About International Genocide Victims Day

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International Victims of Genocide Day has the longest official name of any event in the calendar: International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime. This day marks the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide by the United Nations and its member states on December 9, 1948. The organization began observing this day in 2015. 

The terms "massacre" and "genocide" both refer to extreme acts of violence, but they differ significantly in scope, intent, and legal definition. 

Massacre—A massacre refers to a single event or series of events where there's a deliberate and violent killing of at least 50 individuals, though culturally, most mass murders are referred to as such today. Massacres can be politically, ethnically, or religiously motivated, or they can arise from other sources of conflict. A massacre occurs over a short period (hours or days) and may or may not have intent or premeditation. Massacres, when occurring during conflict or occupation, usually fall under war crimes.

Genocide—Genocide is a term that has a specific legal definition under international law for the large-scale intentional murder of one group of people by another. It denotes a systematic effort by one party to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, economic, or religious group of people. The excuses, propaganda, and manipulation used to justify genocide are irrelevant.

The United Nations defines genocide as any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, economic, racial, or religious group, including one or more of the following:

1. Killing members of the targeted group.
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the targeted group—including bombing, raping, torturing, using nefarious psychology, beating, humiliation and degradation.
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part—including the deliberate withholding or destruction of food, water, medical care, and/or shelter.
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group—such as forced sterilization, forced surgery, using chemicals to alter biology, castration, or beating pregnant women to cause miscarriages.
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group—as has been done with war orphans and child prisoners historically.