Persons accused of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be tried by a competent court of the State in whose territory the offence was committed or by an international criminal tribunal having jurisdiction over those Contracting Parties which have recognized its jurisdiction. Recognizing that genocide has inflicted great losses on humanity in all periods of history and that genocide is one of the greatest crimes under international law, often referred to as the “crime of crimes” after the Nuremberg trials. According to article 2 of the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such: killing of members of the group; cause serious physical or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately imposing living conditions on the group aimed at causing its physical destruction, in whole or in part; the imposition of measures to prevent births within the group; [and] the forcible transfer of children from the group to another group.” Pursuant to the Akayesu case (2 September 1998, paras. 557, 558, 700), the ICTR Appeals Chamber considered the Nahimana et al. case (28 November 2007, para. 698) that the culture and language of Rwanda must be taken into account in determining whether speech constitutes direct incitement to genocide. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) is an instrument of international law that codifies the crime of genocide for the first time. The Genocide Convention was the first human rights treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 and signified the international community`s commitment to never be “never” again after the atrocities of World War II. Its adoption was a decisive step in the development of international human rights law and criminal law as we know it today. This timeline highlights the main conceptual and legal advances in the development of the concept of genocide.
Having considered the declaration of the General Assembly of the United Nations in its resolution 96 (I) of 11 December 1946 that genocide is a crime under international law, contrary to the spirit and purposes of the United Nations and condemned by the civilized world, Others say that there have been at least three genocides within the meaning of the 1948 United Nations Convention: In 2001, General Radislav Krstic, a former Bosnian Serb general, became the first person to be convicted of genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Under Article 25(3)(e) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, a person who “directly and publicly incites others to commit genocide” has committed a crime against international law. In particular, this subsection of Article 25 does not expressly require that genocide be actually committed. Conservative interpreters can quickly assume such a requirement, but the wording of art. Article 25(3)(b) provides that a person who `orders, requests or causes to be committed such a crime` – in this context war crimes and crimes against humanity – is responsible only if that crime `is actually committed or attempted`. In other words, incitement to war crimes and crimes against humanity is punishable only if the crime is committed or attempted, but incitement to genocide is punishable regardless of whether the crime was actually committed or attempted. The ICTR Tribunal`s decision in the Nahimana case provided historical evidence that the framers of the UN Genocide Convention intended convictions for incitement not to require acts of genocide (§ 678). But behind this simple definition lies a complicated tangle of legal terms about what genocide is and when the term can be applied. In 1988, after the campaign of chemical weapons attacks and massacres of Kurds in northern Iraq, a bill was proposed in the U.S.
House of Representatives in the Prevention of Genocide Act. The bill was rejected due to allegations of “inappropriate language” such as “genocide.” Contemporary scholars and international organizations widely consider the Anfal campaign to be genocide after the Iran-Iraq war, in which tens of thousands of Kurds were killed. Saddam Hussein was individually accused of genocide, although he was executed before his return.
