Extermination

Extermination refers to the intentional mass murder of a group in part or in whole. Extermination includes “the intentional infliction of conditions of life…calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population”. Extermination was first tried at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945, during which many leaders of the Nazi Party were prosecuted for the many crimes against humanity that were committed during the Holocaust, including extermination. In 1998, the legal framework for prosecuting extermination was improved when the Rome Statute of the ICC was adopted, defining extermination and codifying the crime of extermination.In Article 7 (1) (b) of the Rome Statute, the following elements must be present to constitute extermination:The perpetrator [directly or indirectly] causes the death of one or more persons, including by intentionally inflicting life conditions calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.The conduct of the perpetrator took place as part of a mass killing of members of a civilian population.The conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.The perpetrator knew that the conduct was part of, or intended the conduct to be part of, a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.Extermination is one of the most heinous crimes against humanity, which are defined as acts of “widespread or systematic attack on any civilian”. As a crime against humanity, there is no requirement that the crime be committed during a time of war, and may occur in peacetime. Additionally, because extermination is a crime perpetrated against civilians, it does not usually apply to non-civilians or legitimate targets, such as members of an opposing military force.While there are similarities between the crimes of extermination and genocide, not all crimes of extermination may be considered a genocide. Genocide is a different crime against humanity that the United Nations recognized as a crime under international law in 1948. Genocide occurs when a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group is, in whole or in part, victimized through mass killing, serious physical or mental harm, conditions deliberately inflicted to bring about the physical destruction of the group, birth prevention, or the forcible transfer of children of the group to another group. (To learn more about genocide, visit the Q&A page and discussion of Genocide. Extermination may be considered a genocide if the victim population is targeted based on nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. An example of a crime of extermination that may not be considered a genocide would be the extermination of a political group. Another crime that may be prosecuted as a result of the events of an extermination may be the war crime of starvation, in which the perpetrators “intentionally deprive [the victims] of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population”, according to Article 14 of Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions. As widespread starvation may lead to extermination, these crimes may be connected when tried in international court.Many well-known examples of extermination have also been classified as genocides as a result of the circumstances surrounding them. These include the Holocaust, the Rwandan Genocide, the Cambodian Genocide, the Armenian Genocide, and the Bosnian Genocide. Today, extermination remains an issue in international politics and human rights discourse, as modern conflicts bring attention to potential examples of an ongoing extermination, such as the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.