Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | United Nations

The United Nations was created during and in the wake of World War II, which was a global cataclysm that brought death to millions of civilians. Most of those civilians were primary targets, and often not even enemy targets. The genocide of the Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and others by Nazi Germany, and the brutal repression and discrimination that preceded it, lent weight to the argument that peace and justice were inseparable, the other side of the coin from war and oppression. As stated in September 1944 by the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace, an influential United States nongovernmental organization: "it has become clear that a regime of violence and repression within any nation of the civilized world is a matter of concern for all the rest."

Human Rights in the Charter of the United Nations

On August 14, 1941, the Atlantic Charter was agreed to...