This is a list of scholarly and international legal definitions of genocide

Genocide

Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...

, a word coined by Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent. He is best known for his work against genocide, a word he coined in 1943 from the root words genos and -cide...

 in 1944. While there are various definitions of the term, almost all international bodies of law officially adjudicate the crime of genocide pursuant to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. It defines genocide in legal terms, and is the culmination of...

 (CPPCG). This and other definitions are generally regarded by the majority of genocide scholars to have an "intent to destroy" as a requirement for any act to be labeled genocide; there is also growing agreement on the inclusion of the physical destruction criterion.

Writing in 1998 Kurt Jonassohn and Karin Björnson stated that the CPPCG was a legal instrument resulting from a diplomatic compromise. As such the wording of the treaty is not intended to be a definition suitable as a research tool, and although it is used for this purpose, as it has an international legal credibility that others lack, other definitions have also been postulated. Jonassohn and Björnson go on to say that for various reasons, none of these alternative definitions have gained widespread support.

Date	Author	Definition
1944	Raphael Lemkin Raphael Lemkin Raphael Lemkin was a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent. He is best known for his work against genocide, a word he coined in 1943 from the root words genos and -cide...	By 'genocide' we mean the destruction of an ethnic group Ethnic group An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...  . . . . Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups . . .. (Axis Rule in Occupied Europe ix. 79)
1945	Count 3 of the indictment of the 24 Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg Trials Nuremberg Trials The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....	They (the defendants) conducted deliberate and systematic genocide - viz., the extermination of racial and nation Nation A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up... al groups - against the civilian populations of certain occupied territories in order to destroy particular races and classes of people, and national, racial or religious groups, particularly Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others.
1946	Raphael Lemkin	The crime of genocide should be recognized therein as a conspiracy to exterminate national, religious or racial groups. The overt acts of such a conspiracy may consist of attacks against life, liberty or property of members of such groups merely because of their affiliation with such groups. The formulation of the crime may be as follows: "Whoever, while participating in a conspiracy to destroy a national, racial or religious group, undertakes an attack against life, liberty or property of members of such groups is guilty of the crime of genocide. (Genocide, American Scholar, Volume 15, no. 2 (April 1946), p. 227-230)
1946	United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96 (I) United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96 United Nations General Assembly Resolution 96 of 11 December 1946, titled "The Crime of Genocide", was a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly during its first session that affirmed that genocide was a crime under international law...  (11 December)	Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings; such denial of the right of existence shocks the conscience of mankind, ... and is contrary to moral law and to the spirit and aims of the United Nations. ... The General Assembly, therefore, affirms that genocide is a crime under international law ... whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds ...
1948	The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. It defines genocide in legal terms, and is the culmination of...  (CPPCG) was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and came into effect on 12 January 1951 (Resolution 260 (III)). Article 2:	Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a nation Nation A nation may refer to a community of people who share a common language, culture, ethnicity, descent, and/or history. In this definition, a nation has no physical borders. However, it can also refer to people who share a common territory and government irrespective of their ethnic make-up... al, ethnical, racial or religious Religion Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...  group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (Article 2 CPPCG)
1959	Peter Drost	Genocide is the deliberate destruction of physical life of individual human beings by reason of their membership of any human collectivity as such. (The Crime of State, Volume 2, Leiden, 1959, p. 125.)
1975	Vahakn Dadrian Vahakn Dadrian Vahakn N. Dadrian , currently the director of Genocide Research at Zoryan Institute, is a professor of sociology, and an internationally-renowned expert on the Armenian genocide.-Biography:...	Genocide is the successful attempt by a dominant group, vested with formal authority and/or with preponderant access to the overall resources of power, to reduce by coercion or lethal violence the number of a minority group whose ultimate extermination is held desirable and useful and whose respective vulnerability is a major factor contributing to the decision for genocide. (A Typology of Genocide)
1976	Irving Louis Horowitz Irving Louis Horowitz Irving Louis Horowitz is an American sociologist, author and college professor who has written and lectured extensively in his field.-Personal Life:Horowitz was born in New York City on September 25, 1929, to Louis and Esther Tepper Horowitz...	[Genocide is] a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus. . . . Genocide represents a systematic effort over time to liquidate a national population, usually a minority . . . [and] functions as a fundamental political policy to assure conformity and participation of the citizenry. (Genocide: State Power and Mass Murder)
1981	Leo Kuper	I shall follow the definition of genocide given in the [UN] Convention. This is not to say that I agree with the definition. On the contrary, I believe a major omission to be in the exclusion of political groups from the list of groups protected. In the contemporary world, political differences are at the very least as signicant a basis for massacre and annihilation as racial, national, ethnic or religious differences. Then too, the genocides against racial, national, ethnic or religious groups are generally a consequence of, or intimately related to, political conflict. However, I do not think it helpful to create new definitions of genocide, when there is an internationally recognized definition and a Genocide Convention which might become the basis for some effective action, however limited the underlying conception. But since it would vitiate the analysis to exclude political groups, I shall refer freely . . . to liquidating or exterminatory actions against them. (Genocide: Its Political Use in the Twentieth Century)
1982	Jack Nusan Porter	Genocide is the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, by a government or its agents, of a racial, sexual, religious, tribal or political minority. It can involve not only mass murder, but also starvation, forced deportation, and political, economic and biological subjugation. Genocide involves three major components: ideology, technology, and bureaucracy/organization.
