Genocide definitions
This is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined with genos and an English suffix -cide by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. The precise etymology of the word however, is a compound of the ancient Greek word γένος or Latin word gēns and the Latin word caedō. While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This and other definitions are generally regarded by the majority of genocide scholars to have an "intent to destroy" as a requirement for any act to be labelled genocide; there is also growing agreement on the inclusion of the physical destruction criterion. Writing in 1998 Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Björnson stated that the CPPCG was a legal instrument resulting from a diplomatic compromise. As such the wording of the treaty is not intended to be a definition suitable as a research tool, and although it is used for this purpose, as it has an international legal credibility that others lack, other definitions have also been postulated. Jonassohn and Björnson go on to say that for various reasons, none of these alternative definitions have gained widespread support.
| Date | Author | Definition |
| 1944 | Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish jurist | By "genocide" we mean the destruction of an ethnic group…. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups…. |
| 1945 | Count 3 of the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg Trials | They conducted deliberate and systematic genocide—viz., the extermination of racial and national groups—against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people, and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others. |
| 1946 | Raphael Lemkin | The crime of genocide should be recognized therein as a conspiracy to exterminate national, religious or racial groups. The overt acts of such a conspiracy may consist of attacks against life, liberty or property of members of such groups merely because of their affiliation with such groups. The formulation of the crime may be as follows: "Whoever, while participating in a conspiracy to destroy a national, racial or religious group, undertakes an attack against life, liberty or property of members of such groups is guilty of the crime of genocide. |
| 1946 | United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96 | Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, …and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. … The General Assembly, therefore, affirms that genocide is a crime under international law…whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds… |
| 1948 | The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951. Article 2: | Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 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. |
| 1959 | Pieter N. Drost, Dutch law professor | Genocide is the deliberate destruction of physical life of individual human beings by reason of their membership of any human collectivity as such. |
| 1975 | Vahakn Dadrian, Armenian sociologist | Genocide is the successful attempt by a dominant group, vested with formal authority and/or with preponderant access to the overall resources of power, to reduce by coercion or lethal violence the number of a minority group whose ultimate extermination is held desirable and useful and whose respective vulnerability is a major factor contributing to the decision for genocide. |
| 1976 | Irving Louis Horowitz, sociologist | a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus. …Genocide represents a systematic effort over time to liquidate a national population, usually a minority… functions as a fundamental political policy to assure conformity and participation of the citizenry. |
| 1981 | Leo Kuper, genocide scholar | I shall follow the definition of genocide given in the Convention. This is not to say that I agree with the definition. On the contrary, I believe a major omission to be in the exclusion of political groups from the list of groups protected. In the contemporary world, political differences are at the very least as significant a basis for massacre and annihilation as racial, national, ethnic or religious differences. Then too, the genocides against racial, national, ethnic or religious groups are generally a consequence of, or intimately related to, political conflict. However, I do not think it helpful to create new definitions of genocide, when there is an internationally recognized definition and a Genocide Convention which might become the basis for some effective action, however limited the underlying conception. But since it would vitiate the analysis to exclude political groups, I shall refer freely…to liquidating or exterminatory actions against them. |
| 1982 | Jack Nusan Porter, Ukrainian American sociologist | Genocide is the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, by a government or its agents, of a racial, sexual, religious, tribal or political minority. It can involve not only mass murder, but also starvation, forced deportation, and political, economic and biological subjugation. Genocide involves three major components: ideology, technology, and bureaucracy/organization. |
| 1984 | Yehuda Bauer, Israeli historian and Holocaust scholar | the planned destruction, since the mid-nineteenth century, of a racial, national, or ethnic group as such, by the following means: selective mass murder of elites or parts of the population; elimination of national culture and religious life with the intent of "denationalization"; enslavement, with the same intent; destruction of national economic life, with the same intent; biological decimation through the kidnapping of children, or the prevention of normal family life, with the same intent…. the planned physical annihilation, for ideological or pseudo-religious reasons, of all the members of a national, ethnic, or racial group. |
