Marziyeh Ghobadi – International Law Expert
At first glance, genocide seems to be a political or media term, but in reality, it is one of the most precise and stringent concepts in international law. This term was first coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, a Polish jurist. In 1948, with the adoption of the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” it became one of the main pillars of international criminal law.
This convention defines genocide as “the commission of certain acts with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group.” To understand this definition precisely, we must pay attention to three categories of elements:
a) Material (Actus Reus) elements: The Convention introduces five specific acts as genocidal acts:

1. Killing members of the group: The physical and direct elimination of individuals due to their belonging to the target group.
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm: Torture, rape, or psychological actions that shatter the physical and mental health of the group’s members.
3. Deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction: Such as depriving a population of food, medicine, water, shelter, or bombing vital infrastructure in a way that makes collective survival impossible.
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group: Severe restrictions on reproduction, destruction of health and maternity centers, or even the forced separation of men and women.
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group: Abducting or forcibly relocating children to erase the identity of the original group.
   b) Mental/Moral element (Special Intent): What distinguishes genocide from other war crimes and crimes against humanity is the “special intent” (dolus specialis). This means the perpetrators must consciously and deliberately seek to destroy, in whole or in part, a group. The mere occurrence of widespread killing or destruction and displacement is not enough. Courts have consistently emphasized that it must be shown that the “primary purpose” is the destruction of a group.
   c) Mental element (Intent and Knowledge): The mental element complements the special intent. For genocide to be realized, it is necessary that the criminal or perpetrator of genocide is aware of the consequences of their acts and that their intent is precisely directed towards the destruction of the group. For this reason, in judicial practice, the public statements of political and military leaders, issued orders, or slogans calling for destruction play an essential role in proving this intent. In the Rwanda and Bosnia cases, courts repeatedly relied on such statements and slogans to prove the mental element.

Experiences of International Courts
The practical experience of international courts has shown that these concepts have not remained merely on paper:
• In the Akayesu case at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), the judges declared that the widespread killing and rape against the Tutsi ethnic group was carried out with the intent to destroy them and constituted a clear instance of genocide. This was the first time an international court recognized sexual violence as a tool of genocide.
• In the Srebrenica case at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the killing of more than seven thousand Bosnian Muslim men was recognized as genocide. An important point in this case was that the court stated that even if the entire Bosnian population was not destroyed, the destruction of a specific and substantial part of a group could also constitute genocide. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) also, in the Bosnia v. Serbia case, confirmed that Serbia had violated its obligation to prevent genocide.
These rulings demonstrated that international law can, albeit belatedly, react to major crimes against humanity.

Instances and Allegations of Genocide by the Israeli Regime in Gaza
Today, the term “genocide” has once again become prominent in legal and political discourse; this time in relation to the Gaza war. In January 2024, South Africa brought a case against the Israeli regime before the International Court of Justice. The Court, at that time, ordered that the Israeli regime must take immediate measures to prevent acts of genocide, ensure the provision of humanitarian aid, and avoid public incitement to destroy Palestinians. In December 2024, Amnesty International officially stated that there was sufficient evidence for the occurrence of genocidal crimes against Palestinians. Human Rights Watch, in a report, considered the deliberate deprivation of Gaza of water, electricity, and medicine as an instance of inflicting conditions of destruction. A UN Special Rapporteur said in March 2024 that at least three of the five genocidal acts had occurred in Gaza. And finally, in September 2025, the UN Independent Commission of Inquiry officially announced that the Israeli regime had committed genocide. The commission clarified that this regime had carried out four of the five acts under the Convention and that the statements of Israeli regime officials indicated an intent to destroy a national group (Palestinians). The Israeli regime has firmly denied these allegations, calling the reports “biased and distorted.” However, the accumulated volume of evidence, from the rulings of the International Court of Justice to the reports of human rights bodies, shows that a serious and weighty case is being built against Tel Aviv.

The International Community Facing a Major Test
It must be noted that the accusation of genocide is the gravest accusation in international law. The experiences of Rwanda and Bosnia showed that the indifference of the international community carries a heavy human cost. Today, the question is: Has the world learned from those experiences, or will politics once again prevail over justice?