A collective, organized attempt systematically to destroy a politically or ethnically defined group. Ideas of ‘difference’ and ‘other’ underpin genocide: ‘to truly understand how…contemporary genocides and camps remain legitimate within liberal democratic regimes, as well as to understand how sovereign states discriminate between an authentic life and a life lacking political value, we need to theorize biological constructions of difference and their connections to citizenship’ (Mitchell (2006) PHG 30, 1). Territoriality is a further component: late 20th-century genocides exhibited a marked spatial pattern, attacks being more frequent in the peripheral areas of the supposed ‘ethnically pure’ unit: eastern Croatia in the former Yugoslavia, and north-west Rwanda, for example.

Wood (2001) TIBG 26, 1 uses the concepts of Lebensraum, territorial nationalism, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing to explain the production of genocide in Rwanda, and J. Anderson (2010) gives a clear and chilling account of that genocide.

‘Ethnic cleansing’ (the foul euphemism for genocide) is not achieved solely through mass murder, but through forced expulsions and systematic rape—to ‘cleanse’ the lineage. ‘After a decade of displacement, the legacy of ethnic cleansing endures, forming limits to returns and persistent insecurity for returning communities, thus permanently altering Bosnia’s human geography and political future’ (Dahlman and Ó Tuathail (2005) Pol. Geog. 24, 5). Typically, the overall ploy moves from segregation to isolation and elimination—which explains the vital role that ‘safe areas’ can play in countering genocide.

The very term genocide has power; see Campbell (2007) Pol. Geog. 26, 4. Romeo Dallaire, UN commander in Rwanda, 1994, thought exposure of the term to the Western media was worth a battalion on the ground (S. Power 2002). Do see Joe Sacco’s graphic novel The Fixer (2003) on Bosnia.