Definition of "pacification" [pa•cif•i•ca•tion]

• The act of pacifying or the condition of being pacified; appeasement. (noun)
• Reduction, as of a rebellious district, to peaceful submission: "Real pacification is hard to get in the Vietnamese countryside” ( McGeorge Bundy). (noun)
• Practical measures or policy aiming to effect this type of submission. (noun)
• A peace treaty: the Pacification of Ghent. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "With Rio gearing up to host the 2014 World Cup final and the 2016 Olympics, authorities have embarked upon a so-called "pacification" scheme, permanently occupying over a dozen slums and evicting the drug traffickers' private armies."
• "Another important element of the pacification was the maintenance of freedom."
• "Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification ."