Al-Haq publishes Legal Brief II on the ‘Protected Group’ in its Genocide Legal Brief Series. The series develops a number of Legal Briefs examining different elements of the crime of genocide, as a legal toolkit for practitioners working on Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
Genocide is defined under Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (emphasis added) “as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (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.”
It has been claimed that the “major problem with the [Genocide] convention is its narrow definition of what constitutes a victim group”.[1] Indeed, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide –– and later the Rome Statute –– both identified four types of groups: “a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” Part I of the legal brief examines the exclusion of categories of protected groups; the positive definition of groups; and whether groups are defined by objective or subjective criteria. Part 2 of the legal brief examines genocidal intent and the destruction of the group in whole or in part.
The series aims to provide a toolkit of legal analysis and relevant caselaw on genocide to aid and assist practitioners of law, and those engaging in legal research and advocacy on genocide, and the destruction of the Palestinian people in particular.
- Legal Brief I: Special Intent (Dolus Specialis) can be found here.
- Legal Brief II: The Protected Group can be found here.
The ‘Genocide Series’ will follow with:
- Legal Brief III: Starvation and the Denial of Humanitarian Assistance
- Legal Brief IV: The Qualification of Forcible Transfer
- Legal Brief V: Incitement to Genocide
- Legal Brief VI: Relationship with International Humanitarian Law
[1] Chalk, Frank and Jonassohn, Kurt. The History and Sociology of Genocide, (New Haven/ London, Yale University Press, 1990), p. 11, cited in
International Crimes Database (ICD), Carola Lingaas, Defining the Protected Groups of Genocide through the Case Law of International Courts
(December 2015), ICD Brief 18, https://www.internationalcrimesdatabase.org/upload/documents/20151217T122733-Lingaas%20Final%20
ICD%20Format.pdf, p. 2.