Genocide Awareness and Prevention Fact Sheet
How Do You Define Genocide?
The term genocide was coined in 1943 by the Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who combined the Greek word “genos” (race or tribe) with the Latin word “cide” (to kill).
After witnessing the horrors of the Holocaust, in which every member of his family except his brother was killed, Dr. Lemkin campaigned to have genocide recognized as a crime under international law.
His efforts gave way to the adoption of the United Nations Genocide Convention, external in December 1948, which came into effect in January 1951.
Article Two of the convention defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 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
Why April’s the Right Month for Genocide Awareness
The world has witnessed nearly a century of genocides that began in April. Millions of people perished; cultures were destroyed; communities and nations were ruined.
It was in April 1915 that the Ottoman government began rounding up and murdering leading Armenian politicians, businessmen and intellectuals, a step that led to the extermination of more than a million Armenians.
In April 1933, the Nazis issued a decree paving the way for the “final solution,” the annihilation of 6 million Jews of Europe.
In April 1975, the Khmer Rouge entered Cambodia’s capital city and launched a four-year wave of violence, killing 2 million people.
In April 1992, the siege of Sarajevo began in Bosnia. It was the longest siege in modern history, and more than 10,000 people perished, including 1,500 children.
In April 1994, the plane carrying the president of Rwanda crashed and triggered the beginning of a genocide that killed more than 800,000 people in 100 days.
In April 2003, innocent civilians in Sudan’s Darfur region were attacked; 400,000 have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in a genocide that continues today.
Ethnic Cleansing vs. Genocide
The Politics Behind Labeling the Rohingya Crisis
On November 22, after some reluctance, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson joined the United Nations and United Kingdom in calling the current Rohingya crisis an “ethnic cleansing.”
Why is there a global unwillingness to label the Rohingya persecution by the Myanmar government and military as genocide?
There are three main reasons why “ethnic cleansing” is preferred as a label over “genocide.”
First, labeling a crisis “ethnic cleansing” has no legal implications—and hence is easier for states to deal with. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide has declared genocide to be a crime under international law, and defines it as “the intent to destroy an ethnic, national, racial or religious group.” Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, refers to the expulsion of a group from a certain area, but there is no treaty that determines its parameters. Even though the lines between ethnic cleansing and genocide are blurry, the former requires no domestic and international legal action. The label of ethnic cleansing, therefore, seems like a call for action but in reality is less politically charged, and is more like a “feel good” option for the international community.
Second, labeling an atrocity as ethnic cleansing is less time consuming. Historically, applying the label “genocide” takes decades. For example, the systematic killing of the Armenian people by the Ottoman Empire in 1915–1917 was first recognized as genocide by the United States in 1975 (though Alabama and Mississippi still do not recognize it). While 28 countries recognize the Armenian genocide, Turkey continues to reject the label. Similarly, the UN recognized the organized targeting and killing of the Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 as genocide in 2014—20 years after the atrocities. Just last week, Ratko Mladic, the “butcher of Bosnia,” was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity twenty years after committing the acts, and after a trial that took five years to conclude.
And third, ethnic cleansing opens the door for the United States to impose specific economic and military sanctions on Myanmar. The State Department is especially interested in pursuing sanctions against Myanmar’s government and military officials who are directly responsible for the atrocities. The problem is that sanctions are typically unsuccessful in changing state behavior, so even if the United States imposed specialized sanctions on Myanmar, it would do little to ease the plight of the Rohingyas. Targeted sanctions could also derail Myanmar’s already slow economic development, which is largely due to decades of oppressive military rule.