Talk:Genocide/Archive 8

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Archive 7

Archive 8

"in part" and "action to destroy"

The first sentence now is: "Genocide is the intentional action to destroy a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part". I don't think that "in part" can be correct. If it were, then if someone tries to kill one member of a group, given that each member of a group is *part* of that group, this attempted murder is genocide. Even an attempted suicide would count as a genocide. So I think this needs to be cleared up. Moreover, "action to destroy" is a little confusing. "Action of destroying" or simply "destruction" is clearer. I suggest this revision: "Genocide is the attempted destruction of a people, usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group." I think "attempted" conveys well enough that the action needs to be deliberate/intentional. I recognize that this proposed definition introduces the opposite problem: if someone attempts to kill all *other* members of his group, then that is surely genocide even though there is one part of the group (himself) that he did not intend to kill. However, I think the proposed definition should be preferred to the current one, as it has fewer imperfections. Omphaloscope talk 23:08, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

I now see that the article clarifies that "part" is usually taken to mean "substantial part". So I suggest: Genocide is the attempted destruction of a people– usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group–in whole or in large part." Omphaloscope talk 23:13, 25 November 2021 (UTC)

I've revised the opening sentence, removing the clause about parts and wholes. I think that is a nuance that the reader can discover as he or she reads the article. There are many nuances in how the term is used (e.g., there is disagreement over how to define the term, and disagreement over whether a genocide needs to be officially declared as such in order to be one), but I think we don't need to get into those details in the opening sentence. What is needed, I think, is a clear sentence that orients readers appropriately without bogging them down in details. Omphaloscope talk 01:03, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Your objections to the original lead definition are understandable, but I feel like you've erased the distinction between genocide and attempted genocide for no reason. "Attempt to Commit Genocide" is listed separately in the UN Genocide convention from genocide. I would propose the following alteration: "Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people, usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group." Retroflexivity (talk) 00:16, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Hm, just thinking about this... The Nazis didn't succeed in destroying the Jewish people (so they didn't intentionally destroy that people), but they did commit the crime of genocide, right? The UN definition defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such." So, even by that definition, one doesn't need to destroy a people in order to commit genocide. However, if genocide is defined as 'the destruction of a people' then one would have to carry out this action (i.e. the destruction, the destroying, the total elimination of a people) in order to qualify as committing genocide, no? Perhaps the U.N. itself made this mistake? I suppose this article shouldn't attempt to resolve this philosophical-legal issue. (Continuing to think out loud: It is possible that 'committing genocide' is like 'crossing the ocean' or 'drawing a circle' in that it is something one can be doing even if one does not complete the action. But it would be strange to say "the Nazis were committing genocide, though they did not finish; they did not succeed in committing genocide.") Omphaloscope talk 01:59, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@Omphaloscope: The Nazis did not succeed in entirely destroying European Jewry; they did inflict massive destruction upon European Jewry, however. I believe that the term "destruction" does not imply entire or complete destruction. If you want to clarify that destruction without complete elimination constitutes genocide, I think the most appropriate thing to do is to restore the "in whole or in part" phrase to the first sentence. — Retroflexivity［talk ❘ contribs］ 06:28, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

There is a good account of various proposed definitions here: Genocide definitions. Some people think genocide is the actual destruction of people, others that it is the attempt to destroy. I think this article should perhaps mention both definitions without taking a side. Omphaloscope talk 01:58, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

@Omphaloscope: We need to actually present a working definition of the term Genocide. This article (and the article you linked) already provide exposition on this subject. The definition of genocide is extremely contentious, and therefore the definition in the lead should be accommodating to mainstream genocide definitions; my belief is that the lead already does this by using the phrase "usually defined". — Retroflexivity［talk ❘ contribs］ 06:28, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

