December 9th is the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime. The UN General Assembly resolution 69/323 establishing the International Day was adopted on September 11, 2015.
The same day marks the anniversary of the first human rights related treaty 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide known as the “Genocide Convention”. This convention provided the first legal definition of "genocide" and established a duty for State Parties to prevent and punish the crime of genocide. As of December 2020, the Genocide Convention has been ratified by 152 and signed by 41 states.
The Genocide Convention (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 … “, including:
- Killing members of the group;
- Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
- Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
- Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
- Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
More information on UN related commemorations of the International Day can be found
here.
The status of ratification of the treaty could be found in the UN
Treaty Depository collection.
