The month of April is designated around the world as the Month of Remembrance, Condemnation and Prevention of Genocide. Clearly, we have failed in our collective mission by sticking to an inadequate legal definition.
A year ago, on April 27, 2022, the House of Commons unanimously passed a motion recognizing the Russian Federation’s acts of genocide against the Ukrainian people, after the Parliament of Ukraine proposed a resolution “on the commission of genocide in Ukraine by the Russian Federation”.
Last March, the International Criminal Court issued two arrest warrants against war criminals: Vladimir Poutine and Maria Lvova-Belova.
Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, known as the Genocide Convention, defines it as “an act committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national group , ethnic, racial or religious”, which includes the murder of members of the group, serious bodily or mental harm to them, their subjection to conditions of existence calculated to bring about the physical destruction of the group, measures aimed at hindering births, forced transfer of children.
It is considered that theactus reus Genocide consists of actions aimed at the physical extermination of members of a certain national, ethnic or racial group. It therefore seems natural to qualify the murder of Ukrainians by Russians as genocide.
However, these acts have a larger purpose than mere physical destruction. In Ukraine, the violence of Russian forces is not a means, but an end in itself: the series of war crimes is part of a project of destruction threatening the existence of the Ukrainian nation.
Unlike a national, ethnic or racial group destroyed by genocide, the nation has a broader definition. Each of its groups, both individually and collectively, can form one. In the century of multicultural and multiethnic states, it is central to consider this civic framing of what a nation is.
A civic nation refers to a society where individuals voluntarily adhere to the concept of community on a daily basis. It is then determined by small actions undertaken by the members of this community, beyond their skin color, the language they speak or the religion they practice. Ukraine, multilingual and multi-confessional, is a perfect example: the population, whether ethnic Russian, Jewish, Romanian-speaking, or Crimean Tatar, feels first and foremost Ukrainian.
Admittedly, since the invasion of February 24, 2022, many Ukrainians have tended to renounce the Russian language out of conviction, because it is associated with the idea of empire, but the fact remains that it can be freely spoken in the four corners of the country.
The modern Ukrainian nation was also built on a deep desire to join the European Union. By adhering to the values of democracy and freedom promoted by the 27, Ukrainians are building their future and contributing to strengthening the European integration project.
Faced with this, the desire for de-Ukrainization in Russian discourse is undeniable. Six months before the invasion, Putin published an essay in which he revisited Ukrainian history, insisting on its “artificiality”. During his speech on February 24, 2022, the war criminal said that historically there was no state like Ukraine and no Ukrainian nation.
An article in the Russian state media RIA Novosti entitled “What Russia should do with Ukraine” echoes official statements, wishing “the liquidation and ideological re-education” of Ukrainians, therefore an “inevitable de-Ukrainization”.
The last tweet from Russian statesman Dmitry Medvedev claimed that Ukraine “will disappear, because no one on this planet needs it”.
Although they do not call for the direct physical destruction of Ukrainians, as understood by the UN definition of genocide, these statements seek the disintegration of their political and national identity, and therefore the destruction of the Ukrainian nation as it is being built.
I therefore propose to add the term nationicide in the dictionary, a neologism that can be defined simply as being the destruction of a nation. The advantages of this name are numerous.
We will first recognize the existence of political communities that go beyond ethnic particularities. We will also update international law, often perceived as outdated, and thus contribute to the condemnation of Russian officials for their crimes in Ukraine.
We will finally pledge to prevent such heinous crimes in the future by protecting nations as unique members of the international community, it is our duty.