Genocide and Its Denial: The Power, Complexity, and Limits of a Contested Concept

Author: Thomas Shacklock, MSc

April 28, 2026

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin [Image credit: Pexels]

Genocide is a mass atrocity that can, according to the 1948 U.N. Genocide Convention, entail any of several fatal and non-fatal tactics driven by the specific intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group “in whole or in part”. The word “genocide” was coined by Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, and the Genocide Convention was adopted following the Holocaust, the Nazi’s extermination of six million Jews and other groups. Hence, this atrocity is considered the “crime of crimes”, and accusations thereof are considered exceptionally serious and are highly contested. Yet legal experts emphasize that it is not inherently more egregious than mass atrocities driven by other objectives, such as crimes against humanity (including targeted killings and forced starvation). Nevertheless, the word “genocide” carries a unique emotional and moral power when applied to atrocities.

Debates often cover the distinctions and similarities between genocide and other atrocities. It is often difficult to prove intent, which is usually inferred by patterns of conduct, particularly in the absence of genocidal rhetoric or stated objectives. Meanwhile, genocide or atrocity denial is often influenced by extremist ideology, dehumanization, atrocity-related trauma, diplomatic pragmatism, political biases, group or national pride, or cherished narratives about nation-states. Examples include Holocaust denial, denial of the 1915-16 Ottoman-perpetrated Armenian genocide in Turkey, Western support for Israel and perceptions of allegations against Israel as antisemitism, and ”anti-imperialist” or left-wing genocide denial, which sees various genocide claims as Western propaganda, among other examples. It is also often argued that overusing the word “genocide” dilutes its meaning or simplifies complex conflicts.

Arguably, the unique immorality of genocide is not necessarily the violence itself but the elements that typically drive it: an exclusionary, purist, or settler-colonial ideology, an intolerance of or perception of threat posed by an “undesirable” group’s existence or presence, and the intent to destroy that group. However, cases of attempted extermination “in whole” are more likely to be uniquely extreme in effect. Ideology, rather than an explicit plan, is thought to have caused a possible genocide of the Nuba in southern Sudan (1992). The mass killings in Cambodia (1975-79) are widely seen as a genocide even though they majorly targeted perceived political “enemies” as well as ethnic minorities protected by the Genocide Convention, as they resulted from an ideological drive to create a pure Communist agrarian utopia. Other large-scale killings and mass deaths that may not strictly (or clearly) be driven by genocidal intent or ideologies can, in some cases, be deadlier than small-scale but clear-cut genocidal killings (such as the Islamic State’s Yazidi genocide). In certain cases, they may also exceed some large-scale genocides. 

There are also genocides that do not (primarily) involve killings. Examples of such genocides are argued to include the repressive forced assimilationist and settler-colonial policies targeting Uyghur Muslims in China, where certain acts appear to have explicitly violated the Genocide Convention, namely forced sterilizations and abortions, as well as torture and family separations. The lack of killings has made this persecution more easily subject to denialist propaganda campaigns depicting a whitewashed, Sinicized version of the Uyghurs’ repressed and erased culture. By comparison, assimilationist “cultural genocides” targeting  Roma and Travellers in Europe and Indigenous Americans and Australians added to the various, more deadly genocides these groups faced throughout history. 

Ethnic cleansing: A euphemism for genocide?

The terms “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” refer to efforts to eliminate groups from areas. Yet, the latter is not a legal concept and specifically describes efforts to ethnically homogenize territories by removing populations through intimidation or force. Many legal experts argue that removing and destroying groups are distinct acts, though the former may involve or evolve into the latter. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia concluded that the 1995 massacre of Bosnian Muslims in the city of Srebrenica constituted a genocide that occurred in the context of the Serb nationalists’ wider “ethnic cleansing” across Bosnia during the Balkan Wars. After observers warned of genocide against Muslims in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2013-14, various international organizations only found evidence of “ethnic cleansing”. In Myanmar, U.N. investigators drew a stronger conclusion in finding that the military’s 2017 “clearance operations” against Rohingya Muslims, which were widely seen as ethnic cleansing, had been driven by genocidal intent. 

Despite these varied, nuanced findings, some scholars view “ethnic cleansing” as a euphemism for genocide that reinforces the dehumanization of victims, having been used by perpetrators in the Balkan Wars. Even Lemkin originally suggested that forced displacement could destroy the foundations of a group’s survival, though it was not included in the negotiated version of the Genocide Convention.

