Exploring the Legal Parameters of the Crime of Genocide and Analyzing the Efficacy of the Application of the Genocide Convention

Abstract

Genocide is often considered the height of atrocity; the worst example of what humanity can inflict on each other. After the adoption and ratification of the Genocide Convention by the United Nations in 1948 in the aftermath of the Holocaust during WWII, the international community presented a unified commitment to prevent and punish further occurrences of genocide. However, the legal definition of the crime of genocide, while comprehensive and multifaceted, has notably fallen short when invoked in rare instances by the international community, as observed in the cases of the Cambodian Genocide, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICRT), the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), and the current ICJ case reviewing the persecution of the Rohingya ethnic group by the state of Myanmar. There is a pressing need to critically analyze the efficacy of the Application of the Genocide Convention and explore various amendments to the legal definition of genocide, in order to bolster and reinforce the international community’s duty to prevent and punish crimes of genocide as they occur, in all capacities. By reviewing literature from prominent international legal scholars and human rights activists, an expanded definition of genocide and preventive framework can be developed, which can serve to encompass and persecute the span of genocidal crimes occurring around the globe today, effectively curbing wide-scale exterminations of marginalized communities before they occur, as the Genocide Convention was intended to do.