Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group. The term was coined in 1944 by
Raphael Lemkin. It is defined in Article 2 of the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) of 1948 as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group's conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."[1]
The preamble to the CPPCG states that "genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and aims of the
United Nations and condemned by the civilized world", and it also states that "at all periods of history genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity."[1]
The debate continues over what legally constitutes
genocide. One definition is any conflict that the
International Criminal Court has so designated. Mohammed Hassan Kakar argues that the definition should include political groups or any group so defined by the perpetrator.[2] He prefers the definition from Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn, which defines genocide as "a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group so defined by the perpetrator."[3]
In literature, some scholars have popularly emphasized the role that the
Soviet Union played in excluding political groups from the international definition of genocide, which is contained in the
Genocide Convention of 1948,[4] and in particular they have written that
Joseph Stalin may have feared greater international scrutiny of the political killings that occurred in the country, such as the
Great Purge;[5] however, this claim is not supported by evidence. The Soviet view was shared and supported by many diverse countries, and they were also in line with
Raphael Lemkin's original conception,[a] and it was originally promoted by the
World Jewish Congress.[7]
The
Sri Lankan military was accused of committing
human rights violations during
Sri Lanka's 26-year
civil war.[8] A
United Nation's Panel of Experts looking into these alleged violations found "credible allegations, which if proven, indicate that serious violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law were committed by both the Government of Sri Lanka and the
LTTE, some of which would amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".[9] Some activists and politicians also accused the
Sri Lankan government which is dominated by
Sinhalese people (who predominantly practice
Theravada Buddhism) of carrying out a genocide against the minority
Sri Lankan Tamil people, who are mostly
Hindu, both during and after the war.[10]
In 2009, thousands of Tamils protested against the atrocities in cities all over the world. (See
2009 Tamil diaspora protests.)[16] Various diaspora activists formed a group called
Tamils Against Genocide to continue the protest.[17] Legal action against Sri Lankan leaders for alleged genocide has been initiated. Norwegian human rights lawyer
Harald Stabell filed a case in Norwegian courts against Sri Lankan President
Rajapaksa and other officials.[18]
Politicians in the Indian state of
Tamil Nadu also made accusations of genocide.[19] In 2008 and 2009 the
Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu
M. Karunanidhi repeatedly appealed to the
Indian government to intervene to "stop the genocide of Tamils",[20] while his successor
J. Jayalalithaa called on the Indian government to bring Rajapaksa before international courts for genocide.[21]The women's wing of the
Communist Party of India, passed a resolution in August 2012 finding that "Systematic sexual violence against Tamil women" by Sri Lankan forces constituted genocide, calling for an "independent international investigation".[22]
In January 2010, a
Permanent Peoples' Tribunal (PPT) held in
Dublin, Ireland, found Sri Lanka guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but it found insufficient evidence to justify the charge of genocide.[23][24] The tribunal requested a thorough investigation as some of the evidence indicated "possible acts of genocide".[23] Its panel found Sri Lanka guilty of genocide at its 7–10 December 2013 hearings in Berman, Germany. It also found that the US and UK were guilty of complicity. A decision on whether India, and other states, had also acted in complicity was withheld. PPT reported that LTTE could not be accurately characterized as "terrorist", stating that movements classified as "terrorist" because of their rebellion against a state, can become political entities recognized by the international community.[25][26] The
International Commission of Jurists stated that the
camps used to
intern nearly 300,000 Tamils after the war's end may have breached the
convention against genocide.[27]
In 2015, Sri Lanka's Tamil majority
Northern Provincial Council (NPC) "passed a strongly worded resolution accusing successive governments in the island nation of committing 'genocide' against Tamils".
