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May 2006Beyond the Dictionary: genocideThe ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and has left another two million people homeless. In September 2004, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell labeled the killings genocide; last month's protests over the conflict moved that word to the 77th position on the most-looked-up list.
What constitutes genocide? According to the Collegiate Encyclopedia, it names a deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, religious, political, or ethnic group. The term first appeared in print in 1944 and has an ancestor in the Greek genos meaning "birth; race; kind." Genocide was coined to define a legal concept describing a premeditated effort to destroy a population. In 1946 the U.N. General Assembly declared genocide a punishable crime, whether committed by an individual, group, or government, even against one's own people, in either peacetime or wartime (this last point distinguishing it from "crimes against humanity," whose legal definition specifies wartime). Suspects may be tried by a court in the country where the act was committed or by an international court. |