The legal term “genocide” refers to certain acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Genocide is an international crime, according to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). The acts that constitute genocide fall into five categories:
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
Although the term “genocide” is often used, its commission is rare when compared to other serious crimes that are not defined by an intent to destroy a targeted group, such as crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, coined the word genocide in 1944 and made it his mission to compel nations to prevent it from occurring in the future. US Holocaust Memorial Museum, gift of United Nations
Origin of the Term Genocide
The word “genocide” did not exist prior to World War II. It is a specific term coined in 1942 by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900–1959) and first used in print in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.
Genocide as an International Crime
After the Holocaust, the word “genocide” was established as a legal term for a specifically defined international crime.
This Section
Find information on historical cases of genocide and other atrocities.