Claus Kreß’s research while affiliated with University of Cologne and other places

The article sets out the nature, the history and the general structure of the crime of genocide and provides a comprehensive analytical commentary of the elements of the crime. Against the current trend of the international case law to expand the boundaries of the definition at the risk of the crime's trivialization this article develops a strict construction even if the results may appear politically unattractive. The article starts from the premise that, for all practical purposes, the occurrence of a crime of genocide entails a collective destructive act. This collective act forms the objective point of reference of the required intent to destroy a protected group in whole or in part; the vain hope of an individual to contribute, by way of commission of one of the underlying offences, to the destruction of a group falls short of this concept of a realistic genocidal intent. The article rejects a purely subjective definition of the various categories of protected groups and cautions against the conversion of the crime of genocide into an unspecific crime of massive human rights violations based on discriminatory motive. At the same time, it is submitted that not every campaign of so-called