Genocide: Call a Spade a Spade

The UN recognized genocide as a crime in 1946, and in 1948 the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was codified.

As of April 2022, 153 states have recognized the Genocide Convention, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) abides by the Convention. Forty-one UN member states have not ratified the Convention.

There are nineteen articles in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

The following is taken from the UN’s Genocide Convention:

Article I: The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.

Article II: In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, such as:

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

Article III: The following acts shall be punishable:

1. Genocide,
2. Conspiracy to commit genocide,
3. Direct and public incitement to commit genocide,
4. Attempt to commit genocide,
5. Complicity in genocide.”

Article IV: Persons committing genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be punished, whether they are constitutionally responsible rules, public officials or private individuals.

Article V: The Contracting Parties undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the present Convention, and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III. 

Article VI: Persons charged with genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III shall be tried by a competent tribunal of the State in the territory of which the act was committed, or by such international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction with respect to those Contracting Parties which shall have accepted its jurisdiction. 

Article VII: Genocide and the other acts enumerated in article III shall not be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition. The Contracting Parties pledge themselves in such cases to grant extradition in accordance with their laws and treaties in force.

Article VIII: Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide or any of the other acts enumerated in article III. 

Article IX: Disputes between the Contracting Parties relating to the interpretation, application or fulfilment of the present Convention, including those relating to the responsibility of a State for genocide or for any of the other acts enumerated in article III, shall be submitted to the International Court of Justice at the request of any of the parties to the dispute. 

The remainder of the articles in the convention are administrative.

It is crucial to note that the United Nations explicitly excludes a specific number of deaths as a prerequisite for classification and that offenders do not need to meet every criterion under Article II for an act to be defined as genocide.

The UN places an obligation on the states that have ratified the Convention to actively try to prevent genocide and to punish perpetrators when it happens, “whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals,” in Article IV. Government officials, military commanders, citizen militias, public media, and individual citizens could all be charged in a criminal case. Ordinary citizens (who did not take part in murdering people) are not often charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, or complicity in it, but citizens could be charged, according to the Convention.