In 1944, lawyer Raphäel Lemkin finalised decades of work and research and coined the term “genocide”. This gave a name to the horrors he had witnessed first-hand living in Poland during the Nazi Occupation and invasion. In combining the Greek word genos (people), and the Latin root “-cide” (to kill), Lemkin was able to identify and verbalise the distinct evil that we recognise as genocide.

Three years after Lemkin coined the term, the United Nations (UN) provided a specific legal definition in article 2 of General Assembly Resolution 260, which states:

Genocide means 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.

Today, the use of a particular definition and term to identify the crime we know as genocide is being challenged by scholars, legal experts, and international institutions. Fundamental problems arise out of issues inherent in the word itself, its definition, and use in discourse.

SOCIAL DEATH

Israel Charny—along with other scholars on genocide—has espoused the need for a generic usage of the term genocide meaning an event that must involve killing. The issue with this, however, is that if genocide is only thought of in the context of killing or physical harm, then the numerous instances wherein cultures, attitudes, or ideas are deliberately erased are ignored. This is not to equate the crime of murder with that of cultural destruction, but it must be said that there are cases wherein the identities of individuals and the inability to express essential tenets of their communities or beliefs is as much a social evil as that of mass killing.

Feminist philosopher Claudia Card instead introduced the concept of “social death,” a distinct evil that infects all members and the future of the persecuted group, not just those who have died. Victims of genocide and social death find themselves in circumstances in which their social group is cut off from society through persecution, ridicule, or restriction and is thereby unable to participate in establishing social connections or decision-making. Their identities and very ability to function in society are questioned, eventually rendering them vulnerable outcasts ripe for violence. This is evident in the expulsion and continued persecution of the Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar’s Rakhine state and in the ongoing destruction of mosques and internment of Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang province of China.

Denied the rights of freedom of expression, citizenship, and political participation, groups like the Rohingya and the Uyghur are left vulnerable to genocidal acts, and their suffering is often ignored until it is realised in the mass graves that have typified previous instances of genocide.

Whilst the quantitative measurements for genocide, such as body counts, are important from a social science perspective, they are far too often put at the forefront of discourse surrounding genocide to the exclusion of other perspectives. In this vein, Card offers an important supplement to the current narrative. Perhaps because of the composition of the term itself, genocide is frequently thought of only in the context of corporeal violence and killing, or “-cide”. However, this lens is too narrow to fully encapsulate what individuals and groups actually undergoing genocide experience as their cultures, traditions, and communities are desecrated.

In the aftermath of the Bosnian genocide in 1995, in which Serbian forces in Srebrenica massacred thousands of ethnic Bosnian Muslims, the families of the victims were often left without bodies to bury and without mosques in which to pray or gather. The surviving members of the ethnic group were stripped of the foundations of the very community that made up the persecuted social group.

Whilst some members of a persecuted group continue to exist in the corporeal sense, their rituals, relationships, and very ability to function as members of a community are destroyed long after the killing has ceased. Without adequate legal recourse, their pain and suffering are obscured or forgotten. As Card argues, human beings exist insofar as they are connected to and recognised by the societies in which they participate. What remains if that society rejects, alienates, or even seeks to deprive them of their livelihoods?    

PRIORITISING INCLUSION, NOT INTENT

The second issue arises out of the established definition for genocide. At present, the definition of genocide is limited to “national, ethnic, racial or religious” groups. This ignores the historical reality that genocides are often committed across intersectional boundaries, which include gender, political, and socio-economic groups. For example, political and gender groups are not included, despite the historical reality of genocides committed against them. Moreover, this narrow definition is liable to create a colourable pretext of sorts, which excludes specific groups and dissolves the intersectionality of violence and oppression that members of overlapping groups face. At present, to say what genocide is inherently implies what genocide is not, and this limitation obscures the unique experiences of individuals and groups who experience violence that we may otherwise deem genocide. As noted by Dr. Jim Snow, an editor for the Journal of Perpetrator Research, “any essentialist definition will serve both to include and exclude from consideration any number of events”.

The current limited definition not only excludes groups from recognition, but prevents them from seeking legitimate legal recourse. Additionally, if a situation fails to align with the current definition, instances of violence and events that would colloquially be referred to as genocide are omitted from legal recognition. Snow refers back to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language in an attempt to deal with this issue by arguing that the use of language can be far more important than the language itself. Lemkin intended to use the term genocide to stop instances of killing and mass murder that occur on the basis of what a group is perceived to be rather than who they are and yet the resulting definition is exclusionary in the legal sense. Observers and scholars of genocide may do better to depart from the hegemonic, legal lens through which it is discussed in order to avoid obscuring the complexities involved in instances of genocide and mass atrocities.

POLITICAL QUANDARIES

The third and final issue in using the term genocide is one of narratives and discourse. Given that a declaration of genocide is, first and foremost, a political statement, it has become a tool of propaganda on the international stage. As stated by Jacques Semelin, the term can also be used as a moral and psychological weapon against an enemy. For example, the Serbs of Kosovo have claimed to be the victims of a new genocide by the Albanians since the mid-1980s, and delegates of the Conference of Durban in 2001 accused Israel of perpetrating a “real” genocide against the Palestinian people. As a result, the word is sometimes used as a symbolic shield to construct the identity of the victim, just as a sword is drawn against an enemy.

Even today, the use of the word genocide is highly controversial in international institutions like the UN, wherein state and non-state actors are resistant to using it for fear of alienating allies or adversaries on a diplomatic platform. Few states in history have been willing to accept responsibility for their past genocidal actions. Any new draft of a definition clearly defining genocide would likely accompany a mandate for interference modeled perhaps on the Responsibility to Protect, which stands at odds with political motives and principles of sovereignty.

These obstacles and tensions give rise to an important conversation as to whether the word genocide is still relevant or broad enough to encapsulate all the instances of barbarity that the word embodies in the colloquial sense. Unfortunately, at present, the debate surrounding genocide has become occupied by semantics, politics, and narratives rather than centering upon the genocides and their victims.          

Alexandra Smith is a recent graduate of Loyola University Maryland where she studied Political Science and Philosophy. Alexandra is an incoming Master's student at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium where she will focus on European Union governance and foreign policy. Her research and academic interests include international relations, game theory, genocide studies, and continental philosophy.

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