What Is Genocide?
This is a brief article providing a contextual background for understanding the issues Operation Broken Silence works on. It is part of our resource list for students, teachers, and the curious and was last updated October 2025. For more information about what's happening in Sudan and our work, please sign up for our email list.
Genocide is an internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. These acts fall into five categories:
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
Photo: Raphael Lemkin (Wikimedia Commons)
Origin of the Term
In 1944, Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin created the term genocide. He formed the word by combining geno-, from the Greek word for race or tribe, with -cide, from the Latin word for killing. He included the term in his book that documented Nazi policies of the systematic destruction of national and ethnic groups, notably the mass murder of European Jews.
Lemkin defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves."
In 1945, the International Military Tribunal — held at Nuremberg, Germany — charged top Nazi officials with crimes against humanity. Lemkin’s term genocide was included in the indictments, but only as a descriptive term, not a legal one.
On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This codified the term genocide in international law, defining it in Article II of the Convention as outlined above.
Further Development of the Term & Research
From an academic and legal perspective, the development of the term genocide is usually placed into two historical periods:
1944-1948: the coining of the term through its acceptance as international law
1991-1998: the establishment of international criminal tribunals created to prosecute the crime of genocide
Throughout history, there have been many cases of targeted violence against various groups of people. Many of these were committed before the term genocide was created and codified into international law. In his work, Lemkin thoughtfully wrote that the term genocide did not create a new phenomenon, but rather was "an old practice in its modern development."
Many scholars have pointed back to campaigns of mass killings that were committed before the 1940s as historical examples of genocide, despite a reputable court of law or tribunal not ruling that genocide was committed. After additional research and recognitions by various governing bodies, some of these pre-1940s campaigns are now widely accepted to have been genocides. One of the most notable example was the systematic mass murder and expulsion of ethnic Armenians committed by the Ottoman government during World War I. Lemkin pointed to the crimes committed against ethnic Armenians as an example of what he meant by the term genocide.
Since the crime of genocide was codified into international law in 1948, various governments and civil and international institutions have researched how and why genocides are committed, as well as how they can be prevented and brought to an end. Perhaps the most well-known result of this critical work is The 10 Stages of Genocide, a processual model that aims to demonstrate how genocides progress. It is widely accepted as a helpful tool for understanding the mechanics of past genocides, as well as providing early warning signs that can be used to prevent future genocides and other mass atrocities. It also provides preventive measures that can be used to prevent, slow, or stop the process.
From Learning To Action
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