Beyond the Defective Gas Chamber

This article revisits the neglected crime of attempted genocide under international law. Although the Genocide Convention lists attempt as a punishable act, courts and scholars have rarely engaged with it. The article argues that this is due to a gap between the legal definition of genocide, as a crime of intent not scale, and its widespread social understanding as a mass atrocity crime requiring many victims. To bridge this, the paper proposes aligning the legal definition more closely with the ordinary notion by adding a quantitative context element. Isolated acts committed with genocidal intent but lacking a mass context could then be prosecuted as attempted genocide. This would expand the scope and utility of the attempt provision, strengthen prevention, and close the gap between legal and social meanings. The massacres of Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan illustrate how this approach could help recognize and address early-stage genocidal violence more effectively