ABSTRACT
The term ‘genocide’ describes a phenomenon which is of interest to sociologists and historians as well as to legal scholars. However, the ‘legal’ concept of genocide which developed since the term was coined in 1943 and more open ‘social’ concepts that tend to identify genocide with all sorts of mass atrocities differ in some important aspects. At the same time, it is hard to deny the impact of different social concepts of genocide on the use of the term by various international criminal tribunals and in legal academic debate. This chapter will set out the differences between a more open social concept and the legal understanding of genocide and provide a critique of the adoption of features of the social concept in legal discourse. While a proper analysis of the intent requirement of the crime of genocide clearly reveals that genocide as a legal concept describes a systemic crime, individual criminal responsibility for genocide cannot be determined by simply referring to the existence of a system of genocide or a genocidal campaign on its own.