The trouble with using "intentional", whilst it hones in on the key element is that it precludes the (inevitable) partial nature of all such destruction. Personally I think "attempted" is a better summary, and whilst it does not explicitly mention intent, you can't attempt to do something without intent and attempting/intending to destroy a people is the crime, regardless of how (un)successful one is. The alternative would be to restore "whole or part". There is no numerical threshold at which a 'hate crime' crosses over into 'genocide', in theory, killing a handful of people would be 'genocide' if the intent was to destroy the group. We're in danger of crossing over into WP:OR here, but I agree that we shouldn't get bogged down in arriving at a definition that covers every conceivable reading or inteerpretation. Detail can be filled in later.Pincrete (talk) 08:25, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Pincrete:I agree that "attempted" clearly indicates intent, and that my edit made it sound too much like genocide referred only to successful complete destruction; see my response to Omphaloscope. I still don't really like using the term "attempted" because I think it unintentionally includes failed attempts at genocide, but I'm happy to defer to you or Omphaloscope on this.
That being said, I think your statement about "killing a handful people" is incorrect and over-literal: first, the UN document currently linked in the lead contains the following footnote:

It might be necessary to determine if all or only a part of the group at risk within a specific geographical location is being targeted. The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough (substantial) to have an impact on the group as a whole. The substantiality requirement both captures genocide’s defining character as a crime of massive proportions (numbers) and reflects the Convention’s concern with the impact the destruction of the targeted part will have on the overall survival of the group (emblematic).

Second, Lemkin in an NYT letter titled Nature of Genocide (I don't know how to avoid this paywall, sorry) states that "Genocide is a rare crime of great magnitude", and later states that "Very often discrimination against individuals, which is dealt with by the U.N. Human Rights projects, has been confused with the Genocide Convention, which deals with annihilation." — Retroflexivity［talk ❘ contribs］ 23:17, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

in theory, killing a handful of people would be 'genocide' if the intent was to destroy the group. The emphasis there was on the in theory, and if the intent bits. Yes, it is difficult to imagine a real-world scenario in which anything other than substantial numbers would constitute genocide, either legally or in more general use. But there is no defined number or proportion. Pincrete (talk) 07:50, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

@Pincrete: Currently Genocide#"In_whole_or_in_part" contradicts your assertion. It seems like your phrase "in theory" is meant to refer to a theoretical interpretation of the UN Genocide Convention, and the section I linked indicates that it is contradicted by the UN's current interpretation.
That being said, I'm not entirely convinced that the documents cited in that section unambiguously support its claims. The document itself only renders as legal opinion that the part targeted must be substantial, not that the part destroyed must be substantial. The Lemkin quotations in the document, however, support the view in the section linked. I might try to research this more and edit that section to be more accurate. As in the sources I quoted one post earlier, the UN currently indicates that "The substantiality requirement [...] captures genocide’s defining character as a crime of massive proportions (numbers)". There might be other cases and opinions supporting this statement. — Retroflexivity［talk ❘ contribs］ 20:12, 27 February 2022 (UTC)

Sorry I must be communicating badly. The key part of what I meant is that there is no actual "defined number or proportion" in legal terms, though the term has never been used when the numbers targetted were not substantial. Tangentially, there is a heated discussion in academia and elsewhere over whether the Chinese treatment of the Uyghurs is genocide, even though there are no known killings (the accusation come about because of measures to suppress population numbers). Pincrete (talk) 07:37, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

My suggestion: "Genocide is the act of destroying – or in some definitions, attempting to destroy – an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group." Re the meaning of 'destruction': the term 'destruction' tends to suggest complete or nearly complete annihilation. The OED defines 'destroy' as "To bring to nought, put an end to; to do away with, annihilate (any institution, condition, state, quality, or thing immaterial)"; "To put out of existence (living beings); to deprive of life; to slay, kill."; "To pull down or undo (that which has been built); to demolish, raze to the ground." Omphaloscope talk 12:02, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Omphaloscope: I'm actually surprised that nearly every dictionary seems to only define "destruction" as complete destruction of some sort. I guess I've been mistaking hyperbolic use of the term for its actual meaning. I'd still prefer to use "in whole or in part" to clarify this distinction, so I would suggest instead:

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people — usually defined as ethnic, national, racial, or religious group — in whole or in part.

