Genocide

In general terms, the word "genocide" is used to refer to instances in which one group or nation sets about systematically exterminating a specific ethnic, racial, national, or religious population. It is undoubtedly true that such killings have happened all throughout history, but genocide as a term did not come into existence until near the end of World War II (1939–45). The horrors of the Holocaust, the Nazi German campaign of extermination of Jews, Roma, LGBTQ+ people, individuals with disabilities, and a wide variety of others, led scholars and commentators to seek a new language to describe what had occurred. Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent, coined the term "genocide" to describe the Nazi atrocities. Genocide combines the prefix geno-, from the Greek term for race or tribe, with the suffix -cide, from the Latin term for killing.

In the years following World War II, genocide was used as a descriptive term by scholars, commentators, and prosecutors. In particular, the prosecutors at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg (an international trial in which Nazi officials were tried for their participation in atrocities) used the term genocide to describe the acts encompassed by the charge "crimes against humanity." In 1948, genocide as a concept took on a more permanent life when the United Nations (UN) established the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This international treaty document defined genocide as an international crime that nations can attempt to prevent and punish.

Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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 (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1948, ¶ 3).

While the Convention has made it possible for the International Criminal Court to prosecute individuals who participate in the commission of genocide, not much success has been had in terms of preventing genocide. In part, this is because it remains hard to predict when genocide will occur. Perhaps more important, however, is the fact that genocides frequently occur within an individual nation's borders, and the international community is often reluctant to interfere in what it sees as an internal matter.

Examples of genocide date back thousands of years. Numerous instances of genocide occurred in the twentieth century; the deadliest of these was the Holocaust, a term referring to Nazi Germany's extermination campaign against Jewish people, Roma people, and other groups the Nazis considered undesirable. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, genocides also occurred in Bosnia, Rwanda, Armenia, Darfur, Myanmar, and numerous other countries.

Episodes of Genocide

Genocide was not a rare phenomenon in the twentieth century, and issues related to genocide continued into the twenty-first century. In the twentieth century, a number of episodes of genocide occurred.

Since the Holocaust is the episode of genocide that sparked the invention of the term itself, it has had a central place in the study of genocide. The Holocaust, sometimes called the Shoah, refers to the period between 1933 and 1945 in Europe, during which the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, consolidated its political power in Germany; invaded and subjugated other European nations; and systematically exterminated Jews, Roma, LGBTQ+ individuals, those with mental and physical disabilities, and various political prisoners such as Catholic priests, resistance fighters, Communists, and dissident intellectuals. It is estimated that the Nazis killed six million Jews as well as several million others. Some died due to forced overcrowding in ghettos, where they succumbed to disease and starvation. Others were executed by roving death squads or were imprisoned in concentration camps where they died from starvation, disease, or overwork. A key element of the Nazi extermination campaigns was the development of gas chambers in which large numbers of prisoners could be killed at once through the application of Zyklon-B, a pesticide.

There have been several instances of genocide in the years since the Holocaust ended, occurring in nations all across the globe. Two of the most notable episodes occurred in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda. In 1991, the Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) was comprised of a majority of Bosniaks (Muslims), Serbs, and Croats. When Bosnia declared its independence in 1992, Serbs objected to a new state with a Muslim majority and began attacking Bosniaks in what would be termed “ethnic cleansing.” From 1992 through 1995, over one hundred thousand people were killed, mostly Bosniaks; one of the most infamous acts of genocide against Bosniaks during this time was the Srebrenica Massacre, the July 1993 killing of over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serbian separatists. A number of individuals were later convicted of genocide for their actions in this conflict.

The Rwandan genocide also has its roots in the political boundaries of the nation. During the years when Rwanda was a Belgian colony, the colonial government differentiated between two ethnic groups, the Hutus and the Tutsis. These differentiations led to resentment and an ongoing civil war. A ceasefire intended to end the violent conflict was reached in 1993. However, in 1994 the Rwandan president's plane was shot down, and this event triggered genocidal action. Hutus, including civilians, were encouraged to kill their Tutsi neighbors. The Rwandan genocide lasted from April 7 through July 15, 1994. Despite clear indications a genocide was occurring, Rwanda was virtually abandoned by the international community. To remain uninvolved and not responsible for intervention or supplying aid, the United States refused to term what was happening in Rwanda as a “genocide.” Up to one million people were killed, despite the presence of a UN force that had little ability to intervene.

