One purpose of a genocide is to persecute a minority.
The term genocide refers to violence against members of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group with the intent to destroy the entire group. The most famous and appaling genocide was the full extent of the atrocities committed by the Nazi regime against European Jews after World War II. The term which was later described by the United Nation as international crime, would later be applied to the horrific acts of violence committed during conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and in the African country of Rwanda in the 1990s.