Deutsche Welle (English edition)
What exactly is genocide?
Comments by US President Biden calling Russian atrocities in Ukraine a “genocide” have sparked debate. But what exactly constitutes genocide and when can the term be applied?
Defined as an intent to exterminate a particular group of people, the term genocide was first coined amid the horrors of the Holocaust during the World War II.
In 1943, Jewish-Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin came up with the term partly in response to Hitler's systematic murder of Jews in Nazi Germany. Lemkin lost his entire family, with the exception of his brother, to the Holocaust.
Lemkin campaigned to have genocide recognized as a crime under international law, paving the way for the adoption of the United Nations Genocide Convention in 1948 which came into effect in 1951.
Article Two of the convention defines genocide as any acts "committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group."
Such acts could include killings, inflicting serious bodily or mental harm or life-threatening conditions, measures to prevent births and forcibly transferring children, according to the UN definition.
Who can be prosecuted?
The UN Genocide Convention states that everyone can be prosecuted and punished for genocide, including elected leaders.
The International Criminal Court has a mandate to investigate and prosecute genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. According to its statutes, anyone who commits, orders, assists and even incites genocide can be prosecuted.
A separate court, the International Court of Justice at the Hague, deals with interstate disputes and can also rule that states are responsible for genocide.
Proving genocide not easy
"Very often the term genocide is used loosely in common language by people to refer to the biggest, gravest crime because somehow it sounds far worse than war crimes or crimes against humanity," Valerie Gabard, an expert on international law based in the Hague, told DW.
"But, legally speaking, the definition of genocide is very narrow," Gabard, who is cofounder of UpRights, a law consultancy, said.
"It's not a matter of numbers that decides whether there is genocide or not. The intention to physically exterminate a group is the main criterion for this crime," she said.
But experts say proving that "special intent" is not easy because often there is no direct evidence.
"The problem with proving genocidal intent is that you're likely not going to have perpetrators in court make some direct admission," William Schabas, professor of International Law at Middlesex University in London told DW.
"So the courts have to infer the intent of the perpetrators based on their conduct. So you have to rely on circumstantial evidence. And the rule is that it has to be beyond reasonable doubt. That's where it gets harder."
Genocide prosecutions can take time
Gabard, who has worked on international criminal tribunals for Cambodia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, said the prosecution of genocide can take time.
"It takes very long, also because of the scale of the crimes," Gabard said.
"Generally when you speak of genocide, there are lots of victims and it takes a long time to investigate the crimes and to prove not only an intention to kill, but to kill people because they were part of a group."
Genocide or not?
In recent years, the term genocide has been used frequently by political leaders to describe abuses in China, Myanmar, Syria and most recently in Ukraine.
This week, US President Joe Biden leveled the accusation of genocide against Russian President Vladmir Putin for the atrocities committed by his forces in Ukraine.
Last year, the US, Canadian and Dutch governments all accused China of committing a genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, while several other countries brought parliamentary resolutions making the same accusation.
Experts, however, point to three genocides recognized to date by a court of law at an international level — Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus died in the 1994 genocide, the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica which was ruled to be genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Khmer Rouge killings in Cambodia in the 1970s.
On the latter, there is disagreement over the fact that many of the victims of the Khmer Rouge were targeted because of their political or social status — putting them outside of the UN definition of genocide.
In 2010, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President, Omar al-Bashir, on genocide charges, accusing him of waging a campaign against the citizens of the region of Darfur.
"We have the legal definition of genocide being used at cases at the International Court of Justice and in the convictions of the Rwanda tribunal. We have a very well established law of what genocide is." Schabas said.
"But then you have this phenomenon of attempts to use the label genocide that does not correspond to the legal definition of genocide, whether it's with the Uyghurs in China or the war in Ukraine," he said.