While most commentators agree that the Holocaust and the events in Bosnia and Rwanda qualify as genocide, there is more controversy over other episodes. The existence of a clear definition of genocide as laid out by the UN Convention has not made people any more likely to agree. For instance, many activists and scholars have argued that the deaths that occurred among Indigenous populations during periods of colonization as well as those that occurred during the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the period during which Africans were enslaved and transported to the Americas, represent episodes of genocide. These controversies are often shaped by the maxim that "the victors write the history." In other words, these activists and scholars argue that large numbers of people recognize the Holocaust as an episode of genocide because Nazi Germany lost the war and the victorious Allies were able to publicize the Nazi regime's crimes against humanity and hold the perpetrators accountable. In contrast, Great Britain, Belgium, the United States, and other nations that have been accused of genocides during the colonial era have little motivation to assume responsibility for their role in these deaths because, as dominant powers, they have framed discussions about them.

An example that might make this problem of identifying genocide clearer is the Armenian Genocide, which refers to the actions of the government of the Ottoman Empire (later modern-day Turkey) in Armenia, a small country wedged between Turkey and Azerbaijan, during and just after World War I (1914–8). After protracted conflicts between Turkey and Russia over their respective national borders, which lay in territory occupied by Armenians, a new Turkish government arose in 1908. Seven years later, in the midst of World War I, which saw the Ottoman Empire fight against Russia and is allies, this new government began a campaign of systematically murdering or expelling Armenians. Many were killed outright; others were forced to march until they died. By 1923, Western Armenia was emptied of Armenians. Some fled to seek refuge in other nations, but over a million were killed. However, during the twenty-first century, the Turkish government, which emerged following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, continued to claim that no genocide occurred. Due to their reluctance to anger Turkey, which is seen as a valuable ally, few other nations have recognized this episode as genocide either. In total, only thirty-two countries recognize the events in Armenia as genocide in 2023.

One of the most controversial episodes of genocide that dominated the early twenty-first century were the events in Darfur, a region in the western part of Sudan that borders Egypt in northern Africa. A group called the Janjaweed, a militia comprising nomadic Arabic tribes from northern Sudan, began systematically killing and expelling non-Arab populations from Darfur. While the Sudanese government claimed that it was not supporting the Janjaweed, there was evidence suggesting that the government provided financial and military resources to the militia. This instance of genocide was precipitated by decades of civil war as well as a severe drought that intensified land conflicts between and religious ethnic groups. Between the beginning of the conflict in 2003 and 2020, it was estimated by World Without Genocide that over 480,000 people were killed; as many as 2.8 million people were displaced. Many of the displaced lived in refugee camps in neighboring nations. While many advocacy groups were active in drawing attention to Darfur, international governments remained undecided about whether to treat this episode as a genocide or as a civil war. In 2011, the Republic of South Sudan was created in an attempt to end the conflict but violence, exacerbated by further droughts, continued to facilitate conflict in Darfur into the 2020s.

Another widely-publicized genocide of the twenty-first century was carried out against the Rohingya people, a Muslim minority historically located in the Buddhist-majority country of Myanmar (known as Burma until 1989). By the 1970s, the Rohingya had begun experiencing discrimination at the hands of Myanmar's government as well as violence carried out by the country's military, known as the Tatmadaw. This pattern of discrimination escalated in 2017 when Buddhist extremists allied with Myanmar's military to engage in what many in the international community later labeled as genocide and ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled the country as a campaign of mass killings, rape, and destruction of villages targeted Rohingya communities in Rakhine State, home to much of Myanmar's Rohingya community. By the 2020s many Rohingya refugees were living as displaced persons in neighboring countries, including Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya lived in the world's largest refugee camp at that time, known as Kutupalong. A case against Myanmar was opened at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2019 and by 2023 numerous foreign countries, including France, the United States, Canada, and Turkey, and international bodies, including the United Nations, had declared the Myanmar military's actions against the Rohingya to be a genocide. By that time the most conservative estimates placed the number of people killed in the Rohingya genocide at 9,000. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya remained under oppression and threat of serious violence in Myanmar, where many lived as internally displaced persons (IDPs), and hundreds of thousands of Rohingya faced dire living conditions in refugee camps in Bangladesh and elsewhere.