I'm retaining the "usually defined" phrase because I think it's intended to potentially include less strict definitions of genocide, especially where genocidal intent is political in nature (e.g. Cambodian Genocide, see in Genocide definitions United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96, Jack Nusan Porter's definition, Steven T. Katz's definition, John Cox's defintion. See also Leo Kuper's discussion on the definition.)
I'm not super attached to my suggestions and I'm not trying to edit war here, so if either you or Pincrete prefer your suggestion you're welcome to edit it how you like. — Retroflexivity［talk ❘ contribs］ 23:17, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

@Retroflexivity: I think your definition is not bad. I assume it goes without saying that 'part' here means 'substantial part'. Note that, as far as I can tell, the definition implies that aiming to destroy only part of an ethnic group, and successfully doing so, would be genocide. For example, if someone killed all the wealthy members of a certain nation, that would be genocide according to this definition (I think). After all, it is the intentional partial destruction of a national group. Do you agree? Is this a valid objection to the definition? If so, is this a serious-enough objection that this definition should be revised? Perhaps it isn't. I think an imperfect definition is tolerable at the start of the article. We might also consider leaving out the word 'intentional', since it is not clear that a genocide needs to be intentional. The thought "if I had accidentally knocked that huge vat of arsenic into the water supply, I would have been responsible for a genocide, an accidental one" is not a contradiction in terms. (I realize I'm just thinking on my own about this, which is original research. But I think probably the best way to avoid doing original research is not to embrace an objectionable definition as correct, but to noncommittally discuss definitions already put forward in the literature, using a clause like "...is usually defined as...".) Omphaloscope talk 22:08, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

@Omphaloscope: Yes, in part means "in substantial part". I think my definition is sufficiently similar to the UN definition for your question about killing "all the wealthy members of a certain nation" to be a question about the UN definition as well; I'll try to answer this question instead.
I think the answer is yes, that is genocide by the UN definition. As seen in the quote below, the destruction of the part targeted should be thought of in terms of the impact on the overall group. Killing all the affluent members of a certain nation would certainly have a substantial impact on that nation, and the systematic targeting of members of the group clearly indicates genocidal intent.
Now I'll explain why I think my definition is so similar to the UN definition, and to do this I'll highlight the minor differences between mine and theirs: first, I have removed the "as such" from the end, which I believe indicates that the victim group and its members are targeted specifically for being members of the victim group; I think specifying this is unnecessary in the opening sentence. Second, where the UN definition has "acts committed with intent to destroy", I have put "intentional destruction", which I believe is shorter and reasonably similar. The main potential difference here is that "intentional destruction" might exclude "acts committed with intent to destroy" that failed to cause destruction or only caused minor destruction. I don't think that this is really a difference, because the UN literature I've already cited in this discussion says things like

The aim of the Genocide Convention is to prevent the intentional destruction of entire human groups, and the part targeted must be significant enough (substantial) to have an impact on the group as a whole. The substantiality requirement both captures genocide’s defining character as a crime of massive proportions (numbers) and reflects the Convention’s concern with the impact the destruction of the targeted part will have on the overall survival of the group (emblematic). --This Document

Further, the UN genocide convention only defines five types of acts that can constitute genocide. Each one is clearly destructive, and trying and failing to commit any one of these acts would only constitute attempted genocide, which is also given as a crime in the UN genocide convention.
I think we should leave "intentional" in the definition; it emphasizes that genocide involves genocidal intent, as seen in the "acts taken with the intent to destroy" part of the UN definition. In your example of accidental mass arsenic poisoning, there is no clear intent to destroy. It's definitely accidental genocide in the popular sense of genocide as mass death, but I'm not sure it's actually genocide in the sense of the UN convention, and I don't think the UN would call it genocide unless they suspected that it wasn't really an "accident".
As for your concern about WP:OR, that policy doesn't apply to talk pages, and since your comments are clearly in good faith there's always WP:IAR to fall back on. — Retroflexivity［talk ❘ contribs］ 02:20, 3 March 2022 (UTC)

