The New Reality of What Is Genocide

Once the sole descriptor of a limited number of horrific events in history, the word “genocide” has become the term of preference for conflicts around the world. Coined in the shadow of the horrors of the Holocaust and Stalin’s famine in Ukraine by the Jewish legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, the term has now been co-opted to describe any number of events including threatened cultures, ethnic strife, racial imbalance, civil war, rebellion, and religious conflicts. 

Nowhere is this clearer than in the midst of the Hamas–Israel conflict, which has stirred enormous debate throughout the world as to what really constitutes a genocide — a not always civil discourse made all the more painful by the linkage of the term itself to the Holocaust. Now, the United Nations is wading further into this argument as its General Assembly debates yet another tragic mass killing event amid an armed conflict that again raises the question of how we should judge what a genocidal event is truly.  

This month, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) will vote on an International Day of Remembrance for the victims of Srebrenica that officially recognizes the Srebrenica massacre of Bosniaks as a genocide. The proposed resolution has ignited a complex and nuanced debate about the judicious use of the term. Serbia opposes the resolution, emphasizing the need for a draft that eschews the term “genocide” and equally honors the historical atrocities that killed thousands of innocent Serbs and Croats during that violent civil war. 

The Srebrenica massacre was indisputably a devastating event in which horrible war crimes occurred; Serbia’s leaders do not deny this. To the contrary, its leaders, including current President Aleksandar Vučić, have honored the victims and recognized this dark chapter in history. But the U.N. resolution raises serious questions about whether all war crimes constitute a genocide. It also raises questions of inclusiveness as it was drafted in secrecy and includes no mention of simultaneous suffering of thousands of Serb and Croat civilians who were also killed. Serbia has additionally raised legitimate questions as to whether the events in Srebrenica rise to the level of genocide and whether the United Nations resolution is a political ploy or a reasonable effort to label an egregious act of violence as genocide.

Skepticism about the application of “genocide” to the civil war in Bosnia has been expressed by noted scholars of the Holocaust, including the great Yehuda Bauer, who, more than probably anyone on this earth, knows the intended meaning of the term “genocide” and despairs at the implications of overuse. As Efraim Zuroff, chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote in the Jerusalem Post last month, “the upcoming United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolution to officially recognize the Srebrenica massacre as a genocide is a well-intentioned move plagued by potential pitfalls that could exacerbate tensions rather than foster reconciliation.” Israeli historian Gideon Greif, who was the president of the Independent Commission for the Investigation of the Suffering of All Peoples in the Srebrenica Region from 1992 to 1995, has described it as an “an ugly, disgusting political initiative.”

Given the danger of watering down the term “genocide,” an impulse that is implicit in this resolution, Israel has not been a supporter of an affirmative vote in the United Nations.

It is critical that the international community take a cautious and informed approach to genocide recognition. This is not new, as the United States and other countries have raised concerns about what should be characterized as genocide when debating the many awful events that have been debated before the U.N. and other international organizations.  

Lemkin, a lawyer born in Lviv, now Ukraine, who fled to the United States in 1941 and lost much of his family in the Holocaust, is the one responsible for the word “genocide.” He created the term for a crime so enormous there had previously been no name for it. He defined it as “the destruction of a nation or an ethnic group.” Genocide, he wrote, “is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.” In other words, genocide is when a national or ethnic group of people is killed not because of their actions, but because of their identity. He developed the word by combining the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing).  

The upcoming UNGA vote on recognizing the Srebrenica massacre as genocide has underscored the need for a thoughtful, informed, and rigorous approach to genocide recognition. 

So, when looking at the current resolution that will be placed before the U.N. General Assembly, the fundamental issue is whether it truly fits into that definition. The answer is complex and requires nuance. It also requires recognition of the dangerous implications of the broader and indiscriminate use of the term, and the importance of adhering to criteria reflective of the term’s origins and history.

The Holocaust was a distinct historical tragedy that society has acknowledged as an attempt to destroy or eliminate an ethnic group. Misapplying the term risks trivializing its significance, hindering efforts to prevent future genocides, and potentially obstructing reconciliation and healing processes. If the hundreds of mass killings that have occurred since the Holocaust are deemed to be genocide, the specific intention of using the term for the most horrific of such mass crimes will be diminished, and with it the term “genocide” itself.

The upcoming UNGA vote on recognizing the Srebrenica massacre as genocide has underscored the need for a thoughtful, informed, and rigorous approach to genocide recognition. As the international community navigates this challenging issue, it is essential to uphold the integrity of the term, the historical background and ask that there be a deeper understanding of these tragedies and how we embrace them. Without that debate, there can only be greater division, hatred, and pain. We must as a community of nations acknowledge the enormous significance of what a genocide really is and how we are to interpret it.

Seth Jacobson is nationally recognized public affairs consultant, the Founder of JCI and a regular lecturer at UCLA, USC and Pepperdine University. He is affiliated with KARV in New York.