What is the meaning of genocide?

Generally speaking, the word genocide is a recently (post European wars of the first half of the 20th century) coined term consisting of the combination the Greek word genos–referring to race or tribe, and the Latin word cide–to kill), to capture one of the motivating supremacist impulses behind many of the mass killings of the century: killing an entire racial or ethnic group of people. This basic definition was formalized in the international treaty dealing with such crime--the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948). The legal definition of genocide, as in Article 2 of the convention, then, refers to “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.” Nearly half a century later, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (in Article 6), defined  Genocide as follows:

> For the purpose of this Statute, “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.

The common elements in all these definitions are these:

– The targeting of an identifiable social group, – The intent to carry out the event – The event is designed to destroy or degrade the social group

Because intent is generally hard to prove short of the existence of explicit policy and statements to such effect, genocide charges are hard to pursue and in most cases charges with offenses that are easier to prove, such as crimes against humanity are filed in courts or tribunals.