7 Additions to the United Nations’ Genocide Convention

Summary: Seven additions that should be made to the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948. That convention is an agreement between all member states of the United Nations to prevent and punish other states for committing genocide, and it defines what a genocide is. However, the UN does not include ethnic cleansing, social cleansing or classicide, domicide, politicide, intentional famines, scholasticide, or ecoside, even though these acts are all committed with the intention of destroying a group in part or in whole. Examples include the crimes committed against the Palestinians.

Ethnic Cleansing: the attempt to drive members of an unwanted ethnic group (often the minority) from an area through deportation, displacement, and mass killing, to establish an ethnically homogenous community.

Ethnic cleansings are acts of genocide if one holds the definition up next to the UN’s definition of a genocide, but the UN has not recognized acts of ethnic cleansing as a crime under international law yet. Sometimes, genocides are called ethnic cleansings to absolve the international community from acting.

Social cleansing, or classicide: the attempt to kill members of society who are seen as “undesirable,” including, but not limited to, homeless, criminals, street kids, elderly, poor, sick, lower class, and disabled.

Since social cleansing operations are not based on any one particular ethnic or religious group, it is not seen as genocide. Anybody of any religion or ethnic group can be homeless, poor, disabled, etc, so the targeted killings are not scrutinized the same way that ethnic cleansings are. When states commit social cleansing, they have the goal of creating a homogenous state, which is what ethnic cleansings and genocides seek to do.

Domicide: the purposeful widespread destruction of homes and homeland, used as a weapon and an act of genocide for centuries.

The UN believes that adequate housing and basic needs are a human right, but they do not include domicide in the definition of genocide or classify it as an international war crime. Balakrishnan Rajagopal, an independent researcher for the UN, has recently called for domicide to be labeled a crime against humanity.

As of February, 2024, an estimated 70,000 homes were completely destroyed in Gaza since the genocide began in October 2023. That leaves about 30% of the population, or about 650,000 people, completely homeless. Hundreds of thousands more homes and buildings had been damaged but were not considered irreparable as of February. By now, in October of 2024, the number of homes completely destroyed is of course much higher.

Photo by Mohammed Ibrahim, via Unsplash

Forced or Intentional Famine: intentionally inflicting mass events of famine on a group or region.

Historians sometimes differ on whether or not these famines can be classified as genocides, but the fact is that they are often consequences of the government’s actions and they are aware that people are starving to death but choose not to act.

For example, the Soviet famine of 1930-1933, called the Holodomor genocide, was a famine that starved at least 5.7 million, but up to 7 million people, to death, primarily in Ukraine.

Then, from 1946 to 1947, there was another great famine in which 1 to 1.5 million people starved. Causes of that famine include collectivization, the loss of manpower and equipment from WWII, a drought in the summer of 1946, and a tremendous amount of grain being exported in spite of the obvious famine. These famines were caused by the forced collectivization of farming, which is a key pillar of communism.

Politicide: the killing or expulsion of people based on their political ideology.

Raphael Lemkin, the man who defined a genocide and assisted the UN in creating the Genocide Convention wanted the definition to include killing based on political beliefs and class. However, the Soviet Union, a prominent member of the UN, opposed the definition of genocide that included those criteria.

The Soviets had been committing genocide of people based on their political beliefs for decades by then, and they continued to; they were conducting ethnic cleansing operations, domicide, politicide, classicide, forced famine, and even educide.

During the Great Purge alone of the late 1930s, the Soviets arrested around 1.5 million politicians, religious leaders, peasants, and military; most were imprisoned for a crime which they likely did not commit, and about half were executed. They arrested tens of millions of people and deported at least 20 million, killing upwards of 10 million, and forcing at least 14 million people into the gulag labor camp system. Their arrests, deportations, and deaths have gone overlooked because politicide and classicide are not part of the definition of genocide.

German Prisoners in a French Prison Camp, ca. 1917-1919 (NARA), CC PDM 1.0, via Flickr

Scholasticide or Educide: the intentional mass destruction of educational facilities in a specific location.

Purposefully targeting schools or preventing students from receiving an education has been used by regimes like the Taliban, the Israeli occupation, and even Nazi Germany. By depriving children of one ethnic group from getting an education the occupier or colonizer can ensure they cannot be as successful, and the occupier can control the educational materials.

The UN reported that there were 813 primary and secondary schools in Gaza, and more than 620,000 students were enrolled before October 7, 2023, and there were twelve universities and colleges; but the Israeli occupation forces have damaged or destroyed over 80% of Gaza’s schools, including all twelve higher education institutions, as of May, 2024, according to OCHA.

More schools were targeted throughout the summer, and as of September more than 220 United Nations staff have been killed, including school staff at the UN schools. Israel has stated that they believe Hamas was hiding in schools, so they bombed schools where displaced refugees were sheltering hundreds of times, and they said the same about hospitals.

Ecocide: the destruction of a natural environment by means of intentional or negligent human actions.

In the occupied Palestinian territories of Gaza and the West Bank, farmers have had their ecosystem systematically destroyed by the Israeli occupation for decades. Airborne herbicides are sprayed on crops, land and water sources have been poisoned, groves of trees are bulldozed or burned, aquifers and water sources are depleted or stolen, and the farmers are often threatened or killed by the military or the settlers in the West Bank.

Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza has destroyed orchards, farmlands, greenhouses, and infrastructure since October 2023. The intentional destruction of land and crops ensures that Palestinians cannot be self-sufficient, worsening the wide-spread starvation. Israel prevents aid trucks from entering Gaza and the settlers have been known to intercept the aid and destroy the food before it can enter Gaza, purposefully causing the starvation.

Not to mention the chemical warfare (which is a war crime) and the bombs which will have grave effects on human, plant, and animal life. Serious birth defects and debilitating life-long medical conditions are seen in warzones when bombs are dropped at significant rates, and the concentration of chemical warfare is extremely condensed. These levels of bombs will influence the environment as well, contaminating the land, water, and air for decades to come.

The Israeli occupation has been “salting the earth” in Gaza and admitting to it.