The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was adopted by the UN General Assembly in December 1948 and came into effect in January 1951. It defines and outlaws genocide, as a result of campaigning by Raphael Lemkin who had coined the term some years earlier. The total number of states who have ratified the convention is currently 137. United Nations General Assembly The United Nations General Assembly is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations. ... Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) Article 2 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 members of the group; Causing... Rafael Lemkin (June 24, 1900—August 28, 1959) was a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent. ...

The Convention (in article 2) defines genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:"

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The convention was passed in order to outlaw actions similar to the Holocaust by Nazi Germany during World War II. Because the convention required the support of the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc, it excluded actions undertaken by those nations. As a result, the convention excludes from the definition of genocide the killing of members of a social class, members of a political or ideological group, and that of cultural killings. Selection procedure of Hungarian Jews at the Auschwitz camp on 26 May 1944, where the Nazis chose whom to kill immediately and whom to use as slave labor or for medical experimentation. ... Nazi Germany, or the Third Reich, commonly refers to Germany in the years 1933–1945, when it was under the firm control of the totalitarian and fascist ideology of the Nazi Party, with the Führer Adolf Hitler as dictator. ... This article is becoming very long. ... During the Cold War, the Eastern Bloc (or Soviet Bloc) comprised the following Central and Eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Poland, Albania (until the early 1960s, see below), the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia. ...

The United States became a state party to the convention in 1988, though only with the proviso that it was immune from prosecution for genocide without its consent. This proviso was also made by Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia. It has been suggested that Protocol (treaty) be merged into this article or section. ... Immunity confers a status on a person or body that makes that person or body free from otherwise legal obligations such as, for example, liability for damages or punishment for criminal acts. ... Yugoslavia (Jugoslavija in all South Slavic languages, Југославија in Serbian and Macedonian Cyrillic) is a term used for the three separate political entities that existed during most of the 20th century on the Balkan Peninsula in Europe. ...

All participating countries are required to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and peacetime.

The first time that the 1948 law was enforced occurred on September 2, 1998 when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide. The lead prosecutor in this case was Pierre-Richard Prosper. Two days later, Jean Kambanda became the first head of government to be convicted of genocide. September 2 is the 245th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (246th in leap years). ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... Wanted poster for the ICTR The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) is a court under the auspices of the United Nations for the prosecution of offenses committed in Rwanda during the genocide which occurred there during April, 1994, commencing on April 6. ... Jean-Paul Akayesu is the former mayor of Taba, a small town in Rwanda, who was found guilty of nine counts of genocide by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on September 2, 1998. ... Pierre-Richard Prosper was nominated by President George W. Bush on May 16, 2001 to become the second United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues. ... Jean Kambanda (born October 19, 1955) was the prime minister in the caretaker government of Rwanda from the start of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide. ...

See also

• International law
• Genocides in history
• Bosnian genocide case at the International Court of Justice

This article or section is missing references or citation of sources. ... Genocide is defined by the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) article 2 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 members of the group; Causing... Peace Palace at the Hague The Bosnian genocide case at the International Court of Justice (also known as Bosnia and Herzegovina v. ...

External links

• Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide at Law-Ref.org - fully indexed and crosslinked with other documents
• List of 133 parties to the Genocide Convention (UNHCHR status report)
• List of over 50 nations not party to the Convention
• Info on the Genocide Convention at Prevent Genocide International
• The Genocide Convention at Fifty U.S. Institute of Peace Report, January 1999