Section on misuse of term

Hi, I added a section on the misuse of term but was reverted ([1]) by Pincrete invoking the essay WP:COATRACK. I don't think my addition constitutes any form of coatracking, to the contrary, as an encyclopedia aiming to provide information in an easily accessible form for everyone, I consider it to be our professional duty to describe, backed up by highly reliable sources, what genocide is and what it is not. I agree that in an ideal world a positive definition would be all that is necessary, but sometimes it is also helpful to explicitly describe what is not covered under a definition to make it impossible to misunderstand a meaning. Given that Putin is prominently misusing the term and that significant portions of the Russian population have difficulties to access neutral and independent media and therefore might actually assume that Putin's use of the term is correct, it is important that we explicitly mark his usage as incorrect. WP:COATRACK mentions that material might be "irrelevant, undue or biased". Given the extensive coverage of Putin's misuse of term in media across the globe (except for in Russia), I think including this example is relevant and appropriate here. I'm open for improved wording or for including additional information, but I think we are not doing some portions of our audience a service if we don't address this explicitly. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 13:48, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

I was careful to label your edit as Good Faith. I don't doubt that practically all sources would agree that Putin's 'genocide' claims are somewhere between massive, massive hyperbole and outright lies, but does saying that Putin is currently massively exaggerating/lying (or as you put it "misusing the term") tell anyone anything about what genocide actually is? Or is it a very topical comment on what/who Putin is and what the present instance is really? Would we put on the rape article a topical instance of a false accusation, ditto fraud, robbery, murder etc. I'm not of course implying that genocide is in any way comparable to fraud, but the principle remains that any such content is much more about the current instance (Putin and the invasion) than about the broader subject, which is what I meant by it being COATRACKing. Pincrete (talk) 15:51, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for explaining your reasoning. To answer your question but does saying that Putin is currently massively exaggerating/lying (or as you put it "misusing the term") tell anyone anything about what genocide actually is?, not by itself, but for those who are under the impression that Putin's use of the term is correct (which certainly is a minority on global scale, but not in Russia, where media are censored or blocked), our set of definitions in the article won't help them unless we explicitly tell them that Putin's use of the term is incorrect.

Sure, a lot of people abuse a lot of terms and we don't routinely list them all in corresponding articles (although I have occasionally seen examples in prominent cases - just because I just ran into one: Gaslighting#Excessive_misuse_of_the_term_"gaslighting"). This is a case that is being discussed globally, therefore I think it is relevant enough to be included in the article.

My intention is not to further expand on this in this article (unless other people would find this appropriate), but just to raise a little "caveat" sign there by including this two-liner, so that the target audience who might come here looking up what Putin's "genocide" means, would stop for a moment, start questioning things and ideally go on to educate themselves about the topic in the other articles we have on the topic.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:41, 10 March 2022 (UTC)

So, could this convince you to add it to the article? What do other editors think about it?

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 01:19, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

My position remains that knowing someone can mis-use the term, or in this instance, frankly, lie in using the term, doesn't really tell anyone anything about what genocide is. Pincrete (talk) 15:19, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

But if someone does not have a good understanding of what genocide is already and has only very limited access to independent sources, then telling them the definition alone does not help much either. If they see Putin using the term and have nothing else to compare with they might even come to the conclusion that he's applying the term correctly - unless someone explicitly tells them that he's not. So, it's not so much about the definition, more about the application. Not an issue for people (like us) with a stable reference system around us based on reliable information, but not necessarily obvious for someone for whom the reference is incomplete, contradictory, or floating.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 18:16, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

The term before WW2

Lemkin is credited with popularizing the term and making it an actionable legal concept, but he was not the first to actually use the term. In March 1917, Hjalmar Branting, leader of the Social Democrat party of Sweden (and a few years later, prime minister) used the term "folkmord" ('murder of a people/nation') in a speech on the Ottoman-run genocide of Armenians, Kurds and other peoples in Anatolia and Syria. The speech was made during an indoor public meeting to raise awareness of what was happening, at Norra Bantorget in central Stockholm (a square in which Branting himself would be honoured with a monument some years after his death in 1925). Both the word "folkmord" and the meaning implied by Branting are essentially the same as those used by Lemkin a quarter of a century later, and "folkmord" is still the word for genocide in Swedish to this day. I don't know whether Branting had borrowed the term from someone else, presumably a German speaker, but he was certainly the first one to use the word in the Nordic countries and far ahead of Lemkin.

