Dictionary of Genocide - D Ank Unlimited

UNITED NATIONS CONVENTION
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matter to the UN Security Council. The UN Security Council, in turn, established the
UN Commission of Inquiry on Darfur and sent a team of investigators to Darfur and
Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, as well as such adjacent states as Chad, in an attempt to ascertain
whether genocide had, in fact, been committed and/or was still in the process of
being perpetrated. Following a two-month investigation (December 2004 and January
2005), the United Nations declared in late January 2005 that while it had found that serious
and ongoing crimes against humanity had been committed by the GOS and Janjaweed,
it had not found that genocide had been perpetrated. The Security Council then referred
the matter to the International Criminal Court (ICC), upon which the ICC began an
investigation into the atrocities for the express purpose of bringing the alleged perpetrators
to trial.
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide (UNCG). In 1946, following in the path of ardent lobbying by jurist Raphael
Lemkin, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution affirming that genocide was a crime
under international law. It called for UN member states to undertake an international
effort to prevent and punish the crime. It also requested the UN Economic and Social
Council (ECOSC) to prepare a draft convention on the prevention and punishment of the
crime of genocide for submission to the General Assembly. On December 11, 1946, the
UN General Assembly passed this initial resolution regarding the definition of genocide:
Genocide is the denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the
denial of the right to life of individual human beings. . . . Many instances of such crimes of
genocide have occurred, when racial, religious, political, and other groups have been destroyed
entirely or in part . . .
The General Assembly Therefore Affirms that genocide is a crime under international law
which the civilized world condemns, for the commission of which principals and accomplices—
whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed
on religious, racial, political or any other groups—are punishable (United Nations,
1978, pp. 607).
Ultimately, the definition that would be used in the UNCG went through numerous
drafts and resulted in what many scholars now refer to as a “compromise convention.” As
a result, the UN’s definition is, at one and the same time, exceedingly broad and
extremely narrow. In regard to the former, it includes acts that are not lethal to a group.
As for being extremely narrow, it neglects to include both political and social groups
under its protection, both of which were intended to be included until certain nations,
including the Soviet Union and the United States, argued against their inclusion for
political reasons.
Finally, in 1948 the convention was presented to the UN General Assembly. In Article II
of the convention, “genocide” is defined as those acts “committed with the intent to destroy,
in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious groups, as such.”
It is not surprising that over the past fifty years many scholars (e.g., Israel W. Charny,
Irving Louis Horowitz, Helen Fein) have proposed alternative definitions of genocide.
Among some of the many changes that have been suggested are as follows: the inclusion
of social and political groups; altering the actions that would be included under the rubric
of genocide; and dropping, altering, or clarifying the meaning of “intent.” Be that as it
may, all internationally recognized courts continue to use the definition of genocide as
delineated in the UNCG.