[…] In a rhetorical battle where World War II looms large for both sides, it is not surprising that the concept of genocide has now been drawn in as well. While the world asks itself if “never again” is now, the Ukrainian foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, invoked that phrase and the memory of the Holocaust on Twitter while lobbying for punitive sanctions against Russia. Putin, for his part, has issued the baseless claim that Ukraine has committed genocide against ethnic Russians. Both sides are misusing the term, albeit for fundamentally different reasons. […]
Now, as the war drags into its fourth week, Ukrainian authorities have brought a formal allegation of genocide against Russia to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). President Volodymyr Zelensky has termed the bombing of a maternity hospital “the final proof that what is happening is genocide of Ukrainians.” His chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, has gone a step further, alleging that “Ukrainians are falling victim to Russia’s evil war just as the Jews fell victim to Nazis who wanted to eradicate all Jews. The Russian invaders are motivated and instructed to commit acts of genocide against Ukrainians.”[…]
We cannot afford to get this wrong. As international law expert William A. Schabas has said, “genocide is, first and foremost, a legal concept.” It is tempting to react emotionally, but the term does have a definition; in this case, the most relevant is that of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Misapplying it risks weakening its efficacy now and in the future. […]
Putin’s war is a violation of international law, and it seems clear that his military has, indeed, violated the laws of war by killing civilians. However, Zelensky and his supporters mistake war crimes for genocide in an understandable (but unnecessary) attempt to retain the moral high ground. The U.N. definition requires the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”A further clarification by the ICJ in 1951 stated that genocide involved “a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups.” This expansive requirement is not met in Ukraine. Läs artikel