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Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

 

 
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Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
 
 
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The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal United Nations System and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation....
 in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951. It defines genocide
Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise genocide definitions, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ....
 in legal terms, and is the culmination of years of campaigning by lawyer Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin was a Poles lawyer of Jewish descent. Before World War II, Lemkin was interested in the Armenian Genocide and campaigned in the League of Nations to ban what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism"....
, who coined the term by reference to the Simele massacre
Simele massacre

The Simele massacre was the first of many Wiktionary:massacre committed by the Iraqi government during the systematic targeting of Assyrians of Northern Iraq in August 1933....
, the Holocaust, and the Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide , also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, the Great Calamity —refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian people population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I....
. All participating countries are advised to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and in peacetime.






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The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly
United Nations General Assembly

The United Nations General Assembly is one of the five principal United Nations System and the only one in which all member nations have equal representation....
 in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951. It defines genocide
Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise genocide definitions, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ....
 in legal terms, and is the culmination of years of campaigning by lawyer Raphael Lemkin
Raphael Lemkin

Raphael Lemkin was a Poles lawyer of Jewish descent. Before World War II, Lemkin was interested in the Armenian Genocide and campaigned in the League of Nations to ban what he called "barbarity" and "vandalism"....
, who coined the term by reference to the Simele massacre
Simele massacre

The Simele massacre was the first of many Wiktionary:massacre committed by the Iraqi government during the systematic targeting of Assyrians of Northern Iraq in August 1933....
, the Holocaust, and the Armenian Genocide
Armenian Genocide

The Armenian Genocide , also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, the Great Calamity —refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian people population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I....
. All participating countries are advised to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and in peacetime. The number of states that have ratified the convention is currently 140.

Definition of genocide

Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as

Article 3 defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention:

The convention was passed to outlaw actions similar to the Holocaust
The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as , Churben is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II, as part of a program of deliberate extermination planned and executed by Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler....
 by Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany

Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the colloquial English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party , which established a Totalitarianism dictatorship that existed from 1933 to 1945....
 during World War II
World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
. The first draft of the Convention included political killings, but the USSR
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
 along with some other nations would not accept that actions against groups identified as holding similar political opinions or social status would constitute genocide, so these stipulations were subsequently removed in a political and diplomatic compromise.

Parties


Provisos
Treaty

A Treaty is an agreement under international law entered into by actors in international law, namely states and international organizations. A Treaty may also be known as: agreement, protocol, covenant, convention, exchange of letters, etc....
 granting immunity from prosecution for genocide without its consent were made by Bahrain
Bahrain

The Kingdom of Bahrain, in , , literally Kingdom of the Two Seas).Bahrain is an Arabic island country in the Persian Gulf ruled by the Al Khalifa regime....
, Bangladesh
Bangladesh

, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a country in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south....
, India
India

India, officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and outlying territories by total area country by geographical area, the List of countries by population country, and the most populous liberal democracy in the world....
, Malaysia
Malaysia

Malaysia is a federation that consists of States of Malaysia in Southeast Asia with a total landmass of . The capital city is Kuala Lumpur, while Putrajaya is the seat of the federal government....
, the Philippines
Philippines

The Philippines, officially known as the Republic of the Philippines, is a country in Southeast Asia with Manila as its capital city. It comprises 7,107 islands in the western Pacific Ocean....
, Singapore
Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country microstate located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. It lies 137 kilometres north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands....
, the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
, Vietnam
Vietnam

Vietnam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam , is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by People's Republic of China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea to the east....
, Yemen
Yemen

Yemen , officially the Republic of Yemen is an Arab country located on the Arabian Peninsula in Southwest Asia. Yemen has an estimated population of more than 23 million people and is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the North, the Red Sea to the West, the Arabian Sea and Gulf of Aden to the South, and Oman to the east....
, and Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia

File:LocationYugoslavia2.pngYugoslavia is a term that describes three political entities that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe, during most of the 20th century....
. Prior to its ratification of the convention, the United States Senate
United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the Bicameralism United States Congress, the lower house being the United States House of Representatives....
 was treated to a speech by Senator William Proxmire
William Proxmire

Edward William Proxmire was a member of the Democratic Party , who served in the United States Senate for the state of Wisconsin from 1957 to 1989....
 in favor of this treaty every day that the Senate was in session between 1967 and 1986.

Breaches


Rwanda

The first time that the 1948 law was enforced occurred on September 2, 1998 when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda
International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda

The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda , or the Tribunal p?nal international pour le Rwanda , is an international court established in November 1994 by the United Nations Security Council in order to judge those people responsible for the Rwandan genocide and other serious violations of the international law performed in the te...
 found Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda
Rwanda

The Republic of Rwanda is a small landlocked country in the Great Lakes region of east-central Africa, bordered by Uganda, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania....
, guilty of nine counts of genocide. The lead prosecutor in this case was Pierre-Richard Prosper
Pierre-Richard Prosper

Pierre-Richard Prosper is an United States lawyer, prosecutor and former government official. He served as the second United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues under President George W....
. Two days later, Jean Kambanda
Jean Kambanda

Jean Kambanda was the Prime Minister of Rwanda in the caretaker government of Rwanda from the start of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. He is the only head of government to plead guilty to genocide, in the first group of such convictions since the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide came into effect in 1951....
 became the first head of government to be convicted of genocide.

Yugoslavia

The first state to be in breach the Genocide convention was Serbia
Serbia

Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a country in Central Europe and Balkans Europe, covering the southern part of the Pannonian Plain and the central part of the Balkans....
. In the Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro case the ICJ presented its judgement on 26 February 2007. It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide
Genocide

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group.While precise genocide definitions, a legal definition is found in the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide ....
 during the Bosnian war, but ruled that Belgrade
Belgrade

Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. The city lies on international waterway, at the confluence of the Sava River and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkan Peninsula....
 did breach international law by failing to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and for failing to try or transfer the persons accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of General Ratko Mladic
Ratko Mladic

Ratko Mladic , born March 12, 1942, a war crimes fugitive, was the Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War of 1992-1995....
.

See also

  • Command responsibility
    Command responsibility

    Command responsibility, sometimes referred to as the Yamashita standard or the Medina standard, is the doctrine of hierarchical accountability in cases of war crimes....
  • Human rights abuse
  • International law
    International law

    Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of states and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond domestic legal interpretation and enforcement....
  • War crimes