Genocide

Introduction Overview Genocide, as General Assembly resolution 96(1) declared, ‘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’. It is a crime simultaneously directed against individual victims, the group to which they belong, and human diversity. The legal concept of genocide is narrowly circumscribed, the term ‘genocide’ being reserved in law for a particular subset of atrocities which are committed with the special intent to destroy groups, even if colloquially the word is used for any large-scale killings. Most of the crimes committed by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in 1975–78 and the instances of ‘ethnic cleansing’ carried out in the countries of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s are examples of atrocities which do not readily fit within the narrow definition, however dreadful the scale of the suffering they caused. A decision that a particular atrocity is not ‘genocide’ does not of course remove the moral or legal guilt for conduct that falls within the definition of other international crimes. Many acts which do not constitute genocide will constitute crimes against humanity. The special intent that is a necessary element of the crime, that of intending to destroy a group, marks it out from all other international crimes. This explains why genocide has a particular seriousness, and has been referred to as the ‘crime of crimes’.