Grouphood in the Law on Genocide

This chapter critically examines the prevailing understanding of grouphoodGrouphood within the context of genocideGenocide law, highlighting the challenges and shortcomings of current interpretations. A thorough critique of the increasingly popular perpetrator-based subjectivity in constructing the four groupsGroups, particularly among legal scholars, is offered. By revisiting the concept of grouphoodGrouphood from historical, teleological, and victimological perspectives, the chapter aims to illuminate its original conceptualization by the drafters, its interpretation by international lawyers at the time, and its evolution in State practice prior to the 1990s. Through a contextual analysis of the first significant international criminal trial on genocideGenocide, the case against Jean-Paul AkayesuAkayesu at the ICTRICTR, core criticisms of the so-called ‘objective’ interpretation of the four groupsGroups are reassessed, the ‘permanent and stable’ formula is reconstructed, and the notion of involuntariness in defining protected grouphoodGrouphood is explored.