( I braved an attempt to publish a paper in my 2nd year of law school in Harvard law journal. I failed.) What is genocide? The term was originated in 1940s by Polish lawyer Raphel Lemkin in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe to describe the 'killing of individuals for the groups they belong to'. He defined genocide as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves." [1] . In resolution 96 (I) of 1 December 1946 entitled 'The crime of genocide', the UN General Assembly affirmed that genocide was a crime- and implicitly a crime in its own right, since the label 'crime against humanity' was not used-under customary law. [2] The Convention was signed on 9 December 1948. The definition of genocide as laid down in the 1948 Genocide Convention includes three main elements, namely: i) the intent to destroy in whole o...