What Makes Genocide Possible?

Sociologists and other scholars who study genocide are particularly interested in understanding what makes genocide possible. If a model could be developed to predict when and where genocide would happen, it would make it much easier for the international community to take advanced action to prevent genocide from occurring. Such a model does not yet exist. However, scholars have proposed a variety of explanations that help to explain what might make genocide possible.

Some scholars have argued that genocide occurs because of unique flaws within the particular nation or population committing genocide. For instance, in his book "The Germans," German sociologist Norbert Elias argued that the Holocaust occurred because of cultural attributes unique to Germany (1996). Elias argued that the culture of violence and dueling in Germany, the code of honor governing social life, and the rigid and authoritarian personality of German individuals led to the development of the Nazi party and, ultimately, the Holocaust. This sort of argument tends to be reassuring, as it assumes that there is something unique about groups that will engage in genocide. As a society, most people do not like to think that they could be likely to participate in genocide. However, the historical record shows that many episodes of genocide have occurred. If it were true that genocide occurs because the unique attributes of a nation, it is unlikely that so many could have occurred within such a short period of time. Additionally, the roots and causes of the Holocaust are complex and need to take into account the history of Jews in Germany, the rise of Nazism and its promotion of German nationalism following World War I, and many other historical factors.

Other scholars argue that the development of modernity made genocide possible. While it is true that some episodes of genocide occurred prior to the modern era, it was logistically much harder for one population to systematically exterminate another. In fact, the dynamics of these mass killings were quite different from those of today. In the pre-modern era, a nation that wished to oppress another nation might choose to kill the population, but it also might choose another form of oppression, such as slavery or forced conversion and assimilation. In part, this distinction arises from the difference between xenophobia, or fear of foreigners, which was a key element of ethnic relations in the pre-modern world, and the modern development of racial ideologies. Racial ideologies allow nations to distinguish between different groups of foreigners and declare some fit for continued existence and others for extermination. Furthermore, they encourage nations to see foreigners as essentially or biologically different and thus unfit for assimilation.

Another aspect of modernity is the development of advanced technologies for extermination. Committing genocide effectively requires the availability of surveillance technologies like censuses and personal identification cards so that those singled out for extermination can be located—both of which were relevant during the Holocaust and Rwandan genocides. It also requires the availability of effective and efficient technologies with which individuals can be killed. The Nazis developed many of these technologies, including racial censuses, personal identification cards, and gas chambers, as the Holocaust progressed. In contrast, in pre-modern societies without surveillance, it was easier for individuals to escape detection and thus survive an attempted genocide. Before the development of bombs, accurate guns, and gas chambers, killing was much more individualized and slower—the Nazi death toll would have undoubtedly been lower in the absence of modern technology.

Still, all of the modern technology and racial ideology in the world cannot create genocide without a population that is willing or compliant enough to carry it out. Social scientists and historians since the Holocaust have been exploring what it takes to get people to participate in an atrocity. A variety of theories have been posited as to why populations participate in or actively ignore genocide. The reasons are contextual and have complex cultural and psychological indications. Some of the earliest of these studies were conducted by experimental psychologists Stanley Milgram, who found that 65 percent of his test subjects were willing to administer what they believed to be seriously harmful shocks to a confederate, and Phillip G. Zimbardo, who, by creating a simulated prison in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford University as part of what became known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, found that the personalities of psychologically "normal" college students were drastically altered as they carried out their assigned roles as guards and prisoners in the course of the experiment. Similar results were found by Christopher Browning, who studied the actions of a particular killing squad that operated in Poland during the Holocaust.

