ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the concept of genocide and similar concepts like 'ethnic cleansing' and 'democide' in a way that enables moral appraisal and comparison while also illuminating the bases for morally prohibiting the act of destroying groups of people. From a liberal-cosmopolitan and deontological perspective, genocide is clearly a violation of the basic rights of the victims as individuals, and it violates important deontological principles that forbid doing harm and treating individuals as instrumental 'means to an end' in the Kantian sense. The Genocide Convention provides a fairly specific definition of genocide, which can be useful in legal settings, but the 'political' influences on this definition render it less useful for analytical purposes, such as ethical analysis or social science research. The crux of the 'politicization' of genocide and understanding state responses to it lies in the struggle between two frequently opposing forces in international politics.
