Genocide Prevention Day – December 9, 2026

History of Genocide Prevention Day

Raphael Lemkin coined the term ‘genocide.’ Lemkin was a Polish-Jewish solicitor who fled Poland because of Nazi rule and reached the United States in 1941. When Lemkin was a child, he was appalled to learn about the killing of thousands of Armenians by the Turks during World War I.

Later, Lemkin set out to coin a name to define Nazi atrocities against European Jews during World War II. He incorporated the term into international law to prevent and punish violence against the innocent. Lemkin invented the term ‘genocide’ in 1944 by combining the Greek word ‘genos,’ which means ‘race’ or ‘tribe,’ with the Latin suffix ‘cide,’ which means “to slaughter.”

Genocide Prevention Day in Australia was established to create awareness about the Genocide Convention (Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide). The Genocide Convention is a collection of articles that establishes how to prevent genocide and what to do if a country is in danger of being a victim of genocide. The United Nations adopted the convention in 1948.

The United Nations defined genocide to be an international crime in 1948; the word would eventually be used to define the crimes perpetrated during hostilities in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in Africa in the 1990s.

Understanding the causes of genocide and genocidal conflicts is vital to preventing them. Genocidal conflict is founded on identity. Genocide is more likely to occur in communities where different racial, national, ethnic, and religious groups are involved in identity struggles.

The first stage of preventing genocide is to identify the elements (discriminatory behaviors) that contribute to the violent treatment of a group of people. The second stage involves investigating strategies to reduce and eliminate these contributing factors. Since no country is completely homogeneous, genocide is a global problem.