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Genocide percentages

A genocide is not legally defined by a particular death percentage. It is defined by intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a protected national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. A lower percentage can still be genocide if the evidence establishes that intent; a high percentage alone does not prove it.

This chart uses the targeted population, not the total population of the country. Figures are approximate and sometimes ranges because the underlying population and death counts are contested.

Genocide / persecuted groupApprox. killedApprox. pre-genocide targeted populationShare of targeted population killedRecognition status
Herero genocide, German South West Africa, 1904–0865,00080,000~81%Officially acknowledged by Germany as genocide
Holocaust: European Jews, 1941–456,000,0009,500,000~63%Universally recognized; Nazi crimes prosecuted after the war
Armenian genocide, Ottoman Empire, 1915–161.0–1.5 million~2 million~50–75%Recognized as genocide by many states and scholarly institutions; denied by Turkey
Rwandan genocide: Tutsi, 1994~500,000–800,000~1.0–1.1 million~50–75%; often summarized as about 70%Judicially established by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
Khmer Rouge genocide: Cham Muslims, Cambodia, 1975–79~90,000~250,000~36%Judicially established by the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia
Srebrenica genocide: Bosniaks in the enclave, 1995~8,000~40,000 enclave residents~20% of the enclaveJudicially established by the ICTY and ICJ; victims were overwhelmingly Bosniak men and boys
ISIS genocide against Yazidis, Iraq, from 2014~3,000–5,500~400,000–550,000~0.6–1.4% killedFound to be genocide by the UN Commission of Inquiry and multiple national courts
xychart-beta
    title "Approximate Share of Targeted Population Killed"
    x-axis ["Herero","Jews","Armenians","Tutsi","Cham","Srebrenica","Yazidis"]
    y-axis "Percent" 0 --> 85
    bar [81,63,63,70,36,20,1]

A few interpretive cautions:

  • The Armenian, Rwandan, and Holocaust rows use midpoint estimates where there is a range.
  • Srebrenica’s 20% is not the share of all Bosniaks killed; it is the share of the enclave’s total population. The genocidal operation was directed especially at the enclave’s Bosniak males, making the proportion within that intended subgroup far higher.
  • The Yazidi row shows why percentage alone is insufficient: ISIS’s genocidal program included mass murder, forced conversion, sexual enslavement, forced transfer of children, and the destruction of Yazidi communal life. The death percentage is lower, but the legal finding of genocidal intent remains.
  • Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge killed about 1.5–2 million people overall, but the ECCC’s genocide findings were specifically for crimes against Cham Muslims and ethnic Vietnamese. The broader mass death of Cambodian society was prosecuted primarily as crimes against humanity, not legally classified as genocide against all Cambodians.

For comparison, Mariupol’s Ukrainian municipal estimate of 20,000–25,000 civilian deaths from a prewar population around 430,000 equals about 4.6–5.8% of the entire city. That is an appalling mortality rate, but it does not by itself establish genocide. That legal conclusion would require evidence that Russia intended to destroy Ukrainians, or a protected part of them, as such, rather than evidence only of mass civilian killing, indiscriminate attacks, siege warfare, or other war crimes/crimes against humanity.

Sources: