Doctrine and case law on the crime of genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and methodical annihilation of a group of people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, nationality or religion, with the aim of their total disappearance, in the name of a racist principle or an ideological conception of that group. The term genocide was coined in 1944 by the jurist Raphaël Lemkin to designate the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. Unlike ideological wars, where the victims are seen as the supposed vectors of their ideas, genocide is based on the discrimination of a population considered undesirable and the fact that membership of this population is linked to birth. Although the list of genocides recognised by historians, States and international tribunals is long, only three have been legally recognised by international bodies under the auspices of the UN: the Armenian genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire in 1915-1916, the genocide of Jews and Gypsies committed by the Nazis, and the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, committed by extremist Hutu militias in 1994.genocide is a crime for which there is no statute of limitations.