The Genocide Convention

1.  I thought it was interesting that the act of trying only to exterminate part of a population was considered genocide as well as forced sterilization of certain individuals in a population.

2.  Publicly urging on or advertising of genocide was also punishable rather than just the act itself along along with complicity.  Even saying something out, serious or not, could get one punished for a public display of genocide without having actually killed another human being .

3.  The conference was left open for over a year to all countries who were part of the United Nations and those who had been invited to sign.

Questions:

1. Why was the convention left open so long? Was it in an effort to get as many countries as possible to sign?

2. Is this convention being used to protect the rights of any of the groups being targeted in the present day?

Observation:

A good portion of the countries that opposed the article were slavic, in that region or were part of the Soviet Union at the time.  Perhaps there was a connection between the these countries opposition and the Soviet Union’s rise to power in the coming years.

2 thoughts on “The Genocide Convention

  1. I would imagine the convention was left open because a lot of countries have committed atrocities that would be defined as genocide. Many of those countries did not and still have not actually accepted their role in a genocide, like the United States and the Trail of Tears. By leaving the convention open it gave countries an opportunity to come to terms with their actions.

  2. I agree with the comment above. While many countries have committed genocide, the Holocaust was something that was so terrible and so incomprehensible that it forced nations to reconsider and rethink their actions. It is unfortunate that something so atrocious as the Holocaust had to happen in order to spur this convention.

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