1984	Yehuda Bauer	[Genocide is] the planned destruction, since the mid-nineteenth century, of a racial, national, or ethnic group as such, by the following means: (a) selective mass murder of elites or parts of the population; (b) elimination of national (racial, ethnic) culture and religious life with the intent of "denationalization"; (c) enslavement, with the same intent; (d) destruction of national (racial, ethnic) economic life, with the same intent; (e) biological decimation through the kidnapping of children, or the prevention of normal family life, with the same intent. . . . [Holocaust is] the planned physical annihilation, for ideological or pseudo-religious reasons, of all the members of a national, ethnic, or racial group.
1987	Tony Barta	My conception of a genocidal society – as distinct from a genocidal state – is one in which the bureaucratic apparatus might officially be directed to protect innocent people but in which a whole race is nevertheless subject to remorseless pressures of destruction inherent in the very nature of the society. ("Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia", pp. 239–240.) (see also Australian genocide debate)
1987	Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski	Genocide is the deliberate, organized destruction, in whole or in large part, of racial or ethnic groups by a government or its agents. It can involve not only mass murder, but also forced deportation (ethnic cleansing), systematic rape, and economic and biological subjugation. (Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2000. Reissue of an early work.)
1988	Henry Huttenbach	Genocide is any act that puts the very existence of a group in jeopardy. (Locating the Holocaust on the genocide spectrum: towards a methodology of definition and categorization, Holocaust and Genocide Studies Holocaust and Genocide Studies Holocaust and Genocide Studies is an international peer-reviewed academic journal addressing the issue of the Holocaust and other genocides. It has been published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum since 1987 with varying frequency . The journal's... . Vol 3, No 3, pp 389–403.)
1988	Helen Fein Helen Fein Helen Fein is a historical sociologist, Professor, specialized on genocide, human rights, collective violence and other issues. She is an author and editor of 12 books and monographs, Associate of International Security Program , a founder and first President of the International Association of...	Genocide is a series of purposeful actions by a perpetrator(s) to destroy a collectivity through mass or selective murders of group members and suppressing the biological and social reproduction of the collectivity. This can be accomplished through the imposed proscription or restriction of reproduction of group members, increasing infant mortality, and breaking the linkage between reproduction and socialization of children in the family or group of origin. The perpetrator may represent the state of the victim, another state, or another collectivity. (Genocide: A Sociological Perspective, London)
1988	Barbara Harff and Ted Gurr	the promotion and execution of policies by a state or its agents which result in the deaths of a substantial portion of a group ...[when] the victimized groups are defined primarily in terms of their communal characteristics, i.e., ethnicity, religion or nationality.(Toward empirical theory of genocides and politicides, International Studies Quarterly, 37:3, 1988)
1990	Frank Chalk and Kurt Jonassohn	Genocide is a form of one-sided mass killing in which a state or other authority intends to destroy a group, as that group and membership in it are defined by the perpetrator. (The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, Yale University Press)
1990	John L. P. Thompson and Gail A. Quets	In short, given the problems which arise from restrictions, we define genocide as the destruction of a group by purposive action. This allows the role of intentional action to be explored, different subtypes of genocide to be compared, and the impact of different factors on genocide to be examined empirically. ("Genocide and Social Conflict: A Partial Theory and Comparison", p. 248)
1993	Helen Fein	Genocide is sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members, sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the victim. (Genocide: A Sociological Perspective, 1993/1990)
1994	Steven T. Katz	[Genocide is] the actualization of the intent, however successfully carried out, to murder in its totality any national, ethnic, racial, religious, political, social, gender or economic group, as these groups are defined by the perpetrator, by whatever means.(The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, Vol. 1, 1994) [Modified by Adam Jones in 2000 to read, "murder in whole or in substantial part. ..."]
1994	Israel Charny	Genocide in the generic sense means the mass killing of substantial numbers of human beings, when not in the course of military action against the military forces of an avowed enemy, under conditions of the essential defencelessness of the victim. (Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions ed. George Andreopoulos)
1996	Irving Louis Horowitz Irving Louis Horowitz Irving Louis Horowitz is an American sociologist, author and college professor who has written and lectured extensively in his field.-Personal Life:Horowitz was born in New York City on September 25, 1929, to Louis and Esther Tepper Horowitz...	Genocide is herein defined as a structural and systematic destruction of innocent people by a state bureaucratic apparatus [emphasis in original]. . . . Genocide mean the physical dismemberment and liquidation of people on large scales, an attempt by those who rule to achieve the total elimination of a subject people.
2003	Barbara Harff	Genocides and politicide Politicide Politicide has three related but distinct meanings. It can mean a gradual but systematic attempt to cause the annihilation of an independent political and social entity. For example the destruction of the apartheid system in South Africa... s are the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents — or, in the case of civil war either of the contending authorities — that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group.
2007	Martin Shaw	Genocide is a form of violent social conflict or war, between armed power organizations that aim to destroy civilian social groups and those groups and other actors who resist this destruction. Genocidal action is action in which armed power organizations treat civilian social groups as enemies and aim to destroy their real or putative social power, by means of killing, violence and coercion against individuals whom they regard as members of the groups.
2009	Dovid Katz Dovid Katz Dovid Katz is an American-born, Vilnius-based Judaic studies professor, Yiddish specialist, and political activist, currently living in Lithuania.-Biography:...	Genocide is the mass murder of as many people as possible on the basis of born national, ethnic, racial or religious identity as such; with intent to eliminate the targeted group entirely and internationally; without allowing the victims any option to change views, beliefs or allegiances to save themselves; and with large-scale accomplished fulfilment of the goal. Genocide leaves in its wake an extinct or nearly extinct group within the territory under the control of the perpetrators.