Domicide (from Latindomus, meaning home or abode, and caedo, meaning deliberate killing, though used here metaphorically), is the destruction of housing for corporate, political, strategic or bureaucratic reasoning.[1] It can also encompass the widespread destruction of a living environment, forcing the incumbent humans to move elsewhere.[2][3] In a human rights context, domicide is the deliberate and systematic destruction of housing and basic infrastructure, making an area uninhabitable.[4] The concept of domicide originated in the 1970s, but only assumed its present meaning in 2022, after a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing, Balakrishnan Rajagopal[4][5][6]
Notable historical examples of domicide include: the Bombing of Tokyo, which was the most destructive and deadly non-nuclear bombing in human history,[8] the bombing of Warsaw and Dresden and the destruction perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.[9]
The recent Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip is considered to be the one of the most destructive campaigns in history.[citation needed] Balakrishnan Rajagopal, advisor to the United Nations on dams and Special Rapporteur on adequate housing has argued that Israel did domicide in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war.[10][11]
According to the US military historian Robert Pape, Allied bombings of Germany in World War II targeted 51 cities in Germany and destroyed 40% to 50% of their urban areas. This led to a total of 10% of the buildings being destroyed in the whole of Germany, being compared to 33% across Gaza, thus the latter exceeds the scale of destruction during the Allied bombings of Germany in World War II on per country basis.[12] However, those numbers have been disputed by the IDF, whose estimates, based on daily visual surveys, are much lower - about 16% as of May 31, 2024.[13] This is consistent with the estimate published by the United Nations Satellite Centre on May 31, 2024, stating that 36,591 out of about 250,000 structures have been destroyed, and 16,513 - severely damaged.[14]
^Long, Tony (9 March 2011). "March 9, 1945: Burning the Heart Out of the Enemy". Wired. 1945: In the single deadliest air raid of World War II, 330 American B-29s rain incendiary bombs on Tokyo, touching off a firestorm that kills upwards of 100,000 people, burns a quarter of the city to the ground, and leaves a million homeless.
