Genocide

In one line

Genocide is any of five listed acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such, and it is the special intent rather than the acts that makes the crime.

The article

For the purpose of this Statute, "genocide" means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• (a) Killing members of the group;
• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The two elements

Every genocide question is answered by separating these.

The act, the material element. One of the five listed acts, and no others. The list is closed.

The intent, the mental element. Not merely the intent to do the act, but the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such. This second, further intent is what distinguishes genocide from every other crime in the Statute, and it is why the crime is so difficult to prove.

The five acts

Read as a group, the five are not simply five ways of killing. Only the first is killing at all.

Clause (e) is the one that shows what the crime is really about. A child transferred to another group is not killed, injured or starved. What is destroyed is the group's continuity, and that is enough. The offence protects the existence of the group, not the lives of its members considered one by one.

Clause (c) uses the word calculated, which points to the objective tendency of the conditions rather than to a hope. Clause (d) uses intended, which points to the purpose of the measures. Both are worth marking, because they are the drafters distinguishing between an effect and an aim.