genocide

Genocide As stated by the United Nations Genocide Convention, genocide is a coordinated plan to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group, by killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, inflicting conditions designed to bring about its destruction, preventing births within the group , or removing children from the group. The term did not exist until Raphael Lemkin devised the word in 1944. Therefore there was no legal mechanism for the international community to react to ethnic-cleansing and atrocities inflicted against a people. The evolution of the international community’s response to genocide over the course of the 20th century can be analyzed throughout the Armenian, Holocaust, and Cambodian genocides. The Armenian genocide occurred in 1915, when the Turkish government generated a standardized campaign of displacement and extinguishment of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. On April 24th, 1915, over 200 Armenians were arrested, deported, or executed. Turkish officials solicited that the Armenians planned to revolt and demolish the Ottoman Empire. By 1923, 1.5 million Armenians had been murdered, deported, or forced into the desert to starve to death. Yet the international community did not intervene to end the genocide. The United States’ President, Woodrow Wilson, determined to keep America out of World War I even though the U.S. ambassador to the Ottoman Empire lobbied fiercely for arbitration. The international community condemned the Armenian genocide and threatened to hold the Young Turks personally accountable for the massacre against the Armenians. The Young Turks saw it no more than an idle threat. No law yet existed establishing how to act in response to such an event. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany began a war of annexation and amplification when it invaded Poland. Three days later, Great Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany. Within a month most of Europe was at war. In six