Source: a document from a multi-party proposal at the Swedish parliament in 2008, aiming to recognize the acts of 1915 as a genocide: https://www.riksdagen.se/sv/dokument-lagar/dokument/motion/folkmordet-1915-pa-armenier_GW02U332

I'll translate the relevant bit, it's about two-thirds down the page. After quoting a number of cables and documents by Swedish diplomats (P G A Anckarswärd and Einar af Wirsén, both of them posted to Constantinople) dating to 1915/16, documents that clearly characterize the ongoing actions as ethnic cleansing, ethnically based extermination, and even quoting a 1942 memoir by Wirsén that uses the actual word "folkmord", the text goes on:

"Beyond these there are many eyewitness accounts published, by missionaries and field workers such as Alma Johansson, Maria Anholm, Lars Erik Högberg, E. John Larson, Olga Moberg, Per Pehrsson and others. Hjalmar Branting was the very first person to use the term genocide, long before Raphael Lemkin used this concept, in a speech on March 26, 1917, calling the persecution of the Armenians "a well organized and systematic genocide. worse than anything ever seen in this vein in Europe".

The fact that Branting highlighted this and actually called it a genocide in public is attested in many books and research articles about him, and obviously notable. Strausszek (talk) 01:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The article already says "Before the term genocide was coined, there were various ways of describing such events. Some languages already had words for such killings, including German (Völkermord, lit. 'murder of a people') and Polish (ludobójstwo, lit. 'killing of a people or nation')." How is this term different and not already covered? Secondly, do WP:RS specifically say anything about Branting's use before Lemkin? One of the sources you give above says the opposite ... that Lemkin coined the term. This sounds like WP:SYNTH at the moment. I don't think anyone doubts that there have been various ways historically to refer to mass ethnic murders, but the term itself and its initial legal definition is usually credited to Lemkin. Pincrete (talk) 08:29, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

There's a difference between coining a term and actually being the first to use it. "Punk rock" for instance existed as a vague slang term in the late 1960s, close to what we now call rough garage rock/surfer rock, Nuggets-type bands, but it was the later punk movement, launched in 1976/77, that actually made it a widespread term, therefore that coined the term and gave it broad currency. Lemkin made "genocide" an established legal concept, but the word and essentials of the concept itself clearly exiated before him. "Folkmord" in Swedish is practically a cognate of Lemkin's later Latin-Greek term genocide: both terms literally read out "people/racial group - murder".

The article here is about the term and the history of the concept, not about Lemkin personally. If the term existed with much the same sense in a different language, and referring to the same events (the 1915 persecutions), a quarter of a century before Lemkin began using it in print, then that's certainly notable.

The text I linked to and translated should certainly suffice as a reliable source; it discusses the history of the term in the context of growing awareness of genocide, and it was written by a group of parliamentarians and published as official print. It doesn't get much more established than that (and Branting himself is a well-known figure to historians, even outside of Sweden). The speech was reported by newspapers right away and it is attested and quoted in several places online. If you're going to insist that all sources used by the English Wikipedia have to be in English, then I can inform you that lots of articles would have been impossible to write, badly depleted or littered with misunderstandings if that was the rule. The fact is that not all that's important in history is well served by English books and English sources. Strausszek (talk) 22:53, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

I just checked with the article on Wiki-De (in German) and it says that Lemkin's term was likely a direct translation from the Polish term, for a draft law proposal written by him in 1943 on behalf of the Polish government-in-exile in London. To give it more weight, he based his rendering on Latin and Greek words, but the sense and structure of his word are the same as the Polish and Swedish terms. Where the Polish term came from, how long it had been around and whether it too was a translated term we simply don't know. Strausszek (talk) 23:11, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