Srebrenica Cemetery [Image credit: Pexels]

The relationship between war and genocide

In popular discourse, a common argument is that a military campaign is not war but genocide, or vice versa. However, this is a false dichotomy, as most genocide scholars agree on the close link between genocide and war. The examples of Rwanda, the CAR, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and Gaza have demonstrated that atrocity crimes or other actions by armed groups from repressed, marginalized, or persecuted communities can be exploited to commit genocide or “ethnic cleansing” fuelled by broader ideologies in complex conflict-affected contexts. 

Objectives can vary and evolve among atrocity perpetrators throughout a war, with implications for how atrocities are interpreted and can be averted. Scholar Martin Shaw even argues that wars aimed at defeating military enemies, including those fought in the name of “self-defence” or counterinsurgency operations, may be genocidal when the violence targets civilian populations as collective enemies to destroy them or their perceived or actual “social” power. This seems to have been the case in Gaza, as well as Somalia’s alleged genocide of the Isaaq in Somaliland and Iraq’s Anfal genocide against the Kurds in the 1980s. But should such atrocities be more accurately understood as crimes against humanity in other contexts? More broadly, when is collective punishment or subjugation in war genocide? For example, is Russia’s war of subjugation in Ukraine a genocide, or is it a war of subjugation that may have included acts of genocide and processes of settler colonialism and cultural destruction? The question of genocide in the Nigerian government’s bombing and mass starvation of mainly Igbos in the 1967-70 Biafran secessionist war, which followed anti-Igbo pogroms and ended with the successionists’ defeat, has also been subject to scholarly debate.

The grey area between genocide and other war-related atrocities was highlighted in a 2005 U.N. report on Darfur, western Sudan, which found crimes against humanity but a lack of genocidal intent in the mass violence perpetrated by the Sudanese military and Arab-identifying “Janjaweed” militias against non-Arab communities, which the U.S. and other observers called genocide. While the U.N. report concluded the violence was mainly a disproportionate counterinsurgency operation against Darfuri rebels, several academics critiqued it for downplaying the context of Arab supremacist politics and the possibility of committing genocide in part. However, the report’s authors emphasized that a lack of genocidal intent did not reduce the seriousness of the crime. U.N. investigators have been more forthright in claiming the renewed Darfur atrocities against non-Arab communities by the Rapid Support Forces, an offshoot of the Janjaweed that is now fighting against the military in Sudan’s current war, show evidence of genocide.

Panorama of Photos of Genocide Victims - Genocide Memorial Center - Kigali - Rwanda. [Image credit: Adam Jones. Ph.D. via Wikimedia]

Competing genocide claims

Competing genocide claims can also seem to represent a dynamic of competitive victimhood, particularly in contexts of complex conflicts. Both denial and accusations of genocide are argued to undermine reconciliation and peacebuilding. Conflict-based atrocity narratives also tend to divide people into “victim” and “perpetrator” groups, even when dynamics of violence are more complex, while atrocity-linked trauma can breed further atrocities and related ideologies. The examples of the conflicts in Israel-Palestine, Ethiopia, and Central Africa have exemplified the challenges of finding ways to understand asymmetric, multidirectional atrocities. Can there be reciprocal genocides in a conflict, even if they are asymmetric in scale, proportion, power relations, perpetrator ideology or capacity, or degree of coherence and clarity of intent? Or should smaller atrocities in such contexts be understood as crimes against humanity? 

A case in point is Rwanda, where Hutu extremists led a highly organized campaign (with the participation of Hutu civilians) to fully annihilate the Tutsi minority in 1994. Later, U.N. investigators suggested that the mainly Tutsi armed group that ended the genocide and seized control of Rwanda may have committed genocide in massacring Hutu refugees while pursuing exiled genocide perpetrators in Congo, all while officially espousing an ideology of interethnic unity. The investigators lacked evidence of intent, and this allegation is seen as reinforcing a false “double genocide” conspiracy theory. Nevertheless, though these massacres did not compare with the Tutsi genocide, they were reportedly driven by revenge and a dangerous conflation of Hutu civilian refugees with genocidaires. Furthermore, the prohibition on discussing them at all in post-genocide Rwanda risks limiting long-term reconciliation, while eliminationist dimensions still feed into related conflicts and various other atrocities in neighbouring DR Congo. 

Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp Fencing [Image credit: Pexels]

The failure to protect

Does it make sense to use the same word for forced assimilation as we use for deadly large-scale genocides, while not applying it to other mass killings? Does this approach only appear problematic because of the assumptions and moral weight we attach to the word “genocide” and not to other atrocities? Does the phrase “crimes against humanity” really convey the level of devastation and destruction in certain atrocities that are not always explained by genocidal intent? Experts who emphasize the distinctions between atrocities in good faith seek to foster a nuanced, rigorous understanding and do not necessarily deny or downplay their egregiousness. Critically, disagreements in genocide debates underscore that labels are not enough and should be accompanied by an understanding of the causes, dynamics, and nature of each atrocity to inform policies aimed at stopping them. 

Moreover, focusing narrowly on these debates can distract us from the real violence facing the victims and reinforce presumptions that only genocide victims should be prioritized for protection, sympathy, and justice. Beyond the genocide in Darfur, the wider war in Sudan is also a serious, neglected humanitarian crisis. It even threatens to merge with a potential renewed war in Ethiopia, the last of which was reportedly the 21st century’s deadliest war and saw ethnic-based atrocities on all sides, including the genocide or “ethnic cleansing” of Tigrayans. Israel’s ongoing violence is among the latest of multiple worldwide atrocities backed (or in some cases committed) by the U.S. and other Western powers. More significant than our use of and disagreements over the word “genocide” is the international community’s repeated collective failure to prevent, learn from, and foster accountability for all types of atrocities.

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Glossary

• Antisemitism: Hate directed at Jewish people, or cruel or unfair treatment of people because they are Jewish [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Assimilation: The cultural absorption of a minority group into the main cultural body [Source: Collins Online Dictionary]

• Atrocity: An extremely cruel, violent, or shocking act [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Asymmetric: Involving actions or parts that are not similar or not balanced, especially because one is much bigger or more powerful than the other [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Collective punishment: The term refers not only to criminal punishment, but also to other types of sanctions, harassment or administrative action taken against a group in retaliation for an act committed by an individual/s who are considered to form part of the group. Such punishment therefore targets persons who bear no responsibility for having committed the conduct in question. Historically used as a deterrence tool by occupying powers to prevent attacks from resistance movements, collective punishments for acts committed by individuals during an armed conflict are prohibited by IHL [International Humanitarian Law] against prisoners of war or other protected persons. [Source (quoted): International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)]

• Communism: The belief in a society without different social classes in which the methods of production are owned and controlled by all its members, and everyone works as much as they can and receives what they need, or a social and political system based on this belief [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Conspiracy theory: A belief that an event or situation is the result of a secret plan made by powerful people [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Counterinsurgency: Action taken by a government to counter the activities of rebels, guerrillas, etc; military and political action carried on to defeat an insurgency [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary] 

• Crimes against humanity: Crimes against humanity are defined as “any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population.” The acts include murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape (and other gender-based or sex crimes), group-based persecution, enforced disappearance, apartheid, and “other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.” [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]

• Dehumanize: Depriving someone of human qualities, personality, or dignity : demeaning or damaging to a person's humanity or individuality [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]

• Eliminationist: In this context, this adjective relates to “eliminationist policies”, a term that scholars Meghan M. Garrity and Harris Mylonas use for the study of “state or non-state actions that aim to destroy, remove, or erase certain groups on the basis of salient identity characteristics,” including genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass expulsion, forced displacement, coercive assimilation, ethnic partition, and mass killing. [Source: Garrity and Mylonas, “Eliminationist politics: an analytical framework,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies]

• Erase: To destroy or remove something completely; to remove or destroy something, especially something that shows that that person or thing ever existed or happened [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Ethnic: Relating or belonging to a group of people who can be seen as distinct (= different) because they have a shared culture, tradition, language, history, etc. [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Ethnic cleansing: The forced removal of an ethnic group from a territory [...] Unlike crimes against humanity, genocide, and war crimes, ethnic cleansing is not recognized as a standalone crime under international law. However, the practice of ethnic cleansing may constitute genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]

