George,

On the story about the so-called World"Help" organization, I think it's important to note that under Article 2 of the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide is specifically defined as including the commission of:

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;

...

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

In other words, coerced "transfers" of children from any one of the specified types of groups (including "religious" groups) constitutes genocide if it is committed with the intention of destroying "in whole or in part" the religious group from which the children were taken.

I am so happy that that particular act was included in the definition of genocide. It is not, of course, only the children of Holocaust-threatened Jews who have, in recent history been forcibly "transferred" from membership in one group to membership in another (and at least there, one could plausibly make the argument that the prime "intent" of the converters was NOT to destroy the Jewish religious group as such.) Here in the US, and in Canada, children from Native American groups were for many decades taken from their homes in huge numbers; they were placed in Anglophone, "Christian" boarding schools, and forbidden to speak their native tongue or practice their people's own religions. Ditto in Australia (which was a strong opponent of including category 'e' in the definition.)

In all these cases, the intent was much more clearly, imho, to destroy the targeted indigenous nations as nations.

And the thing about genocide is that any attempt to commit it, or to plan or conspire to commit it, should anywhere and always be prosecuted... H'mmm.

bests,

Helena. Cobban (electronic mail, January 18, 2005)