Responding to Genocide

Despite the fact that it occurs more often than we like to think, genocide remains an extreme event in human experience. Historians, artists, poets, novelists, and designers of memorials have all sought ways to memorialize and comprehend episodes of genocide. In addition, the victims of genocide, along with the international community, have sought ways to respond legally. These responses have varied, but there are three general forms that have been tried: perpetrator trials, reparations, and truth and reconciliation commissions.

Perpetrator Trials

The Nuremberg Trials after the Holocaust were the first perpetrator trials. At these trials, the international community came together to try those accused of perpetrating genocide during the Holocaust; as a result of the trials, numerous people who had been involved in the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes were sentenced to death or lengthy prison terms. More recently, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was established in the Hague in the Netherlands to serve as a permanent facility for trying those accused of perpetrating genocide as well as crimes against humanity and war crimes. While not all nations, including the United States, have ratified the treaty bringing the International Criminal Court into existence, it is engaged in several investigations and prosecutions. However, the lack of participation by some nations, coupled with the difficulties of international debates about issues like the death penalty — a penalty not assessed by the International Criminal Court — makes its work more difficult. Some survivors of genocide may also find that the trial process and its commitment to legal procedure do not properly represent survivors' experiences and their suffering.

The twenty-first century saw some successful convictions for genocide in international bodies designed to prosecute these types of crimes. For example, following a trial in the Hague carried out by a special UN body, Ratko Mladić, a Bosnian Serb involved in crimes against humanity during the Bosnian War (1992–5), was convicted on a number of charges, including war crimes and genocide, in 2017 and sentenced to life in prison. A special tribunal in Cambodia also successfully prosecuted a number of individuals involved in the Cambodian genocide, which was the killing of at least 1.5 million Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge, the communist regime headed by Pol Pot that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. This tribunal operated from 1997 until 2022.

During the twenty-first century, a number of attempts to prosecute alleged instances of genocide provoked significant debate over the effectiveness of international bodies designed to prosecute these types of crimes. For example, in a case filed in December 2023 with the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN body tasked with settling disputes between nations, South Africa alleged that Israel had committed genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza. This case came amid Israel's ongoing war in Gaza against Hamas, a Palestinian political and military organization responsible for carrying out a series of deadly terror attacks and kidnappings in Israel on October 7, 2023. South Africa argued that Israel, in its intense and deadly response to the October 7 attacks, had violated the 1948 Genocide Convention. As part of its argument, South Africa cited the Israeli military's killing of tens of thousands of civilians during its invasion of Gaza as well as other aspects of Israel's campaign, including the ongoing Israeli blockade that South Africa alleged contributed to worsening humanitarian conditions and skyrocketing food insecurity among the civilian population in Gaza. Additionally, South Africa's lawyers also alleged that some officials in Israel's government sought to permanently displace Gaza's Palestinian population. Israel denied these allegations, referring to the case as an act of "libel," and argued that its military campaign in Gaza was a legitimate military response to Hamas's attacks on Israeli territory. Israeli representatives also denied Israel was responsible for the dire humanitarian conditions in Gaza; for example, Israel argued that the high number of civilian casualties was due in large part to Hamas's decision to operate in civilian population centers.

In January 2024 the ICJ, as part of a preliminary ruling, ordered Israel to make greater efforts to reduce civilian casualties in Gaza but stopped short of ordering a ceasefire or labelling Israel's actions as genocidal. In March 2024 the ICJ also ordered Israel to immediately allow more food and other supplies to reach Gaza's population and avert what the ICJ alleged was a rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis that could result in famine. By that time dozens of other countries, including Ireland, Egypt, Brazil, and Turkey had expressed support for South Africa's case.

