Apartheid, Genocide, Occupation

United Nations

The Apartheid Convention

“The Apartheid Convention declares that apartheid is a crime against humanity and that ‘inhuman acts resulting from the policies and practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination’ are international crimes (art. 1). Article 2 defines the crime of apartheid –‘which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practised in southern Africa’ – as covering ‘inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them’. It then lists the acts that fall within the ambit of the crime. These include murder, torture, inhuman treatment and arbitrary arrest of members of a racial group; deliberate imposition on a racial group of living conditions calculated to cause its physical destruction; legislative measures that discriminate in the political, social, economic and cultural fields; measures that divide the population along racial lines by the creation of separate residential areas for racial groups; the prohibition of interracial marriages; and the persecution of persons opposed to apartheid.”  
-https://legal.un.org/avl/ha/cspca/cspca.html

Genocide

“The word ‘genocide’ was first coined by Polish lawyer Raphäel Lemkin in 1944 in his book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. It consists of the Greek prefix genos, meaning race or tribe, and the Latin suffix cide, meaning killing. Lemkin developed the term partly in response to the Nazi policies of systematic murder of Jewish people during the Holocaust, but also in response to previous instances in history of targeted actions aimed at the destruction of particular groups of people. Later on, Raphäel Lemkin led the campaign to have genocide recognised and codified as an international crime.” 
-https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition

The Question Of Palestine | The 4th Geneva Convention, International Law and Occupation

“In addition to its general rules and provisions governing the treatment of civilians, the 4th Geneva Convention sets out rules specific to cases of occupation in Articles 47 through 78. These provisions are parallel to those set out in the Hague Regulations of 1907, which continue to be binding and which must be taken into account in conjunction with the above-mentioned provisions. One such Hague regulation, Article 42, defines occupation as follows: ‘Territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of the hostile army.’ Under international law, occupation is considered temporary in nature and involves no transfer of sovereignty. The occupation of territory during war does not confer upon the Occupying Power ‘state authority’ over the population of the occupied territory or over the occupied territory itself. […] One of the major provisions of the 4th Geneva Convention regarding occupation is Article 49, which prohibits the transfer by the occupying Power of its own nationals into the territory it occupies. This article was drafted specifically to prevent colonialization and annexation and to prevent any changes in the character of these territories, a result that inevitably ensues with such transfers. At the same time, the Convention also specifies the point at which its application ceases. In cases where a territory is occupied, the application of international humanitarian law, in particular the 4th Convention, ceases only with the effective end of occupation or with a comprehensive political settlement of the dispute, in accordance with the rules of general international law.” 
-  https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-199015/