What Is Genocide?

Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) Article 2 as 'any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; deliberately inflicting on te 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.' This definition was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 (effective from 1951).
The linguistic roots of the word genocide are the Greek 'genos' meaning family, tribe or race and the Latin 'cide' from 'occidere', to massacre. Examples of genocide in history include: The Nanking Massacre of Chinese by the Japanese army in 1937-38; the Nazi Holocaust of Jews and other minority groups during World War II; the1995 Srebrenica massacre of Bosnian Muslims by Serbs; and the Rwandan massacre of Tutsi tribe members by the Hutu tribe in 1994.

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