Linguistics Regarding Genocide

So what exactly constitutes a "genocide"? In the international world, whether it's certain countries or even the United Nations, people are hesitant using the word "genocide". People label events of this magnitude various things: a "situation", a "conflict", and maybe eventually a "genocide." But why/when does it become okay to define an event as such?

Genocide was defined as a crime in international law by the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Article 2 defines it as the following:

"In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group,

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part,

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

However, the Center on Law and Globalization points out that even under this definition, it is still unclear what counts as genocide. There are numerous important instances that this definition does not cover (i.e. mass political killings). Outside of a few cases (the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide and the Rwandan genocide) people disagree on just when and whether the term applies.

Scholars have compiled lists of the genocides during the 20^th century. Even taking into consideration the difference in time periods, the lists are different. Scholars and politicians disagree about whether or not to use the word genocide to describe the deaths and destruction of the societies of indigenous peoples during the colonial periods. Even in the current context, scholars and policy makers cannot agree on whether the violence in Darfur counts as a genocide. While there is compelling evidence that attacks against the Darfurian people is both directed by the Sudanese government and has a racial basis, people from Darfurian tribes live in peace in areas of Sudan outside Darfur. So, is the current conflict in Darfur a genocide and how is it different than previous violent government actions in Sudan?

The current definition seems to ignore the targeting of political groups; instead it is limited to racial, ethnic, national and religious groups. This poses a problem when the number of people murdered because of political affiliation since World War II far out numbers those killed when racial, ethnic, national or religious groups are targeted, and sometimes mass killing of political groups can shade off into genocide so it is not always clear whether a situation is a genocide.