The article is about genocide itself, rather than the history or origins of the term, which we cover only briefly. We acknowledge already that similar European terms preceded Lemkin's and give two examples, which have similar literal meanings. I don't see how the Swedish term (which of course in turn probably has its own 'back-story') is especially notable. It would need stronger sources than this IMO to make any argument other than that other ways of describing such events existed before Lemkin. Many people (including Hitler I believe) had written about instances of mass ethnic murder before Lemkin, including East European pogroms and also about the killing of Armenians. That isn't sufficient proof of growing awareness of genocide, though Lemkin probably was aware of Branting's writings and the Swedish term as he was aware of those of other commentators and other terms. Do WP:RS in general credit Branting with any role? If not any addition would be undue IMO. Pincrete (talk) 07:15, 11 May 2022 (UTC)

Add alternative definitions based on gender, sexual orientation, and especially sexual identity

I've add a paragraph at end of the Other Definitions section, supported by about a dozen sources, mostly academic, a few news sources. There's much more to add, which might be done in the article on Definitions of genocide. But I think this brief discussion is warranted by the scholarship and attention to the issue. ProfGray (talk) 17:49, 21 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks, Gray - This was sorely needed. I went ahead and updated your references to citation templates and linked to the articles wherever possible. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/they)^{Talk to Me!} 01:10, 22 June 2022 (UTC)

grammar error

If i'm not mistaken, as i'm not a native speaker, in the first sentence it should read group instead of 'a people' but i cant correct it. Maybe someone could do that or tell me if its correct. Robert Sonter (talk) 11:39, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

A people is correct - an imperfect term but usually meaning a substantial human group linked by ethnicity. Pincrete (talk) 20:35, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

History

Genocide 41.182.135.150 (talk) 11:42, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Requested move for Amhara genocide

People who edit here may be interested in Talk:Amhara genocide#Requested move 13 January 2023. Boud (talk) 18:19, 15 January 2023 (UTC)

As a label, it is contentious because it is moralizing,[13] and has been used as a type of moral category since the late 1990S

Kind of an ... loaded orphan statement ... a section missing from the article?? 2600:1700:CDA0:1060:C9BD:D334:7295:541A (talk) 02:23, 23 January 2023 (UTC)

Incorrect etymology

The article states that Raphael Lemkin combined "..the Greek word γένος (genos, 'race, people') with the Latin suffix -caedo ('act of killing')" to create the word genocide. However, in the source given for this, Lemkin is said to have combined "genos" and "cide". I looked up the etymology of genocide in a few different dictionaries and they told me the same thing. The suffix -cide comes from Middle French, which comes from the Latin suffix -cīda, meaning "killer", which itself comes from the Latin word caedere, meaning "to kill". Nordtman (talk) 11:54, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I suspect that this is a case of immediate/ultimate root of the second part. Lemkin would hardly have needed to go back to Latin anyhow, since 'cide' was already well established as an English suffix (homicide, matricide, fratricide, regicide etc) and his own text suggests he went no further back than utilising this existing suffix (even if he was aware of the Latin root). I'm not sure at present how to rephrase, we are currently implying that Lemkin did something more complicated than he actually did. Pincrete (talk) 12:26, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

Requested edit: Second and sixth prohibited acts

Under "Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group" the text reads "The final prohibited act is the only prohibited act that does not lead to physical or biological destruction..." but under "Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group Article II(b)" the text says this act "can encompass a wide range of non-fatal genocidal acts."

Surely non-fatal acts do not lead to physical destruction. I would change the aforementioned text to "Along with the second, the final prohibited act does not necessarily lead to physical or biological destruction..." -- 46.212.53.203 (talk) 14:28, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

'Single' intent?

