Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

ROOSEVELT, ELEANOR
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the UN General Assembly, authorizing “the establishment of an international criminal
court.” It had taken half a century of constant effort for human rights law to arrive at
this point. In General Assembly Resolution 260 of December 9, 1948, the United
Nations adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide (UNCG), and Article IV of the UNCG referred to the establishment of
“such an international penal tribunal as may have jurisdiction” for the purpose of trying
cases of genocide, but no such universal tribunal existed until the Rome Statute authorized
the creation of one.
Various explanatory and preparatory committees met throughout the 1990s to establish
the form such a court would take and to draft the proposals on which the states attending
the formal establishment of the court would vote. At its fifty-second session, the General
Assembly decided that a “Diplomatic Conference of Plenipotentiaries on the Establishment
of an International Criminal Court” would take place in Rome between June 15 and
17, 1998. During the conference, it was agreed that the key crimes the court would address
would be genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The crime of international
aggression was considered but shelved. With the adoption of the Rome Statute, it was
decided that the International Criminal Court (ICC) would become operational after
sixty of the signatory states had ratified their accession within their home legislatures: this
was achieved in April 2002.
There were numerous holdouts, but the one that garnered the most attention and criticism
was the United States, which had not been one of the original signatories to the
Rome Statute and only acceded to the ICC under certain conditions advantageous to the
retention of U.S. sovereignty in situations where U.S. citizens are accused of crimes
within the ICC’s jurisdiction.
Roosevelt, Eleanor (1884–1962), and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Eleanor Roosevelt, wife and widow of U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(1882–1945), regarded her work on the UN Human Rights Commission (to which she
was appointed in 1946, becoming its chairperson in 1947) and her leading role in the passage
of the (1948) Universal Declaration of Human Rights as her greatest accomplishment.
Submitting the latter to the General Assembly of the United Nations, she
remarked as follows: “We stand today at the threshold of a great event both in the life of
the United Nations and in the life of mankind. This declaration will become the Magna
Carta for all men everywhere. We hope its proclamation by the General Assembly will be
an event comparable to the proclamation of 1789 (of the French Declaration of the
Rights of Man), the adoption of the Bill of Rights by the people of the U.S., and the adoption
of comparable declarations at different times in other countries.”
Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882–1945). Historians remain divided with regard to
U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s reactions and actions in response to reports of
the Nazi extermination of the Jews. In the main, however, it is the consensus that he
could have done much more than he did, including taking a more proactive versus
reactive stance. At one and the same time, it is important to recognize the fact that he
faced Herculean problems associated with winning World War II, had to deal with the
adverse impact of the Great Depression, was faced with a propensity for U.S. isolationism
within international affairs (along with the national reluctance and hesitancy to admit
foreign immigrants to the United States), and had serious health problems. All of the
latter combined to place Jewish concerns off center stage in his considerations. In fact,