Download Genocide Information Questions

Name: ___________________________________
Period: ___________
Overall Genocide Information-- http://www.history.com/topics/what-is-genocide
"Genocide," a term used to describe violence against members of a national, ethnical, racial or
religious group with the intent to destroy the entire group, came into general usage only after
World War II, when the full extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against the
Jews of Europe during that conflict became known. In 1948, the United Nations declared
genocide to be an international crime; the term would later be applied to the horrific acts of
violence committed during conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and in the African country of
Rwanda in the 1990s. An international treaty signed by some 120 countries in 1998 established
the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has jurisdiction to prosecute crimes of genocide.
Raphael Lemkin & the Nuremburg Trials
The word genocide owes its existence to Raphael Lemkin, a Polish-Jewish lawyer who fled the
Nazi occupation of Poland and arrived in the United States in 1941. As a boy, Lemkin had been
horrified when he learned of the Turkish massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
during World War I. As an adult, he set out to come up with a term to describe Nazi crimes
against European Jews during World War II, and to enter that term into the world of
international law in the hopes of preventing and punishing such horrific crimes against innocent
people. In 1944, he coined the term "genocide" by combining genos, the Greek word for race or
tribe, with the Latin suffix cide ("to kill").
In 1945, thanks in no small part to Lemkin's efforts, the term genocide was included in the
charter of the International Military Tribunal set up by the victorious Allied powers in
Nuremburg, Germany. The tribunal indicted and tried top Nazi officials for "crimes against
humanity," which included persecution on racial, religious or political grounds as well as
inhumane acts committed against civilians (including genocide). After the Nuremburg trials
revealed the horrible extent of Nazi crimes, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution in
1946 making the crime of genocide punishable under international law.
The Genocide Convention
In 1948, the U.N. approved its Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide (CPPCG), which defined genocide as any of a number of acts "committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." This included
killing or causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, inflicting conditions
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of life intended to bring about the group's demise, imposing measures intended to prevent
births (i.e. forced sterilization) or forcibly removing the group's children. Genocide's "intent to
destroy" separates it from other crimes of humanity such as ethnic cleansing, which aims at
forcibly expelling a group from a geographic area (by killing, forced deportation and other
methods).
The convention entered into force in 1951 and has since been ratified by more than 130
countries. Though the United States was one of the convention's original signatories, the U.S.
Senate did not ratify it until 1988, when President Ronald Reagan signed it over strong
opposition by those who felt it would limit U.S. sovereignty. Though the CPPCG established an
awareness that the evils of genocide existed, its actual effectiveness in stopping such crimes
remained to be seen: Not one country invoked the convention during 1975 to 1979, when the
Khmer Rouge regime killed some 1.7 million people in Cambodia (a country that had ratified the
CPPCG in 1950).
Events of the 1990s
In 1992, the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia,
and Bosnian Serb leaders targeted both Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croatian civilians for
atrocious crimes resulting in the deaths of some 100,000 people by 1995. In 1993, the U.N.
Security Council established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)
at The Hague, in the Netherlands; it was the first international tribunal since Nuremburg and
the first to have a mandate to prosecute the crime of genocide.
From April to mid-July 1994, members of the Hutu majority in Rwanda murdered some 500,000
to 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority, with horrifying brutality and speed. As with the
former Yugoslavia, the international community did little to stop the crimes while they were
occurring, but that fall the U.N. expanded the mandate of the ICTY to include the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), located in Tanzania. The Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals
helped clarify exactly what types of actions could be classified as genocidal, as well as how
criminal responsibility for these actions should be established. In 1998, the ICTR set the
important precedent that systematic rape is in fact a crime of genocide; it also handed down
the first conviction for genocide after a trial, that of the mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba.
The International Criminal Court (ICC)
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An international statute signed in Rome in 1998 expanded the CCPG's definition of genocide
and applied it to times of both war and peace. The statute also established the International
Criminal Court (ICC), which began sittings in 2002 at The Hague (without the participation of the
U.S., China or Russia). Since then, the ICC has dealt with cases against leaders in the Congo and
in Sudan, where brutal acts committed by the janjawid militia against civilians in the western
region of Darfur have been condemned by numerous international officials (including former
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell) as genocide.
Debate continues over the ICC's rightful jurisdiction, as well as its ability to determine what
exactly constitute genocidal actions. For example, in the case of Darfur, some have argued that
it is impossible to prove the intent to eradicate the existence of certain groups, as opposed to
displacing them from disputed territory. Despite such ongoing issues, the establishment of the
ICC at the dawn of the 21st century reflected a growing international consensus behind efforts
to prevent and punish the horrors of genocide.
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Name: _______________________________________
Period: _______________
Genocide Information Questions
1. What is the definition of genocide?
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2. Why would genocide be considered an international crime?
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3. Who created the word genocide and why did he do this?
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4. After WWII Nazi’s were tried for “crimes against humanity.” This included persecuting people
based on what types of things?
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5. At the genocide convention, how was the definition of genocide expanded?
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6. What happened in 1992 in the country formerly known as Yugoslavia (Eastern Europe)? How
many people were killed by 1995?
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7. What happened in Rwanda (Africa) in 1994? How many people were killed?
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8. Why do you think the international community did little to stop these crimes? If they signed the
“genocide convention” (130 countries signed this including the United States) shouldn’t they be
obligated to help?
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9. What is the International Criminal Court at The Hague (capital city in The Netherlands)? What
types of cases do they hear?
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10. In your own words, describe what you know about the term “genocide” in three sentences,
using this sheet to help you, anything you know about the Holocaust, etc. End with: What is the
difference between the word murder and genocide?
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