Genocide definitions include many scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin in 1944. The word is a compound of the ancient Greek word γένος (génos, 'genus', or 'kind') and the Latin word caedō ("kill"). 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 (CPPCG).
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; 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. This has been supported by later scholars. Jonassohn and Björnson go on to say that for various reasons, none of these alternative definitions have gained widespread support. Rouben Paul Adalian writing in 2002 also highlights the difficulty there has been in trying to develop a common definition for genocide among specialists.
According to Ernesto Verdeja, associate professor of political science and peace studies at the University of Notre Dame, there are three ways to conceptualise genocide other than the legal definition: in academic social science, in international politics and policy, and in colloquial public usage. The academic social science approach does not require proof of intent, and social scientists often define genocide more broadly. The international politics and policy definition centres around prevention policy and intervention and may actually mean "large-scale violence against civilians" when used by governments and international organisations. Lastly, Verdeja says the way the general public colloquially uses "genocide" is usually "as a stand-in term for the greatest evils". This is supported by political scientist Kurt Mundorff who highlights how to the general public genocide is "simply mass murder carried out on a grand scale".
Legal definition of genocide
The 1948 Genocide Convention defines genocide as any of five 'acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group'. The acts in question include killing members of the group, causing them serious bodily or mental harm, imposing living conditions intended to destroy the group, preventing births, and forcibly transferring children out of the group. Genocide is a crime of special intent (dolus specialis); it is carried out deliberately, with victims targeted based on real or perceived membership in a protected group. The genocides recognised under the 1948 legal definition that led to trials in international criminal tribunals are the Cambodian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, and the Srebrenica massacre.
Themes in definitions of genocide
Raphael Lemkin's original definition of genocide was broader than that later adopted by the United Nations; he focused on genocide as the 'destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups', including actions that led to the 'disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups'. Scholarly definitions vary, but there are three common themes: 'the violence or other action taken should be deliberate, organized, sustained, and large-scale', atrocities are selective for a distinguishable group, and 'the perpetrator takes steps to prevent the group from surviving or reproducing in a given territory'. The colloquial understanding of genocide is heavily influenced by the Holocaust as its archetype and is conceived as innocent victims targeted for their ethnic identity rather than for any political reason. Genocide is often considered the apex of criminality, worse than other atrocities that lead to an equal amount of civilian death and destruction.
The tension between law and history serves to clarify the variations in the interpretation of genocide legal definitions and popular discussion. Law focuses on serious acts, defining genocide with specific criteria and limited group protections, while historians explore the complexity of genocides without legal restrictions. They consider long-term processes, various motives, and the evolution of group identities after attacks.
List of definitions
| Date | Author | Definition |
|---|---|---|
| 1944 | Raphael Lemkin, Polish Jewish lawyer | New conceptions require new terms. By 'genocide' we mean the
destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by
the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made
from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide
(killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words as
tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc. 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 the 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. Genocide is
directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions
involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual
capacity, but as members of the national group.
(Axis Rule in Occupied Europe ix. 79) |
| 1945 | Count 3 of the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg Trials | They (the defendants) 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. |
| 1945 | Raphael Lemkin | It is for this reason that I took the liberty of inventing the word, genocide. The term is from the Greek word genes meaning tribe or race and the Latin cide
meaning killing. Genocide tragically enough must take its place in the
dictionary of the future beside other tragic words like homicide and
infanticide. As Von Rundstedt has suggested the term does not
necessarily signify mass killings although it may mean that.
