Genocide and Human Rights Flashcards
Grade 9 · Social Studies · Flashcards
Essential vocabulary, historical cases, legal frameworks, and key figures related to genocide and international human rights.
Flashcards
- Genocide
- Acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group; codified in the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.
- Holocaust
- Nazi Germany's systematic state-sponsored murder of approximately six million Jews and millions of others (Roma, disabled, political opponents) from 1941–1945 using ghettos, death squads, and extermination camps.
- Armenian Genocide (1915–1923)
- The Ottoman Empire's mass killing and deportation of 1–1.5 million Armenians; considered the first genocide of the 20th century, still denied by Turkey.
- Rwandan Genocide (1994)
- Hutu extremists massacred approximately 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu over 100 days; the international community's failure to intervene despite early warnings made it a defining lesson in the need for R2P.
- Cambodian Genocide (1975–1979)
- Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot killed roughly 1.5–2 million Cambodians (~25% of the population) through executions, forced labor, and starvation in pursuit of a radical agrarian utopia.
- Srebrenica (1995)
- Massacre of over 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys by Bosnian Serb forces during the Bosnian War; ruled genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
- Raphael Lemkin
- Polish-Jewish lawyer who coined the word 'genocide' in 1944 and spent years campaigning for the UN Genocide Convention, ratified in 1948.
- International Criminal Court (ICC)
- Permanent tribunal (est. 2002, The Hague) that prosecutes individuals for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute when national courts fail to act.
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
- UN resolution outlining the fundamental rights and freedoms all people are entitled to; morally authoritative but not legally binding on its own.
- Crimes Against Humanity
- Widespread or systematic acts against civilian populations including murder, enslavement, torture, and persecution; recognized under international law regardless of whether they occur during war.
- Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
- UN doctrine (endorsed 2005) that the international community may intervene when a state fails to protect its people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, or crimes against humanity.
- Prisoner of Conscience
- A person imprisoned solely for their political views, religion, ethnicity, or peaceful expression — the focus of Amnesty International's advocacy work.
- Ethnic Cleansing
- Forcible removal of an ethnic or religious group from a territory through expulsion or mass killing; may constitute genocide or crimes against humanity depending on intent.
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