A genocide is the systematic elimination of an ethnic, religious or social group. In order to be considered a genocide, these acts of destruction must be organized and approved by the state.
The Holocaust was the genocide of Jewish people by the Nazi regime during World War II.
The definition of genocide is similar to that of crimes against humanity. However, in legal terms, “genocide” refers to cases where the acts committed are intended to destroy all or part of a group (national, religious, ethnic, religious, political).
A crime against humanity is a deliberate and serious violation of the fundamental rights of an individual or a group of individuals for political, philosophical, racial or religious reasons.
This definition originated from the first meeting of the United Nations Assembly in 1948, but has been subject to some criticism since then.
For example, the USSR manoeuvred to have the term “political” removed from the text. This was how the USSR managed to prevent certain Soviet massacres from being categorized as genocides. The legal definition approved by the UN is not necessarily the same for every country. This is why some countries recognize certain massacres as genocides and other countries do not.
The UN must intervene quickly when a genocide occurs in order to stop it. However, since the definition of the crime is problematic, the UN has sometimes hesitated to intervene. Since genocide is a crime against humanity, the UN is responsible for setting up an international crimes tribunal, similar to the one held for the Nuremberg trial.
Before the beginning of the 20th century, several massacres were justified by the colonization ideologies of imperialist policies. These colonial conquests destroyed certain ethnic groups in Africa, Australia and America. These massacres are not really considered genocides in the legal sense of the term, but were nevertheless perpetrated with indifference. World War I, a war during which large-scale violence and death were routine, marked the beginning of the 20th century.
Since the UN defined genocide, three massacres have been officially recognized as genocides: the Armenian genocide, the genocide of Jewish people carried out by the Nazis and the Rwandan genocide. We will also describe two other events recognized as genocides by several nations: the genocides of Cambodia and Ukraine.