More often it [Genocide] refers to a coordinated plan aimed at destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups so that these groups wither and die like plants that have suffered a blight. The end may be accomplished by the forced disintegration of political and social institutions, of the culture of the people, of their language, their national feelings and their religion. It may be accomplished by wiping out all basis of personal security, liberty, health and dignity. When these means fail the machine gun can always be utilized as a last resort. Genocide is directed against a national group as an entity and the attack on individuals is only secondary to the annihilation of the national group to which they belong. |
| 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. ("Genocide", American Scholar, Volume 15, no. 2 (April 1946), p. 227–230) |
| 1946 | United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96 (I) (11 December) | 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 (CPPCG) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). 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; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Article 2 CPPCG) |
| 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. (The Crime of State, Volume 2, Leiden, 1959, p. 125.) |
| 1960 | Nehemiah Robinson, lawyer and director of the Institute of Jewish Affairs of the World Jewish Congress | Genocide has been committed when acts of homicide are joined with a connecting purpose, i.e., directed against persons with specific characteristics (with intent to destroy the group or a segment thereof). |
| 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. (A Typology of Genocide) |
| 1976 | Irving Louis Horowitz, sociologist | [Genocide is] 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...[and] functions as a fundamental political policy to assure conformity and participation of the citizenry. (Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder) |
| 1981 | Leo Kuper, genocide scholar | I shall follow the definition of genocide given in the [UN] 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. (Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century) |
| 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 | [Genocide is] the planned destruction, since the mid-nineteenth century, of a racial, national, or ethnic group as such, by the following means: (a) selective mass murder of elites or parts of the population; (b) elimination of national (racial, ethnic) culture and religious life with the intent of "denationalization"; (c) enslavement, with the same intent; (d) destruction of national (racial, ethnic) economic life, with the same intent; (e) biological decimation through the kidnapping of children, or the prevention of normal family life, with the same intent.... [Holocaust is] 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. ("Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia", pp. 239–240.) (see also Australian genocide debate) |
| 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 (ethnic cleansing), systematic rape, and economic and biological subjugation. (Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Reissue of an early work.) |
| 1988 | Henry Huttenbach | Genocide is any act that puts the very existence of a group in jeopardy. ("Locating the Holocaust on the Genocide Spectrum: Towards a Methodology of Definition and Categorization", Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 289–303.) |
| 1988 | Helen Fein, sociologist | Genocide is a series of purposeful actions by a perpetrator(s) 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. (Genocide: A Sociological Perspective, London) |
| 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 ...[when] the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality. ("Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides", International Studies Quarterly, 37:3, 1988) |
| 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. (The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, Yale University Press) |
| 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. (Genocide and Social Conflict: A Partial Theory and Comparison, p. 248) |
| 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. (Genocide: A Sociological Perspective, 1993/1990) |
| 1994 | Steven T. Katz, American philosopher and scholar | [Genocide is] 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. (The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. 1, 1994) [Modified by Adam Jones in 2000 to read, "murder in whole or in substantial part…, in 2010 to read, "murder in whole or in part… "] |
| 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 defenselessness of the victim. (Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions ed. George Andreopoulos) |
| 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 (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. |
| 2002 | Rouben Paul Adalian, historian and director of the Armenian National Institute | [W]ithout constructing a dictionary definition, there are five elements that I find necessary to identify a specific atrocity as genocide: the commissioning party is the state, or any institution acting as the instrument of the state, proceeding in the avowed interest of the state; the objects of the policy, the victims, are civilians incapable of mounting an organized defense of their lives, families, and properties; the atrocity is on a scale such as to indicate a scheme by its architects for the wholesale extermination of a sizable segment of a population, if not an entire people, defined or self-defined as a distinct social community; that the objective is a permanent alteration of the demographic characteristics and composition of a defined geographic space; and that all of the above occur or are implemented over, historically-speaking, a short period of time. |
