Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Origins of the legal prohibition of genocide
- 2 Drafting of the Convention and subsequent normative developments
- 3 Groups protected by the Convention
- 4 The physical element or actus reus of genocide
- 5 The mental element or mens rea of genocide
- 6 ‘Other acts’ of genocide
- 7 Defences to genocide
- 8 Prosecution of genocide by international and domestic tribunals
- 9 State responsibility and the role of the International Court of Justice
- 10 Prevention of genocide
- 11 Treaty law questions and the Convention
- Conclusions
- Appendix: The three principal drafts of the Convention
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the first edition
- Preface to the second edition
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Origins of the legal prohibition of genocide
- 2 Drafting of the Convention and subsequent normative developments
- 3 Groups protected by the Convention
- 4 The physical element or actus reus of genocide
- 5 The mental element or mens rea of genocide
- 6 ‘Other acts’ of genocide
- 7 Defences to genocide
- 8 Prosecution of genocide by international and domestic tribunals
- 9 State responsibility and the role of the International Court of Justice
- 10 Prevention of genocide
- 11 Treaty law questions and the Convention
- Conclusions
- Appendix: The three principal drafts of the Convention
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
‘The fact of genocide is as old as humanity’, wrote Jean-Paul Sartre. The law, however, is considerably younger. This dialectic of the ancient fact yet the modern law of genocide follows from the observation that, historically, genocide has gone unpunished. Hitler's famous comment, ‘who remembers the Armenians?’, is often cited in this regard. Yet the Nazis were only among the most recent to rely confidently on the reasonable presumption that an international culture of impunity would effectively shelter the most heinous perpetrators of crimes against humanity.
The explanation for this is straightforward: genocide was generally, although perhaps not exclusively, committed under the direction or, at the very least, with the benign complicity of the State where it took place. Usually, the crime was executed as a quite overt facet of State policy, particularly within the context of war or colonial conquest. Obviously, therefore, domestic prosecution was virtually unthinkable, even where the perpetrators did not in a technical sense benefit from some manner of legal immunity. Only in rare cases where the genocidal regime collapsed in its criminal frenzy, as in Germany or Rwanda, could accountability be considered.
The inertia of the legal systems where the crimes actually occurred did little to inspire other jurisdictions to intervene, although they had begun to do so with respect to certain other ‘international crimes’ such as piracy and the trafficking in persons, where the offenders were by and large individual villains rather than governments.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Genocide in International LawThe Crime of Crimes, pp. 1 - 16Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009