• Euphemism: The substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive word or expression for one that is harsh, indelicate, or otherwise unpleasant or taboo [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]  

• Exclusionary: Limited to only one group or particular groups of people, in a way that is unfair [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]

• Extermination: In international criminal law, extermination refers to the mass murder of a demographic group. In international criminal law, extermination refers to the mass murder of a demographic group. Extermination is a crime against humanity codified in Article 7 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Extermination includes "the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population." [Source (quoted): Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School]

• Forced sterilization: Sterilization is a medical procedure that prevents a person from reproducing. Forced sterilization means that the medical procedure was carried out on a person without proper consent. [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]

• Genocidaire: A person who is guilty of genocide [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]

• Genocide: An internationally recognized crime where acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]

• The Holocaust: The systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million European Jews by the Nazi German regime and its allies and collaborators [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]

• Homogenize: If something is homogenized, it is changed so that all its parts are similar or the same, especially in a way that is undesirable. [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]

• Humanitarian crisis: Generally, a humanitarian crisis is defined as an event or series of events that represents a critical threat to the health, safety, security or wellbeing of a community or other large group of people, usually over a wide area. There is no universal definition of a humanitarian crisis, and the terms ‘humanitarian crises’ and ‘humanitarian emergency’ are often used interchangeably. [Source (quoted): Concern Worldwide]

• Ideology: A set of beliefs or principles, especially one on which a political system, party, or organization is based [Source: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/ideology]

• Indigenous: Used to refer to, or relating to, the people who originally lived in a place, rather than people who moved there from somewhere else [Source: Cambridge Dictionary online]

• International community: A phrase used especially by politicians and in newspapers to describe all or several of the countries in the world, or their governments, considered as a group [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Islamic State: ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria), also known as ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), is a Sunni jihadist group with a particularly violent ideology that calls itself a caliphate and claims religious authority over all Muslims. [Source (quoted): RAND]

• Janjaweed: A Sudanese Arab-nomad militia that was a key perpetrator of the Darfur genocide in the 2000s. The name “Janjaweed” translates as “devils on horseback.” [Source: Holocaust Memorial Day Trust]

• Mass atrocity: Instances of “large-scale, systematic violence against civilian populations.” Although the term mass atrocities has no formal legal definition, it usually refers to genocide (as defined above), crimes against humanity, war crimes, and ethnic cleansing. [Source (quoted): US Holocaust Memorial Museum]

• Massacre: A massacre is the killing of a large number of people at the same time in a violent and cruel way [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]

• Persecution: Cruel and unfair treatment of a person or group, especially because of their religious or political beliefs, or their race [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]

• Pogrom: A mob attack, either approved or condoned by authorities, against the persons and property of a religious, racial, or national minority. The term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. [Source (quoted): Britannica]

• Roma: The umbrella-term ‘Roma’ encompasses diverse groups, including Roma, Sinti, Kale, Romanichels, Boyash/Rudari, Ashkali, Egyptians, Yenish, Dom, Lom, Rom and Abdal, as well as Traveller populations (gens du voyage, Gypsies, Camminanti, etc.). [Source: European Commission]

• Secessionist: relating to or supporting secession (= the act of becoming independent and no longer part of a country, area, organization, etc.) [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Settler colonialism: Settler colonialism can be defined as a system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism, that aims to displace a population of a nation (oftentimes indigenous people) and replace it with a new settler population. [Source (quoted): Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School] NB: This is one definition, and the centrality of genocide in settler colonialism may differ from different perspectives. 

• Sinicize: To make Chinese in character or bring under Chinese influence [Source (quoted): Collins Online Dictionary]

• Subjugation: The act of defeating people or a country and ruling them in a way that allows them no freedom [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Supremacist: An advocate or adherent of the supremacy of one group : a person who believes that one group of people as identified by their shared race, ethnicity, sex, gender, or religion is inherently superior to other groups and should have control over those other groups [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]

• Torture: The act of causing great physical or mental pain in order to persuade someone to do something or to give information, or to be cruel to a person or animal [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Trauma: Severe and lasting emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely upsetting experience, or a case of such shock happening [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]

• Utopia: A place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions [Source (quoted): Merriam-Webster Dictionary online]

• Whitewash: To make something bad seem acceptable by hiding the truth [Source (quoted): Cambridge Dictionary online]