Ralph Crammed In posted:

There are specific criteria for something to be called genocide by the UN Security Council, which would then give them the legal right to invade a country under a resolution called Right to Protect (lol that they would ever in a million years actually do anything but there you go).

As per the definitions from the UN website, genocide is-

Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Ethnic cleansing, on the other hand, is not really a legal term. The two terms are often used interchangeably, however, outside of a legal setting.