The United Nations General Assembly is holding a plenary session on Monday to discuss nations’ responsibility to prevent genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.But the meeting on Monday at UN headquarters in New York comes amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Rapid Support Forces’ and allied militias’ ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, and other humanitarian crises around the world, which many critics say the international community has done very little to address.Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of listWhile the UN meeting may result in protocols that countries need to follow to prevent future genocides, observers are sceptical that these will make much difference to victims on the ground.What is the UN’s definition of genocide, and which are some of the genocides the UN has ultimately failed to act on? Here, Al Jazeera takes a look.How does the UN define genocide?In 1944, Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin used the term “genocide” for the first time in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. The prefix of the word is “genos” and means “race” or “tribe” in Ancient Greek. The suffix “cide” is Latin and means “killing”.In 1946, the UN General Assembly recognised genocide as a crime for the first time. According to the world body, the term genocide was then “codified” as an independent crime in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, …
