GENOCIDE

the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, religious, political, or ethnic group. The word, from the Greek genos, meaning race, nation, or tribe, and the Latin cide, meaning killing, was coined after events in Europe in 193345 called for a legal concept to describe the deliberate destruction of large groups. Despite many historical incidents of genocide and the modern case of the massacre of Armenians by the Turks at the outbreak of World War I, there had been no attempt until after World War II to construct a legal framework through which the international community could deal with cases of mass extermination of peoples. In 1946, under the impact of revelations at the Nrnberg and other war-crimes trials, the General Assembly of the United Nations affirmed that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices are punishable. In 1948 the General Assembly approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which went into effect in 1951. The fact that under the convention genocide is a crime whether it is committed in time of peace or of war distinguishes it from the crimes against humanity, defined by the International Military Tribunal at Nrnberg as acts committed in connection with crimes against peace, or war crimes. Under the terms of the convention, 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: (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. Conspiracy, incitement, attempt, and complicity in genocide are also made punishable. Perpetrators may be punished whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials, or private individuals. They may be tried by a competent tribunal of the state in which the act was committed or by an international penal tribunal whose jurisdiction has been accepted by the contracting parties. One of the results of the convention has been the establishment of the principle that genocide, even if perpetrated by a government in its own territory, is not an internal matter (a matter essentially within the domestic jurisdiction) but a matter of international concern. Any contracting state may call upon the United Nations to intervene and to take such action as it considers appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide. See also Nrnberg trials.