Extermination

Extermination is the intentional and massive homicide of an entire group of persons. The international law of armed conflict states that it is forbidden to attack civilians; to murder or exterminate the wounded or sick, the shipwrecked, prisoners of war, and civilians; or to order that there shall be no survivors.

The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court includes extermination in its codification -or description- of crimes against humanity. It defines extermination as “includ[ing] the intentional infliction of conditions of life, inter alia the deprivation of access to food and medicine, calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population.”

The criteria for the crime of extermination requires that:

1. The perpetrator killed one or more persons, including by inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of a population;
2. The conduct constituted, or took place as part of, a mass killing of members of a civilian population;
3. The conduct was committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population;
4. The perpetrator knew that the conduct was part of or intended the conduct to be part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population.

Extermination may also fall under the qualification of genocide if the group in question is being targeted on the basis of national, ethnic, racial, or religious grounds.