In the previous chapter I explored the idea that the harm of genocide is that the group is harmed or that in some sense humanity is harmed. Although there is a sense in which all of humanity is harmed when genocide occurs, this is also true of other international crimes as well. The crime against humanity, as its name would suggest, is also a crime for which the harm can be characterized, at least in part, as adversely affecting humanity. To find what makes genocide uniquely harmful, and perhaps supremely harmful, in international law, something else needs to be identified as the basis of the harm of genocide.

In this chapter it will be important to note that the crime against humanity, called persecution, involves attacks made against a population based on group membership. In this respect the crime of persecution differs from the crime of genocide only in the reference to group destruction. It is thus the reference to group destruction that is the unique characteristic of genocide. And it is this characteristic that needs to be shown to make matters worse than if it were not present. I will argue that the destruction of a group does not make genocide the worst of crimes, although I also argue that the destruction of a group is one of the worst of harms.