[28] The
resolution asserts that "Tamils across Sri Lanka, particularly in the historical Tamil homeland of the NorthEast, have been subject to gross and systematic human rights violations, culminating in the mass atrocities committed in 2009. Sri Lanka's historic violations include over 60 years of state sponsored anti-Tamil pogroms, massacres, sexual violence, and acts of cultural and linguistic destruction perpetrated by the state. These atrocities have been perpetrated with the intent to destroy the Tamil people, and therefore constitute genocide."[29]
The Sri Lankan government denied the allegations of genocide and war crimes.[30]
On 21 April 2019,
Easter Sunday, three churches in
Sri Lanka and three luxury hotels in the commercial capital,
Colombo, were targeted in a series of coordinated Islamic
terrorist suicide bombings. Later that day, there were smaller explosions at a housing complex in
Dematagoda and a guest house in
Dehiwala. A total of 267 people were killed,[31][32] including at least 45 foreign nationals,[33] three police officers, and eight bombers, and at least 500 were injured.[b] The church bombings were carried out during
Easterservices in
Negombo,
Batticaloa and Colombo; the hotels that were bombed were the
Shangri-La,
Cinnamon Grand,
Kingsbury and Tropical Inn.[c] According to the
State Intelligence Service, a second wave of attacks was planned, but was stopped as a result of government raids.[43]President of the European ParliamentAntonio Tajani referred to the bombings as an act of genocide.[44][45]
Following the
dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991,
Chechnya declared its independence from the
Russian Federation. Russian President
Boris Yeltsin refused to accept Chechnya's independence; subsequently, the conflict between Chechnya and the Russian Federation escalated until it reached its climax when Russian troops invaded Chechnya and launched the
First Chechen War in December 1994, and in September 1999, they invaded Chechnya again and launched the
Second Chechen War. By 2009, Chechen resistance was crushed and the war ended with Russia re-establishing its control over Chechnya. Numerous
war crimes were committed during both conflicts.[46]Amnesty International estimated that in the First Chechen War alone, between 20,000 and 30,000 Chechens were killed, mostly in indiscriminate attacks which were launched against them by Russian forces in densely populated areas,[47] and that a further 25,000 civilians died in the Second Chechen War.[48]
Some scholars estimated that the Russian government's brutal attacks against such a small ethnic group amounted to a crime of genocide.[49][50] The German-based NGO
Society for Threatened Peoples accused the Russian authorities of genocide in its 2005 report on Chechnya.[51] On 18 October 2022,
Ukraine's parliament condemned the "genocide of the Chechen people" during the First and Second Chechen War.[52][53]
During the
Congo Civil War (1998–2003),
pygmies were hunted down and eaten by both sides in the conflict, who regarded them as subhuman.[58] Sinafasi Makelo, a representative of
Mbuti pygmies, asked the
UN Security Council to recognize
cannibalism as both a crime against humanity and an act of genocide.[59][60] Minority Rights Group International reported evidence of mass killings, cannibalism and rape. The report, which labeled these events as a campaign of extermination, linked the violence to beliefs about special powers held by the Bambuti.[61] In
Ituri district, rebel forces ran an operation code-named "
Effacer le tableau" (to wipe the slate clean). The aim of the operation, according to witnesses, was to rid the forest of pygmies.[62]
In particular, critics have highlighted the concentration of Uyghurs in state-sponsored internment camps,[93] suppression of Uyghur
religious practices,[96] political
indoctrination,[97] severe ill-treatment,[98] and testimonials of alleged human rights abuses including
forced sterilization,
contraception,[99] and
abortion.[103] Chinese government statistics show that from 2015 to 2018,
birth rates in the mostly Uyghur regions of
Hotan and
Kashgar fell by 84%.[104][105] In the same period, the birth rate of the whole country decreased by 9.69%, from 12.07 to 10.9 per 1,000 people.[106] Chinese authorities acknowledged that birth rates dropped by almost a third in 2018 in Xinjiang, but denied reports of forced sterilization and genocide.[107] Birth rates have continued to plummet in Xinjiang, falling nearly 24% in 2019 alone when compared to just 4.2% nationwide.[105]
In July 2020, German anthropologist
Adrian Zenz wrote in Foreign Policy that his estimate had increased since November 2019, estimating that a total of 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities had been extrajudicially detained in what he described as "the largest incarceration of an ethnoreligious minority since the Holocaust", arguing that the Chinese Government was engaging in policies in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[108]Ethan Gutmann estimated in December 2020 that 5 to 10% of detainees had died each year in the camps.[109]
Myanmar's government has been accused of crimes against the Muslim
Rohingya minority that are alleged to amount to genocide. For many years, the Rohingya had been one the primary targets of
hate crimes and discrimination in the country, much of which was given tacit encouragement by extremist nationalist Buddhist monks and the military-controlled government. Muslim groups have claimed that they were subjected to genocide, torture, arbitrary detention, and cruel,
inhuman, and degrading treatment.[110][111]
On 25 August 2017, the Myanmar military forces and local
Buddhist extremists started attacking the
Rohingya people and committing atrocities against them in the country's north-west
Rakhine State. The atrocities included attacks on Rohingya people and locations, looting and burning down Rohingya villages, mass killing of Rohingya civilians,
gang rapes, and other sexual violence.
Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) estimated in December 2017 that during the persecution, the military and the local Buddhists killed at least 10,000 Rohingya people.[112][113] At least 392 Rohingya villages in Rakhine state were reported as burned down and destroyed,[114] as well as the looting of many Rohingya houses,[115] and widespread gang rapes and other forms of sexual violence against the Rohingya Muslim women and girls.[116][117][118] The military drive also displaced a large number of Rohingya people and made them refugees. According to the United Nations reports, as of September 2018[update], over 700,000 Rohingya people had fled or had been driven out of Rakhine state who then took shelter in the neighboring
Bangladesh as refugees. In December 2017, two Reuters journalists who had been covering the
Inn Din massacre event were arrested and imprisoned.
During the
South Sudanese Civil War there were ethnic undertones to the conflict between the
South Sudan People's Defence Forces and the
Sudan People's Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, which has been accused of being dominated by the
Dinka ethnic group. A Dinka lobbying group known as the "
Jieng Council of Elders" was often accused of being behind hardline SPLM policies.[139][140] While the army used to attract men who were members of different tribes, during the war, a large number of the SPLA's soldiers were from the
Dinka stronghold of
Bahr el Ghazal,[141] and within the country the army was often referred to as "the Dinka army".[142] Much of the worst atrocities committed are blamed on a group known as "Dot Ke Beny" (Rescue the President) or "
Mathiang Anyoor" (Brown caterpillar), while the SPLA claim that it is just another battalion.[143][142] Immediately after the alleged coup in 2013, Dinka troops, and particularly Mathiang Anyoor,[143][144] were accused of carrying out pogroms, assisted by guides, in house to house searches of Nuer suburbs,[145] while similar door to door searches of Nuers were reported in government held Malakal.[146] About 240 Nuer men were killed at a police station in Juba's Gudele neighborhood.[147][148] During the
fighting in 2016–17 in the Upper Nile region between the SPLA and the SPLA-IO allied Upper Nile faction of Uliny, Shilluk in
Wau Shilluk were forced from their homes and Yasmin Sooka, chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, claimed that the government was engaging in "social engineering" after it transported 2,000 mostly Dinka people to the abandoned areas.[149] The king of the
Shilluk Kingdom, Kwongo Dak Padiet, claimed his people were at risk of physical and cultural extinction.[150] In the Equatoria region, Dinka soldiers were accused of targeting civilians on ethnic lines against the dozens of ethnic groups among the Equatorians, with much of the atrocities being blamed on
Mathiang Anyoor.[142]Adama Dieng, the U.N.'s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, warned of
genocide after visiting areas of fighting in
Yei.[151] Khalid Boutros of the Cobra faction as well as officials of the Murle led
Boma State accuse the SPLA of aiding attacks by Dinka from Jonglei state against Boma state,[152][153] and soldiers from Jonglei captured Kotchar in Boma in 2017.[154] In 2010,
Dennis Blair, the United States
Director of National Intelligence, issued a warning that "over the next five years, ... a new mass killing or genocide is most likely to occur in southern Sudan."[155][156] In April 2017,
Priti Patel, the
Secretary of the United Kingdom's
Department for International Development, declared the violence in South Sudan as genocide.[157]
ISIL or ISIS compels people who live in the
areas that it controls to live according to its interpretation of
sharia law.[158][159] There have been many reports of the group's use of
death threats,
torture and
mutilation in order to
compel people to convert to
Islam,[158][159] as well as reports of clerics being killed for refusing to pledge allegiance to the so-called "
Islamic State".[160] ISIL commits violence against
Shia Muslims,
Alawites,
Assyrian,
Chaldean,
Syriac and
Armenian Christians,
Yazidis,
Druze,
Shabaks and
Mandeans in particular.[161] Among the known killings of civilians who were members of religious and other minority groups which were carried out by ISIL were those killings which were committed in the villages and towns of
Quiniyeh (70–90 Yazidis killed),
Hardan (60 Yazidis killed),
Sinjar (500–2,000 Yazidis killed), Ramadi Jabal (60–70 Yazidis killed), Dhola (50 Yazidis killed), Khana Sor (100 Yazidis killed), Hardan area (250–300 Yazidis killed), al-Shimal (dozens of Yazidis killed), Khocho (400 Yazidis killed and 1,000 abducted), Jadala (14 Yazidis killed)[162] and Beshir (700 Shia Turkmen killed),[citation needed] and others committed near Mosul (670 Shia inmates of the Badush prison killed),[citation needed] and in
Tal Afar prison, Iraq (200 Yazidis killed for refusing conversion).[162] The UN estimated that 5,000 Yazidis were killed by ISIL during the takeover of parts of northern Iraq in August 2014.[citation needed] In late May 2014, 150 Kurdish boys from
Kobani aged 14–16 were abducted and subjected to torture and abuse, according to Human Rights Watch.[163] In the Syrian towns of Ghraneij, Abu Haman and Kashkiyeh 700 members of the Sunni
Al-Shaitat tribe were killed for attempting to launch an uprising against ISIL rule.[164][165] The UN reported that in June 2014 ISIL had killed a number of Sunni Islamic clerics who refused to pledge allegiance to it.[160] By 2014, a U.N. Humans Rights commission counted that 9,347[166] civilians had been murdered by ISIL in Iraq, then however; by 2016 a second report by the United Nations estimated 18,802[167] deaths.