Reparations

Others believe that survivors deserve compensation for their suffering and advocate for reparations as another legal method of response to genocide. Reparations refer to the idea that individual survivors and their descendants should receive payments to compensate for their losses. Reparations have been most notable in the case of the Holocaust but have been used in other situations as well. Not all situations involving reparations have been genocides. For instance, the United States paid reparations to Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps during World War II, and activists have argued that the United States should also pay reparations to the descendants of those brought here as slaves. Germany also paid reparations to Holocaust survivors on multiple occasions between 1945 and the 2020s. Despite the fact that reparations do offer tangible benefits to survivors and their descendants, they have remained controversial. Among the many objections to reparations that Christian Pross outlined in his book 1998 Paying for the Past are the ideas that suffering cannot be so easily quantified, that reparations allow the offenders to assuage their own guilt, and that reparations create a situation in which survivors are re-victimized and made dependent upon the country that tried to kill them.

Truth & Reconciliation Commission

A final and more modern method of responding to genocide is the truth and reconciliation commission. South Africa developed the first truth and reconciliation commission in the aftermath of the severe segregation system known as Apartheid that was legally enforced in the country between 1948 and 1990 and known as apartheid. Truth and reconciliation commissions function as hearings in which perpetrators of genocide admit openly to their crimes in return for a guarantee that they will not face criminal prosecution. Though some argue that this approach allows perpetrators to avoid being punished for their crimes, truth and reconciliation commissions do allow for the possibility of communal healing, and they do allow survivors to have their voices heard. Rwanda used this approach in response to genocide.

Scholarly Understandings of Genocide & the Holocaust

Scholars of genocide often struggle with how to understand comparisons between the Holocaust and other instances of genocide. As noted above, the Holocaust was the episode that lead to the development of the concept of genocide; it also had the highest death toll of any modern genocide. These distinctions have led some scholars to argue that the Holocaust is different from other genocides and that it should be considered apart from them. However, others argue that the Holocaust followed a pattern similar to other genocides and that seeing it as different trivializes other genocides that have had equally devastating effects on targeted communities. Partially for this reason, the academic discipline that studies genocide is often called "Holocaust and Genocide Studies" so as to avoid taking a side in this dispute.

Terms & Concepts

Ethnic Group: Ethnic groups are groups of people who see themselves as sharing some sort of common ancestry, identity, and/or culture.

Holocaust: The word "Holocaust" derives from the Greek term meaning "completely burnt." It generally refers to the period between 1933 and 1945 when Nazi Germany exterminated six million Jews and several million others. Some scholars have expanded the term to include the extermination of other non-Jewish people, like Roma, communists, and people with disabilities, whom the Nazi party also deemed "undesirable."

International Criminal Court: An international tribunal established in 2002 in The Hague, Netherlands, to prosecute individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes.

Modernity: Modernity refers to the period of human history ranging roughly from the end of the Middle Ages until the mid to late twentieth century. Modernity is marked by four primary characteristics: rapid and extensive social change, a new set of social institutions, the de-localization of social relations, and the development of new technologies that allow for increased standardization and surveillance.

Nazis: The German National Socialist German Workers' Party. It came to power in Germany under Adolf Hitler and perpetrated the Holocaust.

Nuremberg Trials: A series of trials in which Nazi officials were prosecuted for their involvement in crimes against humanity, including genocide, and war crimes. The trials were held in Nuremberg, Germany between 1945 and 1949 and were presided over by officials from the United States, France, Russia, and Great Britain.

Romani people/Roma: An ethnic group with origins in South Asia who traditionally led a nomadic lifestyle. Widespread persecution and marginalization of Roma people, including the use of the derogatory term "gypsy," continued in many countries during the twenty-first century.

Shoah: A Hebrew word meaning "calamity" that is the preferred term for the Holocaust in Israel and among some scholars.

United Nations Convention on the Prevention & Punishment of Genocide: An international treaty that established the concept of genocide in international law and authorized member nations of the United Nations to seek to prevent and punish it.

Xenophobia: Literally, "fear of foreigners." Figuratively, it is used to refer to situations in which members of an ethnic group or a nation are prejudiced against or feel superior to other ethnic groups or nations.

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