ETHNIC VIOLENCE

Prejudice and Ethnic Violence; Governmental Responses; Other Responses and Solutions

Prejudice and Ethnic Violence; Governmental Responses; Other Responses and Solutions

Genocide: The deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group.

Ethnic Cleansing: The elimination of an unwanted group from a society, as by genocide or forced migration.

Any discussion of genocide or ethnic cleansing would seem to be straightforward, both in the subject matter itself and in the myriad examples one could bring to mind. As these topics are studied in greater depth, however, the discussion invariably becomes far more complicated. Defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group," (Annan, 2006) genocide tends to evoke thoughts of the Holocaust of World War Two--the most egregious and infamous example of the mass killing of people based on their ethnic or religious background.

For many people, that is the full extent of what genocide means. Today, however, the word genocide draws upon an even more complex body of history and scholarship, focusing on the motivation of the perpetrators. By narrow definition, genocide can only occur when there is a deliberate attempt to completely destroy all members of a particular group. As such, there are few clearly identifiable examples of genocide.

The phrase "ethnic cleansing" may embody just the opposite. Ethnic cleansing has been defined as "the elimination of an unwanted group from society, as by genocide or forced migration." (Annan, 2006) This definition is inherently broader than that of genocide alone, and thereby encompasses mass killings and forced removals in far greater number and scope. The U.S. State Department, in a recent report on Kosovo, concluded that ethnic cleansing "generally entails the systematic and forced removal of members of an ethnic group from their communities to change the ethnic composition of a region."

The latter definition, while accurate ...