| 2003 | Barbara Harff, political scientist | 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 | Manus I. Midlarsky, political scientist | Genocide is understood to be the state-sponsored systematic mass murder of innocent and helpless men, women, and children denoted by a particular ethno-religious identity, having the purpose of eradicating this group from a particular territory. |
| 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. |
| 2005 | Jacques Sémelin, historian and political scientist | I will define genocide as that particular process of civilian destruction that is directed at the total eradication of a group, the criteria by which it is identified being determined by the perpetrator. |
| 2006 | Daniel Chirot and Clark McCauley | A genocidal mass murder is politically motivated violence that directly or indirectly kills a substantial proportion of a targeted population, combatants and noncombatants alike, regardless of their age or gender. |
| 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. |
| 2007 | Daniel Feierstein, social scientist | Genocide should be defined in broad and general terms as the execution of a large-scale and systematic plan with the intention of destroying a human group as such in whole or in part. (English translation, 2014) |
| 2009 | Donald Bloxham, historian | [Genocide is] the physical destruction of a large portion of a group in a limited or unlimited territory with the intention of destroying that group’s collective existence. |
| 2011 | Uğur Ümit Üngör, Dutch–Turkish historian, sociologist | Genocide can be defined as a complex process of systematic persecution and annihilation of a group of people by a government... We can speak of genocide when individuals are persecuted and murdered merely on the basis of their presumed or imputed membership in a group rather than on their individual characteristics or participation in certain acts. |
| 2013 | Adrian Gallagher, professor of mass atrocity prevention | Genocide is when a collective source of power (usually a State) intentionally uses its power base to implement a process of destruction in order to destroy a group (as defined by the perpetrator), in whole or in substantial part, dependent upon relative group size. |
| 2014 | Christopher Powell and Julia Peristerakis | We define genocide as the violent erasure of a collective identity and understand genocide as a multidimensional process that works through the destruction of the social institutions that maintain collective identity as well as through the physical destruction of human individuals. |
| 2017 | John Cox, historian | Genocide is the concerted, coordinated effort to destroy any human group or collectivity as it is defined by the perpetrator.
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. |
| 2017 | Maureen S. Hiebert, political scientist | [T]he intentional, systematic physical, biological, and/or cultural destruction of the members of a group in which the group is defined by the perpetrator. |
| 2024 | Thomas Earl Porter, historian | Genocide is the purposeful attempt to destroy any human group as defined by the genocidists. It is an effort to disrupt that group's social cohesion, thereby preventing its ability to maintain its cultural identity, and thus, its very existence as a group. |
Criticisms of definitions
Since the adoption of the CPPCG there has been criticism of the definition adopted. Common criticisms across definitions includes the focus on physical destruction, the defining of target groups, and the proportion of a group that needs to be affected to cross the threshold to be considered "genocide".
Christian Gerlach, professor of Modern History at the University of Bern, opposes the concept of genocide. His history of the Holocaust, The Extermination of the European Jews, does not use the term, and in a 2023 interview with the World Socialist Web Site he called genocide "an analytically worthless concept made for political purposes" and "an instrument of liberal imperialism".
In literature, some scholars have popularly emphasized the role that the Soviet Union played in excluding political groups from the international definition of genocide, which is contained in the Genocide Convention of 1948, and in particular they have written that Joseph Stalin may have feared greater international scrutiny of the political killings that occurred in the country, such as the Great Purge; however, this claim is not supported by evidence. The Soviet view was shared and supported by many diverse countries, and they were also in line with Raphael Lemkin's original conception, and it was originally promoted by the World Jewish Congress. By 1951, Lemkin was saying that the Soviet Union was the only state that could be indicted for genocide; his concept of genocide, as it was outlined in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, covered Stalinist deportations as genocide by default, and differed from the adopted Genocide Convention in many ways. From a 21st-century perspective, its coverage was very broad, and as a result, it would classify any gross human rights violation as a genocide, and many events that were deemed genocidal by Lemkin did not amount to genocide. As the Cold War began, this change was the result of Lemkin's turn to anti-communism in an attempt to convince the United States to ratify the Genocide Convention.
Historian Anton Weiss-Wendt has highlighted how much countries' own interest in not being prosecuted under the CPPCG led to changes to the final CPPCG adopted by the UN.
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