Doctors Against Genocide Medical Definition of Genocide

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.

• Genocide is a profound pathology of the perpetrator's society, rooted in cultural dysfunction, indoctrination, and an inability to self-regulate, leading to direct, severe, and catastrophic impacts on its victims. Perpetrators are not irrational but calculated and emotionally detached, often displaying traits consistent with Antisocial and Narcissistic Personality Disorders or sociopathy. 

• This toxic combination of societal indoctrination and calculated harm highlights the urgent need for early and decisive external intervention to prevent such devastating consequences.

• Like any disease, genocide has identifiable signs and symptoms that allow for early recognition, diagnosis, and intervention.

• Since the 20th century, genocide has taken more lives than wars and pandemics combined, underscoring its unparalleled impact on public health.

• This perspective shifts the focus toward predictive measures and prevention, emphasizing the importance of saving lives over legalistic debates.

• Early detection of genocide’s major risk factors, including dehumanization, discrimination, persecution, and polarization, ensures that action is taken at the earliest credible signs of mass violence or systemic oppression.

• Delays in recognition—whether due to political hesitation, systemic racism, apathy, or rigid legal frameworks—lead to catastrophic loss of life, an outcome the medical community has an ethical duty to prevent.

• Proving intent should not be a prerequisite for intervention. This legalistic requirement often delays lifesaving actions. 

• Instead, the focus should be on observable impacts—such as mass deaths, severe bodily harm, displacement, and the imposition of conditions intended to bring about the destruction of life in whole or in part—which are undeniable markers of a crisis requiring immediate action.

• International laws, regulations and frameworks should prioritize prevention over retrospective adjudication. The medical framework posits to overcome the current political intransigence and protracted legal process that cost time and life.

• The global community must adopt a health-oriented approach focused on the duty to prevent and protect regardless of whether intent is conclusively proven.

• The media plays a pivotal role in shaping public opinion, often functioning as a powerful tool for manufacturing consent for policies and actions that lead to mass atrocities. This manufactured consent fosters a culture of apathy or tacit approval, obscuring the moral and ethical consequences of these actions.

• Any loss of lives and livelihoods is intolerable and unjustifiable, regardless of political, social, or economic contexts. This perspective underscores the sanctity of human life and reinforces the moral obligation to take action.

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:

• Monitoring and Prediction: Using data-driven methods to identify early signs of genocide or mass atrocities.
• Prevention: Developing and implementing interventions to stop escalation, as well as to provide life-saving care
• The power to declare an impending or ongoing genocide based on medical and humanitarian evidence.
• The ability to mobilize international resources and interventions, including medical, logistical, and protective measures[1] .
• The authority to hold governments and entities accountable for acts that contribute to genocide or hinder prevention efforts.

This body must remain free from political interference, operating solely on humanitarian and medical principles to uphold the sanctity of life and prevent atrocities.

• Current international laws, often bound by strict definitions of intent, must evolve to reflect the medical definition of genocide.

• Legal frameworks should align with public health principles, prioritizing rapid response, risk reduction, and proactive accountability.

• Healthcare workers often lack the training to recognize evidence of mass atrocities or indiscriminate violence.

• Standardizing education to democratize knowledge—emphasizing training on early warning signs and disentangling trauma care from militaristic frameworks—would empower doctors to independently and ethically raise credible alerts, reducing instances of genocide denial among individual healthcare workers and institutions.

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.