Mun Redefining Genocide
Columbia MUN 2013
Security Council
Delegate: Jaime Laniado
Delegation: Japan
Position Paper Topic A: Redefining Genocide
Winston Churchill called Genocide ‘The crime without a name’.
The term “genocide” was created after WWII, By Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Lawyer and Jurist, who had Jewish descendent. He first acquired the term in year 1944, when he wrote his book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe”, he used the word to define the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, where approximately 1 million and a half people died. He created the promise by combining the Greek word “Genos” (γένος) that was the word used to describe groups as a unit, with the word “cide”, that was used to describe a killing, an assassination or a murder. After the term was invented, the UN adopted the word in year 1948 during the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article Two of the convention defines the word genocide as "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such": * Killing members of the group * Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group * Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part * Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group * Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Criminal acts still occur nowadays, that’s why we must agree what should be the true definition and meaning of the word genocide, so we can decide the dictum for those who commit those awful crimes. We have to stand out the fact that when we use this word we are not meaning that someone has killed more than 100, or 50 people. This term says that by only trying to get rid of a specific group, we are committing genocide.
My Delegation wants to give the word a new meaning, maybe not a new meaning but
Security Council
Delegate: Jaime Laniado
Delegation: Japan
Position Paper Topic A: Redefining Genocide
Winston Churchill called Genocide ‘The crime without a name’.
The term “genocide” was created after WWII, By Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Lawyer and Jurist, who had Jewish descendent. He first acquired the term in year 1944, when he wrote his book “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe”, he used the word to define the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, where approximately 1 million and a half people died. He created the promise by combining the Greek word “Genos” (γένος) that was the word used to describe groups as a unit, with the word “cide”, that was used to describe a killing, an assassination or a murder. After the term was invented, the UN adopted the word in year 1948 during the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article Two of the convention defines the word genocide as "any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such": * Killing members of the group * Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group * Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part * Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group * Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
Criminal acts still occur nowadays, that’s why we must agree what should be the true definition and meaning of the word genocide, so we can decide the dictum for those who commit those awful crimes. We have to stand out the fact that when we use this word we are not meaning that someone has killed more than 100, or 50 people. This term says that by only trying to get rid of a specific group, we are committing genocide.
My Delegation wants to give the word a new meaning, maybe not a new meaning but