Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | UN General Assembly Resolution on Genocide

SOURCE Available from http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/1/ares1.htm.

INTRODUCTION General Assembly Resolution 96(I) elevated the term genocide, first proposed by Raphael Lemkin in a scholarly work published two years earlier, to an internationally recognized crime. Resolution 96(I) mandated the United Nations to prepare a convention on the subject, and this process was completed two years later, in December 1948. The Resolution was initially proposed by Cuba, India, and Panama, who expressed their frustration with the definition of crimes against humanity used at Nuremberg. They argued that such serious atrocities should be punishable in peacetime as well as during war. Moreover, they urged the principle of universal jurisdiction over genocide, allowing its prosecution even by states with no direct link to the crime through either...