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In 1944 Raphael Lemkin invented the word Genocide. This neologism conveys first of all a form of attachment to the values threatened by the recurrent displays of Barbary and vandalism in the history of mankind. It also demonstrates an attachment to the law when it upholds humanism, that is, when it expresses universal and permanent values. After a long process of elaborating the legal definition, marked by hostility from the States as they saw their sovereignties becoming reduced, genocide permitted a repression of the “crime of ail crimes”. Genocide is a word that acts. The creation of a new word always causes plenty of debate, including within the social sciences, but above all, in the Law, “genocide” allowed an enduring criminal reality to be associated with the film resolution to get rid of it once and for all.