societies.

Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, observed the mass killing of Armenians in Turkey during the First World War and by 1933 tried to convince the League of Nations that if governments committed such atrocities, it should be recognised as an international crime. But he was ignored. When the Nazis murdered his own family in the Holocaust of the 1940s – because they were Jews – Lemkin made up a new word.

He used a combination of Greek and Latin words ‘geno’ (race or tribe) and ‘cide’ (killing). He also proposed a UN Convention on Genocide, which was approved by the United Nations (UN) in 1948. So Lemkin eventually succeeded in his mission because the United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as a crime in international law. The following are the acts described as genocide in that Convention: Text taken from Wasted Lives, Aegis Trust, 2004 @aegistrust.org

1| 2| 3| 4