The
Sinjar massacre in 2014 resulted in the killings of between 2,000[168][169] and 5,000[170] civilians.
In 2015, coalition forces led by
Saudi Arabia and
the UAE,
intervened in the already ongoing
Yemeni Civil War on behalf of the government forces. The intervention has been described as a genocide against Yemenis by some commentators due to war crimes and its role in the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.[171][172][173][174][175] The Saudi-led campaign had a dramatic worsening effect on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen[176] by contributing to the
famine in Yemen. Over 78% of the population, 20 million people, were in need of humanitarian assistance in 2015 according to the UN. The intervention also contributed to the
outbreak of cholera which has infected hundreds of thousands.[177][178][179] The
blockade of Yemen by Saudi warships which began in 2015 also worsened the situation, leaving the many in without access to food, water and medical aid.[180][181][182] Aid to Yemen to relieve the situation was often delayed by the Saudi blockade, leading to further deaths.[183] On 1 July 2015, the UN declared for Yemen a "level-three" emergency—the highest UN emergency level—for a period of six months.[184][185] By December 2015, 2.5 million Yemeni people were
internally displaced by the fighting,[186] and 1 million more fled the country.[187]
The coalition forces been accused of war crimes, including deliberately targeting civilian areas,[188][189]including hospitals, schools, refugee camps, and public infrastructure.[190][191][192][193] The entire
Saada Governorate was declared a military target by the coalition in May 2015;
Human Rights Watch (HRW) later expressed concern that the bombing was causing unnecessarily harming civilians.[194][195]cluster munitions,[196][197][198] and
white phosphorus munitions were reportedly used on multiple occasions by the coalition.[199] In March 2017, HRW reported that "Since the start of the current conflict, at least 4,773 civilians had been killed and 8,272 wounded, the majority by coalition airstrikes. ... Human Rights Watch has documented 62 apparently unlawful coalition airstrikes, some of which may amount to war crimes, that have killed nearly 900 civilians, and documented seven indiscriminate attacks by Houthi-Saleh forces in Aden and Taizz that killed 139 people, including at least eight children."[200]
As of late 2022, the combined impact of wartime violence, famine and a lack of medical access had killed an estimated 385,000-600,000 people,[209] with other reported estimates reaching numbers as high as 700,000-800,000 killed.[210]
On 24 February 2022, Russian leader
Vladimir Putin ordered the
Russian invasion of Ukraine. Following months of
massive war crimes against Ukrainians, several scholars assumed that a
genocide was being committed in Ukraine. The
Siege of Mariupol, the
Bucha massacre, and the
deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia so they could be forcibly adopted by Russian families were all classified as genocidal acts, while the words of Putin's officials, such as "There is no Ukraine", have been cited as examples of
genocidal intent.[211] Historian
Alexander Etkind wrote that the genocidal aspects of Russian war crimes in Ukraine did not just include mass murder and deportation, they also included the intentional destruction of Ukrainian cultural sites, and he also wrote that Putin framed his genocide as the "victim's revenge" for the previous one.[212] Political scientist
Scott Straus declared that "genocide may be an appropriate term to describe the violence" following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[213]
Russian
social media users and state media pundits
demonized Ukrainians, describing them as "vermin", "rats", "unpeople", "diseased", and they also wrote that Ukraine itself must be "erased".[214] On 6 April 2022, an
op-ed article which was written by Timofey Sergeytsev, What Russia Should Do with Ukraine,[215] was published by the Russian
state-owned news agency
RIA Novosti.[216] It called for the full destruction of Ukraine as a state and the full destruction of the Ukrainian people's
national identity.[217] American historian
Timothy D. Snyder cited it as an example to illustrate Russia's genocidal intent.[218]
National parliaments, including those of
Poland,
Ukraine,
Canada,
Estonia,
Latvia,
Lithuania and the
Republic of Ireland declared that a genocide was taking place in Ukraine.[219] On 27 May 2022, a report by the
New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy and the
Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights concluded that there were reasonable grounds to infer that Russia breached two articles of the 1948 Genocide Convention, by publicly inciting genocide through its denial of Ukraine's right to exist as a state and its denial of the Ukrainian people's right to exist as a nation, as well as through its
forcible transfer of
Ukrainian children to Russia, which is a genocidal act under article II of the convention.[220] A Foreign Policy article acknowledged that Putin's goal was to "erase Ukraine as a political and national entity and
Russify its inhabitants", warning that Russia's war could become a genocide.[221]
In September 2023, human rights organizations and experts in genocide prevention issued alerts stating that the indigenous
Armenian population in
Nagorno-Karabakh was at risk of genocide,[d] while others stated that
Azerbaijan was already carrying out such actions.[230][231][232]
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention states "There is no doubt in the minds of experts in genocide prevention – at the Lemkin Institute, but also at
Genocide Watch, the
International Association of Genocide Scholars, and among legal experts such as former ICC chief prosecutor
Luis Moreno Ocampo – that what Armenians are facing from Azerbaijan is genocide."[233] Experts in genocide prevention have stated that Azerbaijan's ongoing blockade of Artsakh and sabotage of public infrastructure constitutes genocide according to the
Genocide Convention: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction" and that there are various indicators that Azerbaijan possesses
genocidal intent: President
Aliyev's public statements, his regime's
openly Armenophobic practices and noncompliance with the
International Court of Justice orders to end the blockade.[234][235][236]
Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups have committed numerous war crimes during the
2023 Israel–Hamas war.[240] According to over 100 international experts, because these acts appeared to have been carried out with an "intent to destroy, in whole or in part" a national group in line with the explicit goals of Hamas, these acts likely amounted to genocide.[241]
Prevention of future genocides
Helen Clark,
Michael Lapsley and
David Alton, writing in The Guardian, stated that the reasons for the
Rwandan genocide and crimes such as the
Bosnian genocide of the
Yugoslav Wars had been analysed in depth and they also stated that
methods to prevent future genocides had been extensively discussed. They described the analyses as producing "reams of paper [that] were dedicated to analysing the past and pledging to heed warning signs and prevent genocide".[242] A group of 34
non-governmental organizations and 31 individuals, calling themselves African Citizens, referred to the Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide report prepared by a panel headed by former Botswana president
Quett Masire for the
Organisation of African Unity.[243][244]African Citizens highlighted the sentences, "Indisputably, the most important truth that emerges from our investigation is that the Rwandan genocide could have been prevented by those in the international community who had the position and means to do so. ... The world failed Rwanda. ... [The United Nations] simply did not care enough about Rwanda to intervene appropriately."[245]Chidi Odinkalu, former head of the
National Human Rights Commission of Nigeria, was one of the African Citizens.[246]
^By 1951, Lemkin was saying that the Soviet Union was the only state that could be indicted for genocide; his concept of genocide, as it was outlined in Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, covered
Stalinist deportations as genocide by default, and differed from the adopted Genocide Convention in many ways. From a 21st-century perspective, its coverage was very broad, and as a result, it would classify any gross
human rights violation as a genocide, and many events that were deemed genocidal by Lemkin did not amount to genocide. As the
Cold War began, this change was the result of Lemkin's turn to
anti-communism in an attempt to convince the United States to ratify the Genocide Convention.[6]
^Schabas 2009, p. 160: "Rigorous examination of the travaux fails to confirm a popular impression in the literature that the opposition to the inclusion of political genocide was some Soviet machination. The Soviet views were also shared by a number of other States for whom it is difficult to establish any geographic or social common denominator: Lebanon, Sweden, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Iran, Egypt, Belgium, and Uruguay. The exclusion of political groups was originally promoted by a non-governmental organization, the World Jewish Congress, and it corresponded to Raphael Lemkin's vision of the nature of the crime of genocide."
