Last updated on January 15, 2025
Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of a people based on their group identity. From a medical and public health perspective, genocide should be recognized as a disease inflicted on the victim's society, resulting in catastrophic public health consequences. It is characterized by widespread physical and psychological harm, including persecution, killings, torture, deprivation of essential resources (such as food, water, or healthcare), forced sterilizations, sexual violence, and deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculate to bring about their physical annihilation in whole or in part.
Genocide is a significant public health threat, triggering long-term crises such as severe mental trauma for survivors and communities, generational trauma, mental health disorders, displacement-related illnesses, and the breakdown of healthcare infrastructure. It also fosters conditions that facilitate the spread of infectious diseases, malnutrition, and chronic illnesses, particularly among displaced and marginalized populations.
Recognizing genocide as a disease underscores the urgency for inter-disciplinary preventive strategies, integrating healthcare, policymaking, and education to halt its progression and mitigate its devastating public health impacts.
Genocide, like an epidemic, thrives in environments of systemic neglect, inequality, and hatred. It requires a medical approach to focus not only on treatment but also on early detection, intervention, and prevention. This contrasts sharply with the limitations of the legal framework.
The paradigm of intervention for genocide must address both the victimized group and the perpetrating entity, similar to the dual approach in domestic violence intervention, which differs from Good Samaritan intervention. This means defining interventions to include forcibly stopping the perpetrator, alongside ensuring protection, rehabilitation, and justice for the targeted group.
This framework emphasizes the necessity of an independent international medical body tasked with:
This body must remain free from political interference, operating solely on humanitarian and medical principles to uphold the sanctity of life and prevent atrocities.
The medical framework for genocide prevention must take its rightful place within the international community and lead global efforts to prevent genocide. By adopting this framework and establishing an independent international medical body with executive powers, the global medical community can transform its response to atrocities. This approach ensures that mass violence and systemic oppression are addressed with the urgency, precision, and authority they demand, safeguarding human life and dignity above all else. Recognizing genocide as both a societal disease and a public health crisis shifts the paradigm from reaction to prevention, ensuring vulnerable populations are protected before irreversible harm occurs.
Doctors Against Genocide is collaborating with experts in international law, genocide studies, medical ethics, education, and United Nations representatives to implement this definition and ensure its effectiveness.
For suggestions and inquiries, please email us at: leadership@doctorsagainstgenocide.org.
The ceasefire offers a much awaited relief, for our People in Gaza but it is no substitute for justice. The genocide in Gaza has claimed countless lives, targeted healthcare workers, destroyed hospitals, and shattered communities.
We demand accountability, the dismantling of the Genocide Enablement Apparatus, the end of the occupation, the dismantling of the apartheid system, the full human rights for our people, and our own self determination and immediate global action to correct centuries old injustices. Without justice, this horror will continue unchecked.
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