Four Crimes That Look Like Genocide
Not every mass crime against a group is genocide. A comparative study draws the lines between genocide, persecution, extermination, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, and shows what each requires a court to prove.
The Short Answer
What is the difference between genocide and ethnic cleansing? Genocide requires intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, in whole or in part. Ethnic cleansing aims to remove a population from a territory and is not a separate crime; it is prosecuted as crimes against humanity or war crimes. A 2025 comparative study notes that removal combined with mass killing can, however, become evidence of genocidal intent.
The Claim
When many members of one group are killed or driven out, the crime is genocide.
The Source
Article II of the 1948 Genocide Convention, repeated almost word for word in the statutes of the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals and of the International Criminal Court, and in Article 370 of Serbia’s Criminal Code. The monograph notes that genocide entered international criminal law as a separate crime only in the 1990s, through those statutes, although the Convention dates from 1948. Yugoslavia ratified the Convention on 21 June 1950 and wrote genocide into its 1951 Criminal Code, joining what the book calls a small number of states that had done so.
Genocide vs ethnic cleansing: what must be proved
| Crime | Who the victims are | What must be proved about intent | Context required |
| Genocide | A national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such. Captured combatants can be victims. | Intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part | No wider attack needs to be proved |
| Persecution | Individuals, as members of a political, racial or religious group | Discriminatory intent | Usually part of crimes against humanity |
| Extermination | People defined by political allegiance, physical traits or simply being in a place | No intent to destroy a group | A widespread or systematic attack, known to the perpetrator; civilians only |
| Crimes against humanity | People defined by political opinion, physical traits or presence at a time and place | Awareness of the attack | A widespread and systematic attack; a wider range of acts than genocide |
| Ethnic cleansing | A population forced from a territory to make it ethnically homogeneous | Intent to remove, not to destroy | Not a crime in its own right; charged as crimes against humanity or war crimes |
What Is Verified
On the analysis in the monograph, two features set genocide apart. First, the victim is the group itself, not the individuals. In persecution, by contrast, the victims are individuals targeted as members of a group. Second, genocide does not require a widespread or systematic attack, while extermination and crimes against humanity do. A third difference is rarely noticed. Extermination protects only civilians, while genocide can be committed against prisoners of war.
Genocidal intent, the book says, “may be proven using various indicia”, such as those arising from the general context, the circumstances, and the nature and scale of the crime (translated). Forced displacement, the core of ethnic cleansing, is not in itself genocide. Combined with the killing of a large number of members of a group, “cleansing” can become evidence of intent to destroy it.
What Is Disputed
The book records three questions the law has not settled. Whether political groups with stability and continuity could be protected by the genocide definition is still unresolved. There is no generally accepted precise definition of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. Each must be assessed, the monograph says, in its specific political, social and cultural setting, at a given time and place. And the line between ethnic cleansing and genocide, which the book draws carefully, was blurred at the start of the Bosnian war, when a 1992 UN General Assembly resolution treated the two as the same.
What Is Missing
The monograph names a gap rarely discussed: the pogrom. Mass, often seemingly spontaneous violence against a minority, with the state failing or refusing to stop it, is “still not recognised as a separate crime” in either international or national law (translated). It is prosecuted, when it is prosecuted at all, as part of crimes against humanity. Persecution itself is rarely defined in the region’s codes. The book finds definitions only in the codes of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia and Croatia.
What the Evidence Does Not Show
A finding that genocide is not proved is not a finding that nothing happened. The book’s example is the ICTY prosecution of the Croatian generals over Operation Storm in August 1995. The prosecution described a joint criminal enterprise to remove the Serb population of the Krajina permanently, and charged deportation, forcible transfer and persecution, not genocide. Those charges ended in acquittal on appeal in 2012. The International Court of Justice reached a parallel result in Croatia v. Serbia in 2015. It found that serious crimes had been committed on both sides, and that genocidal intent had been proved on neither.
Evidentiary Position
What we know: the elements of each crime, and that genocidal intent can be inferred from indicia of context, scale and method. What we do not know: whether international courts will accept that inference where another purpose is also plausible. The Gambia v. Myanmar, pending at the ICJ, will test it. What would change the assessment: recognising political groups, or the pogrom as a separate crime. Either would widen what can be prosecuted without lowering what must be proved.
How denial of an established genocide is punished is compared in Which Court Decides What Cannot Be Denied. The distinction between what happened and what can be proved also runs through Aleksić Perspectives, The Last Address of Responsibility.
Frequently asked questions
Can prisoners of war be victims of genocide?
Yes. According to the comparative analysis in Genocid (2025), genocide can be committed against captured combatants, whereas extermination as a crime against humanity protects only civilians.
Are political groups protected by the genocide definition?
No. The 1948 Convention protects national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. Whether stable political groups could be protected remains, in the monograph’s words, an unresolved question.
Is a pogrom a crime under international law?
Not as a separate crime. The monograph notes that pogroms are not recognised as an autonomous offence in international or national law and are usually prosecuted as part of crimes against humanity.
How is genocidal intent proved?
Through direct evidence or inference from indicia such as the context, circumstances, nature and scale of the crime. At the ICJ the inference must be the only reasonable one.
Sources and further reading
S. Aleksić, Genocid u međunarodnom i nacionalnom krivičnom pravu (Banja Luka, 2025), ch. 1 §§1–4, ch. 2
UN, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
