Genocide

The jurist Raphael Lemkin, a Polish scholar of international law, coined the legal concept of genocide in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He subsequently played an important role in the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal trials of Nazi war criminals, and he lobbied at the United Nations during its debate on genocide. This concluded with General Assembly Resolution 96 (Dec. 11, 1946): “genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices are punishable.”

People generally consider genocide one of the worst moral crimes a government 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 every Jew everywhere—to destroy Jews as a group. This murder of between five and six million Jews became the paradigm case of genocide. As the world also learned about other genocides, jurists and officials attempted through the United Nations to make genocide an international crime and to bring its perpetrators to justice. As a result, in 1948, the UN approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (in force in 1951), which in 2006 had 137 ratifying states.

International Criminal Court

The International Criminal Court (ICC), created by treaty in 1998 (Rome Statute) to adjudicate the crime of genocide and other international crimes, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, entered into force in 2002 and had 104 state parties in 2006, but not the United States. The ICC may indict, try, and punish individuals, no matter how important their political rank, for committing genocide. According to article 6 of the ICC statute, this crime involves any of the following acts when they are aimed at destroying part or all of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group:

killing,

causing “serious bodily or mental harm,”

deliberately inflicting “conditions of life” meant to bring about physical destruction,

preventing births, or

forcibly transferring children to another group.

The ICC statute elaborates most aspects of the court's procedure and clarifies the crime of genocide. First, the perpetrator can be a government, its military, an international organization, such as a UN peacekeeping one or NATO, or a terrorist group or guerrilla organization. Second,individuals cause genocide; the ICC will prosecute individuals for genocide, no matter what authority condones or plans it. The ICC has the authority to issue international warrants for an individual's arrest, trial, and assessment of punishment. Third, the perpetrator's intent is paramount, which the court may infer from an individual's conduct. Fourth, genocide is limited to national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups—groups that one may be born into and that in most cases are considered indelible. In the case of a religious group, which one may choose to leave as an adult, people infrequently do so and one may nonetheless remain identified with the religious group by virtue of physical or cultural characteristics, as is often the case with Jews. The crime ...