CIAO DATE: 04/05

Africa Action Talking Points on How to Stop Genocide in Darfur

February 2005

Africa Policy Information Center

Abstract

The legal definition of GENOCIDE: The international legal definition of the crime of genocide is found in Articles II and III of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Article II describes the two elements that constitute the crime of genocide:

• The mental element, meaning the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such", and

• The physical element, which includes five types of violence described in sections [a] though [e] as follows:

[a] Killing members of the group; [b] Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; [c] Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; [d] Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [e] Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

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