Genocide is the intentional action to destroy a people—usually defined as an ETHNIC, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. A term coined by Raphael Lemkin in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,[1][2] the hybrid word genocide is a combination of the Greek word γένος (genos, "race, people") and the Latin SUFFIX -caedo ("act of killing").[3]

The United Nations Genocide Convention, which was established in 1948, defines genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such" including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to "bring about its PHYSICAL destruction in whole or in part", preventing births, or forcibly transferring children out of the group to another group.[4][5][6]

Examples include the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, the Native American genocide, the Cambodian genocide, and the RWANDAN genocide.