In the section Genocide#Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, which was introduced by SeymourJustice (talk · contribs) a few years ago, there is a formulation which I find questionable:

It encompasses acts with the single intent of affecting reproduction and intimate relationships, such as involuntary sterilization, forced abortion, the prohibition of marriage, and long-term separation of men and women intended to prevent procreation.

followed by a reference to Stanton. I react to the qualifier 'single' (which was employed already by SeymourJustice). I looked at the given source. and did not find any justification for this qualifier there. (This is seemingly at variance with SeymourJustice's answer to the question in Talk:Genocide/Archive 7#Inserting subtlety and nuance around the non-killing acts of genocide - just added. However, law is not my expertise; if I haven't grasped the meaning correctly, I hope SeymourJustice or someone else will explain why I'm wrong.)

The trouble, as far as I understand it, is that the phrase 'single intent' would make the clause non-applicable, if there was a mixed intent, with just part of it covered by the convention's definition of genocide. Say, forinstance, that the authorities force sterilisation on a substantial part of the women belonging to a specific racial minority, with two clear and outspoken goals: To lessen the economic burden of maintaining the costs and trouble with care-taking and upbringing of children for women from this minority, and also achieve at least a partial elimination of this ethnical group, as a long time goal. As far as I understand the convention, and the discussion in given source, the second intent would be enough to classify (and, if the perpetrators are brought to justice, punish) this as a clear case of genocide. The same would be the case, if a substantial number of adolescent boys from a certain ethnic minority were forcefully castrated, both in order to lessen their sexual urges, and thereby also the spread of veneric diseases, and in order to exterminate this group in the long run. I find nothing stating that the existence of another intention (possibly even a legal one) voids the claim that these acts would be genocides, just since this means that the deeds were not done with the 'single' intent to prevent reproduction.

@SeymourJustice: The general overhaul you made at that time was more in the direction that there should be a 'clear' intent or a 'specific' intent (as contrasted to, e.~g., classical crimes of war, where a greater stress is put on the actual effects of the deed, if I got this right). Are you sure that this was not what you intended in this place, too? I now remove the word 'single'. If you restore it, then please consider some clarification, and improved sources! JoergenB (talk) 20:30, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I had a feeling at the time that much that was being added at that time was WP:OR-ish/ Essay-ish, or at least unhelpfully phrased, but could not dispute specifics as I did not have access to the sources. I suspect your scepticism here is apt. Pincrete (talk) 05:27, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

@JoergenB your confusion here is warranted. After some reflection and review of key sources, I removed the word "intent" altogether. The reason being to avoid confusion between the specific intent of genocide ("the intent to destroy") with what is required in relation to the act, which is a goal or purpose of preventing births. SeymourJustice (talk) 14:48, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Add topic

Massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, and also to

2A02:A314:843C:A00:85AA:E27A:83B0:7A75 (talk) 21:39, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Scholarly Debate on the Definition of Genocide

Personally, I think that the concept of genocide should be expanded to include the systematic elimination of so-called "objective enemies", which, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt identifies as groups of people who are targeted regardless as to their having committed what the regime defines as political crimes, as it is still an attempt to eliminate entire sectors of the populace in regards to some essence which is ascribed to the victims, which, if an ascribed essence were, then, included as criteria, may go far enough, as you would still, say, count the people to have been systematically eliminated due to their having been categorized as "mentally ill" by the Third Reich among the victims of the Holocaust. As those who are defined as "mentally ill" do not consist of an ethnicity or nation, the extant definition of the term doesn't seem to be expansive enough to even include all of the victims of the Holocaust, which leads me to suspect that there's bound to be scholarly debate in regards to whether or not the term should specifically refer to the systematic elimination of an ethnicity or nation or whether it should be expanded to include some other criteria. Though the Soviet Union, for instance, did systematically starve the populace of Ukraine, and, thereby, commit genocide, there's a large number of excess deaths which the extant definition can not account for, which just has to have led to some sort of debate upon the definition of the term.

This article mentions the alternative, "democide", but, as there is, for instance, no Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Democide, somehow, someone or another has debated this in some way, shape, or form, perhaps, even quite fiercely. Daydreamdays2 (talk) 22:15, 8 October 2023 (UTC)