Ethnic Cleansing
The process where a particular ethnic or religious group is targeted by another group (either ethnic, religious, or even governmental).
Genocidaires
Someone who commits or participates in genocide.
Genocide
The definition for one of the most commonly misunderstood terms — genocide — was established by the United Nations in 1948 under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article two of that resolution states:
In the present Convention, genocide means 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.
This is part of what is now known as General Assembly resolution 260 A (III).
Interahamwe
During the 1994 Rwandan genocide, groups of Hutu formed themselves into militia known as Interahamwe (meaning “those who stand together”). These groups were responsible for much of the violence.
Janjaweed (or Janjawiid)
Janjaweed is the name for the government sponsored militia that have been attempting to ethnically cleanse the Darfur region of Sudan. It originally refered to bandits and highwaymen from Chad. It means “hordes” or “ruffians.”
Paper Genocide
When a government uses bureaucratic methods, commonly involving records, to deny rights or priviledges to a particular group that would otherwise qualify for those rights.
Pogrom
From a Russian word that means “to wreak havoc,” a pogrom is a riot against a particular group (frequently either ethnic or religious in nature).