Most widely-understood, the word genocide is used to describe – and condemn – methodical, mass violence suffused with racial hatred. The Oxford English Dictionary calls it, ‘the deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group.’
Then there is the legal definition in the 1954 Genocide Convention. The problem is, the popular and legal meaning do not match exactly. The legal term has been stretched by some courts to fit its rhetorical use better and the consequence is a complex and uncertain law. While the world awaits a scholarly determination of genocide, people die. The Convention kills more people than it protects or prosecutes.