^Allen-Ebrahimian, Bethany (10 February 2021).
"Norway's youth parties call for end to China free trade talks". Axios.
Archived from the original on 10 February 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2022. [O]pposition to China's Uyghur genocide is gaining momentum in Norway, where some politicians are fearful of jeopardizing ties with Beijing.
^Congressional Research Service (18 June 2019).
"Uyghurs in China"(PDF). Congressional Research Service.
Archived(PDF) from the original on 18 December 2020. Retrieved 2 December 2019.
^Bachman, Jeff (13 December 2018).
"Genocide in Yemen?". World Peace Foundation, Tufts University.
Archived from the original on 28 October 2021. Retrieved 14 June 2022.
^McKernan, Bethan (7 November 2018).
"Battle rages in Yemen's vital port as showdown looms". The Guardian. The port has been blockaded by the Saudi-led coalition for the past three years, a decision aid organizations say has been the main contributing factor to the famine that threatens to engulf half of Yemen's 28 million population.
^"Azerbaijan's attack on Nagorno-Karabakh raises the risk of genocide against ethnic Armenians in the region". International Federation for Human Rights.
Archived from the original on 23 September 2023. Retrieved 22 September 2023. 'We have to prevent a mass expulsion of ethnic Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh,' remarks Oleksandra Matviichuk, FIDH's Vice-President, 'and we fear that the worst is yet to come for civilians who are left at the mercy of the advancing hostile forces unless the international community intervenes.' The international community must intervene to prevent genocide.
^"SOS – Artsakh". Lemkin Institute.
Archived from the original on 21 September 2023. Retrieved 22 September 2023.
^"Top International Lawyer Calls Azerbaijani Blockade Of Nagorno-Karabakh Genocide". Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (in Armenian). 9 August 2023.
Archived from the original on 11 August 2023. Retrieved 22 September 2023. '...there is reasonable basis to believe that President Aliyev has Genocidal intentions: he has knowingly, willingly and voluntarily blockaded the Lachin Corridor even after having been placed on notice regarding the consequences of his actions by the ICJ's provisional orders,' the founding prosecutor of the International Criminal Court wrote in his conclusion.
^"Risk Factors and Indicators of the Crime of Genocide in the Republic of Artsakh: Applying the UN Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes to the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"(PDF). The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention.
Archived(PDF) from the original on 20 September 2023. Retrieved 19 September 2023. President Aliyev's intention to commit genocide against the Armenian of Nagorno-Karabakh "should be deduced from his informed, voluntary and antagonistic decisions with full disregard of the International Court of Justice orders....President Aliyev's public statements, coupled with his government's openly Armenophobic practices, clearly display the Azerbaijani regime's goal to completely eliminate the ethnic Armenian community residing in Artsakh, striving to eradicate any Armenian presence from the region. These verbalized aspirations, frequently translated into legal measures and manifested through the cited criminal acts detailed in this report, meet the criteria for the essential intent necessary for classifying these actions as genocidal.
^"Public Statement: Scholars Warn of Potential Genocide in Gaza". Third World Approaches to International Law Review. 17 October 2023. Archived from
the original on 17 November 2023. Statements of Israeli officials since 7 October 2023 suggest that beyond the killings and restriction of basic conditions for life perpetrated against Palestinians in Gaza, there are also indications that the ongoing and imminent Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip are being conducted with potentially genocidal intent. Language used by Israeli political and military figures appears to reproduce rhetoric and tropes associated with genocide and incitement to genocide. Dehumanising descriptions of Palestinians have been prevalent. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared on 9 October that "we are fighting human animals and we act accordingly". He subsequently announced that Israel was moving to "a full-scale response" and that he had "removed every restriction" on Israeli forces, as well as stating: "Gaza won't return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything." On 10 October, the head of the Israeli army's Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian, addressed a message directly to Gaza residents: "Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water, there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell". The same day, Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari acknowledged the wanton and intentionally destructive nature of Israel's bombing campaign in Gaza: "The emphasis is on damage and not on accuracy."
Schabas, William A. (2009). Genocide in International Law: The Crime of Crimes (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN978-0-521-71900-1.