Following the atrocities of World War II, the international community vowed to prevent such human rights abuses from occurring in the future. To do so, it created the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the United Nations’ first human rights treaty. It establishes genocide as an international crime and was adopted by the United Nations on December 9, 1948.
As defined by the Convention, genocide includes specific harmful acts done with the “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” One of the most significant accomplishments of this convention is that it advocates for legal prevention and punishment of genocide in both war and peace times.
Signing of the convention (Marvin Bolotsky VIA UN PHOTO)