Genocide is generally considered one of the worst moral crimes a government (meaning any ruling authority, including that of a guerrilla group, a quasi state, a Soviet, a terrorist organization, or an occupation authority) can commit against its citizens or those it controls.

The major reason for this is what the world learned about the Holocaust, the systematic attempt of German authorities during World War II to kill all and every Jew no matter where found-to destroy Jews as a group. This murder of between 5 to 6 million Jews became the paradigm case of genocide and underlies the word's origin. As the world also learned about other genocides, there was an international attempt through the United Nations to make genocide an international crime and to bring its perpetrators to justice. Thus in 1948 it approved and proposed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (UHCG), and most recently states signed into being the International Criminal Court (ICC). As a crime, the UHCG defined genocide as the intention to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. The ICC accepts this definition, further elaborates it, provides broader jurisdiction, and can subject individuals regardless or status or rank to prosecution. Noteworthy is the fact that the ICC now covers not only genocide, but crimes against humanity that include, aside from genocide, government murder, extermination campaigns, enslavement, deportation, torture, rape, sexual slavery, enforced disappearance, and apartheid.

Genocide is also a subject of social science and scholarly study, but its legal definition does not easily allow for empirical and historical research. For this reason the definition of genocide for research purposes has, in essence, been of two types. One is the definition of genocide as the intention to murder people because of their group membership, even if political or economic. A second definition, which may also be called democide, is any intentional government murder of unarmed and helpless people for whatever reason.

Taking both social definitions into account, governments have murdered probably around 174 million people during the 20th Century. Most of this killing, perhaps around 110 million people, is due to communist governments, especially the USSR under Lenin and Stalin and their successors (62 million murdered), and China under Mao Tse-tung (35 million). Some other totalitarian or authoritarian governments are also largely responsible for this toll, particularly Hitler's Germany (21 million murdered) and Chiang Kai-chek's Nationalist government of China (about 10 million). Other governments that have murdered lesser millions include Khmer Rouge Cambodia, Japan, North Korea, Mexico, Pakistan, Poland, Russia, Turkey, Vietnam, and Tito's Yugoslavia.

Fundamentally, genocide is a product of the type of government a country has. There is a high correlation between the degree of democratic freedom a people enjoy and the likelihood that the government will commit democide. Modern democratic governments have committed virtually no domestic genocide. Those governments that commit the most genocide have been totalitarian governments, while those that committed lesser genocide have been partially or wholly authoritarian and dictatorial.

Regardless of type of government, the likelihood of genocide increases during their involvement in war, or when undergoing internal disruptions, as by revolution, rebellion, or foreign incursions. Such provides the cover and excuse for genocide. Regardless of war or peace, the motive for genocide may be to deal with a perceived threat to the government or its policies, to destroy those one hates or envies, to pursue the ideological transformation of society, to purify society, or to achieve economic or material gain.

Assuming a nondemocratic society, domestic genocide goes through eight stages, which are the classification of peoples into different categories, the symbolization by naming or characterizing them, dehumanization of members of the group, organizing to murder or exterminate members of the group, polarization of the moral distance between groups, preparation for a campaign of extermination, the actual genocide, and after the fact a denial that such was carried out.

Genocide is foremost an international crime for which individuals, no matter how high in authority, may be indicted, tried, and punished by the International Criminal Court (ICC). According to Article 6 of the ICC Statute, This crime involves, "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."


(Contributed by Abdi Zenebe)