| 1987 | Tony Barta, historian | My conception of a genocidal society—as distinct from a genocidal state—is one in which the bureaucratic apparatus might officially be directed to protect innocent people but in which a whole race is nevertheless subject to remorseless pressures of destruction inherent in the very nature of the society. |
| 1987 | Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski | Genocide is the deliberate, organized destruction, in whole or in large part, of racial or ethnic groups by a government or its agents. It can involve not only mass murder, but also forced deportation, systematic rape, and economic and biological subjugation. |
| 1988 | Henry Huttenbach | Genocide is any act that puts the very existence of a group in jeopardy. |
| 1988 | Helen Fein, sociologist | Genocide is a series of purposeful actions by a perpetrator to destroy a collectivity through mass or selective murders of group members and suppressing the biological and social reproduction of the collectivity. This can be accomplished through the imposed proscription or restriction of reproduction of group members, increasing infant mortality, and breaking the linkage between reproduction and socialization of children in the family or group of origin. The perpetrator may represent the state of the victim, another state, or another collectivity. |
| 1988 | Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr, professors of political science | the promotion and execution of policies by a state or its agents which result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a group … the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality. |
| 1990 | Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn | Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator. |
| 1990 | John L. P. Thompson and Gail A. Quets | In short, given the problems which arise from restrictions, we define genocide as the destruction of a group by purposive action. This allows the role of intentional action to be explored, different subtypes of genocide to be compared, and the impact of different factors on genocide to be examined empirically. |
| 1993 | Helen Fein | Genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim. |
| 1994 | Steven T. Katz, Jewish philosopher and scholar | the actualization of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in its totality any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means. |
| 1994 | Israel W. Charny, psychologist and genocide scholar | Genocide in the generic sense means the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defencelessness of the victim. |
| 1996 | Irving Louis Horowitz, sociologist | Genocide is herein defined as a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus …. Genocide mean the physical dismemberment and liquidation of people on large scales, an attempt by those who rule to achieve the total elimination of a subject people. |
| 2002 | Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court | Article 6 of the Rome Statute provides that "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such 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. |
| 2003 | Barbara Harff | Genocides and politicides are the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents—or, in the case of civil war either of the contending authorities—that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group. |
| 2005 | Mark Levene, historian | Genocide occurs when a state, perceiving the integrity of its agenda to be threatened by an aggregate population—defined by the state as an organic collectivity, or series of collectivities—seeks to remedy the situation by the systematic, en masse physical elimination of that aggregate, in toto, or until it is no longer perceived to represent a threat. |
| 2007 | Martin Shaw, sociologist | Genocide is a form of violent social conflict or war, between armed power organizations that aim to destroy civilian social groups and those groups and other actors who resist this destruction. Genocidal action is action in which armed power organizations treat civilian social groups as enemies and aim to destroy their real or putative social power, by means of killing, violence and coercion against individuals whom they regard as members of the groups. |
| 2013 | Adrian Gallagher | hen a collective source of power intentionally uses its power base to implement a process of destruction in order to destroy a group, in whole or in substantial part, dependent upon relative group size. |
| 2017 | John Cox, historian | Genocide is the concerted, coordinated effort to destroy any human group or collectivity as it is defined by the perpetrator. We recognize that most humans possess identities that evolve and overlap, and also that societies have invented many of the most commonly held identities, such as race. That is why we emphasize “as it is defined by the perpetrator.” Groups that have suffered genocidal violence have usually been identified by “race” or “ethnicity,” nation, religion, political identity, or by social class or membership in other social groupings, such as those defined by sexual orientation or gender identity. It is essential therefore to avoid creating a restrictive list of potential victim groups. Genocide differs from other mass crimes against humanity and atrocities by its ambition. Genocide aims to not only eliminate individual members of the targeted group but to destroy the group’s ability to maintain its social and cultural cohesion and, thus, its existence as a group. Because perpetrators very rarely provide explicit statements of genocidal intent, this intent can be uncovered by examining policies, actions, and outcomes, as well as the guiding ideology. |