Genocide
Learning Target: Students will be able to explain what genocide is.
What is genocide?
• Discuss with a partner what you think the definition of genocide is.
Where have you heard the term? What are some examples of
genocide you have heard of?
• Be ready to share with the class
Spectrum of Violence
• With your partner, discuss where you would place the following acts
on a spectrum from least harmful to most harmful. Assume this is in
a country with two groups of people: Pink and Purple.
• Calling someone a bad name because they are purple
• Ransacking a neighborhood, breaking windows of houses and painting graffiti
on purple people’s houses
• Beating up a random person on the street because they are purple
• Killing a purple family because they are purple
• Spitting on someone because they are purple
• Rounding up and taking all purple people to a school yard and killing them
• Passing a law to prevent all purple people from getting jobs from pink people
What is genocide?
• Genocide is the systematic actions taken to destroy or exterminate a
group of people based on a specific characteristic of the group (such
as race, religion, ethnicity).
• Break down each segment and define them with your partner:
•
•
•
•
Systematic actions taken
To destroy or exterminate
A group of people
Based on a specific characteristic of the group
Where did the term come from?
• WWII
• 6 million Jewish people had been systematically killed by the Nazis
• International community decided this should never happen again
• United Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) in 1948
• Gave a legal definition of genocide
• Obligates countries that signed the treaty to intervene to stop genocide when
it is occurring.
Definition from convention:
• Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole
or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious 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
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
• Does this definition change your thoughts of what could be
considered “genocide”? Why or why not?
This week:
• We will take a look at a recent example of genocide in 1994 in
Rwanda and the response (or lack of a response) by the international
community
• Then we will look at a genocide (as deemed by the United States) in
Sudan that led to the creation of a new country, South Sudan, in 2011
and the ongoing conflict between the two countries