which had begun to recognize genocide as an offense against humanity as well as against the target group. It was more precisely defined in 1948, when the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This document defines genocide as follows:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, 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

Because genocide by this definition involves the question of intent as well as the act of destruction, its applicability in given situations is sometimes subject to controversy; however, acts that may lack the deliberate attempt to destroy a group as such may still constitute gross human rights violations that are no less horrible in their consequences.

Instances of human rights violations, from torture to terrorism, from slavery to genocide, should be studied at appropriate historical points in the curriculum. Examples of genocide are the:

• Annihilation of the Armenians by the government of the Ottoman
Empire

• Famine in the Ukraine caused by the Soviet government

• Nazi extermination of European Jews (the Holocaust)

• Mass murders of the Poles

• Mass killings of Cambodians by the Pol Pot regime

Examples of extreme human rights violations include:

• Slavery of black people in the U.S.

• Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 in California

• Forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II on the West Coast of the U.S.

• Discrimination against blacks, Asians, Hispanics, American Indians, women, the handicapped, and homosexuals in the U.S.

• Apartheid in South Africa

• Political repression, torture, and terrorism such as that in Argentina

• Totalitarian policies, such as those that brought suffering to the Chinese people and those that were imposed in Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia against Gypsies, disabled people, homosexuals, Slavs, and other groups in Eastern Europe

Students must understand the centuries-long struggle for human rights and democratic government. The curriculum requires the study of critical points in the evaluation of democratic ideas and practices, the landmark documents, and the struggles to safeguard human rights, including the:

• Magna Carta, which established limits on the power of the sovereign

• English Bill of Rights of 1689 and common law

• American Declaration of Independence and the Revolution

Genocide is the denial to groups of the right to live and the deliberate destruction of racial, ethnic, national, or religious groups.