According to the United Nations (cited in Destexhe 1996:5), genocide
...means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, including (a) killing members of the group (b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group (c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part (d) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group by forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
This terminology has been reviewed and enriched and even subjected to controversies by social scientists who have shown that all mass murders or massacres are not necessarily genocide (Staub 1992:8), but one can also conceive genocide where there is no murder (Robbins and Robbins 2003:151). Genocide as stated by McCullum (1995:105) is deliberate murder born of the myth that one ethnic group, race or creed is superior to another and that it is thus legitimate to eliminate that ‘other’ to gain power. Calvocoressi (2005:656) states that the massacres of the 1990s in Rwanda were the clearest instances of genocide since the adoption in 1948 of the genocide convention by the United Nations (UN). However, some scholars have a number of problems with the UN definition. Chalk and Jonassohn (1990:10–11) argue that the UN definition ‘is responsible for much of the confusion that plagues scholarly work in the field’ because it lacks rigour.
Muberanziza (2004:6) contends that when an act is committed with the intention to destroy a group in whole or in part it constitutes genocide and the number of victims does not matter. According to Destexhe (1996:4), ‘the specificity of genocide does not arise from the extent of the killings’. For Staub (1992:8) the notion of mass killing is no longer enough to define genocide. It is also argued that genocide may or may not consist of murder. One can conceive of genocidewhere there is no murder but other acts such as rape and torture which do not kill or cause the deaths of members of a group (Robbins and Robbins 2003:151). Genocide may include the purposeful submission of a group to conditions of existence leading to total or partial physical destruction. For example, the deprivation of food and health care can be seen as an act of genocide (Mann 2005:4; Muberanziza 2004:6). Genocide can also consist of measures aimed at hindering births or the transfer of children of one group to another, and attacks on the physical and mental integrity of victims (Muberanziza 2004:6). Some scholars such as Mann (2005:4) have underlined the role of the State in carrying out genocide and the responsibility of the international community in acknowledging its occurrence.
Thus scholars have improved our understanding of genocides and went beyond the simple description of ancient hatred as their main cause (Mamdani 2001; Melvern 2000; Naimak 2001; Nyankanzi 1999; Pottier 2002; Prunier 1995; Staub 1992). The work by Nyankanzi (1999) showed for instance that all genocides were not ethnically or racially based. Mamdani (2001:9–20) attempted to understand the dynamics behind the slaughter by exploring the difference between settlers and natives which has made the causes of genocide in general and in Rwanda in particular much easier to understand.