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10 - Genocide

Robert Cryer ,
Håkan Friman ,
Darryl Robinson  and
Elizabeth Wilmshurst
Robert Cryer
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Håkan Friman
Affiliation:
University College London
Darryl Robinson
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Elizabeth Wilmshurst
Affiliation:
Chatham House
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Summary

Introduction

Overview

Genocide, as General Assembly resolution 96(1) declared, ‘is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings’. It is a crime simultaneously directed against individual victims, the group to which they belong, and human diversity.

The legal concept of genocide is narrowly circumscribed, the term ‘genocide’ being reserved in law for a particular subset of atrocities which are committed with the special intent to destroy groups, even if colloquially the word is used for any large-scale killings. Most of the crimes committed by the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia in 1975–78 and the instances of ‘ethnic cleansing’ carried out in the countries of former Yugoslavia in the 1990s are examples of atrocities which do not readily fit within the narrow definition, however dreadful the scale of the suffering they caused. A decision that a particular atrocity is not ‘genocide’ does not of course remove the moral or legal guilt for conduct that falls within the definition of other international crimes. Many acts which do not constitute genocide will constitute crimes against humanity.

The special intent that is a necessary element of the crime, that of intending to destroy a group, marks it out from all other international crimes. This explains why genocide has a particular seriousness, and has been referred to as the ‘crime of crimes’.

Type
Chapter
Information
An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure , pp. 165 - 186
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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References

Antonio Cassese, ‘Genocide’ in Cassese, A., Gaeta, P. and Jones, J. R. W. D. (eds.), The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (Oxford, 2002) 335.Google Scholar
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Quigley, John, The Genocide Convention: An International Law Analysis (Aldershot, 2006).Google Scholar
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Malcolm Shaw, ‘Genocide in International Law’ in Dinstein, Yoram (ed.), International Law at a Time of Perplexity (Dordrecht, 1989) 797.Google Scholar
Shelton, Dinah (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity (Farmington Mills, 2005), vols. I–III.Google Scholar

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