THE UNCG is a complicated piece of international law. This book, authored by two experts on the topic of genocide, enables readers to more accurately analyze these horrific events.

The Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948, is one of the most important instruments of contemporary international law. It was drafted in the aftermath of the Nuremberg trial to give flesh and blood to the well-known dictum of the International Military Tribunal, according to which 'Crimes against international law are committed by men, not by abstract entities, and only by punishing individuals who commit such crimes can the provisions of international law be enforced'. At Nuremberg, senior state officials who had committed heinous crimes on behalf or with the protection of their state were brought to trial for the first time in history and were held personally accountable regardless of whether they acted in their official capacity. The drafters of the Convention on Genocide crystallized the results of the Nuremberg trial and thus ensured its legacy. The Convention established a mechanism to hold those who committed or participated in the commission of genocide, the crime of crimes, criminally responsible. Almost fifty years before the adoption of the Rome Statute, the Convention laid the foundations for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. It also obliged its Contracting Parties to criminalize and punish genocide. This book is a much-needed Commentary on the Genocide Convention. It analyzes and interprets the Convention thematically, thoroughly covering every article, drawing on the Convention's travaux preparatoires and subsequent developments in international law. The most complex and important provisions of the Convention, including the definitions of genocide and genocidal acts, have more than one contribution dedicated to them, allowing the Commentary to explore all aspects of these concepts. The Commentary also goes beyond the explicit provisions of the Convention to discuss topics such as the retroactive application of the Convention, its status in customary international law and its future. "

How both the Soviet Union and the United States manipulated and weakened the drafting of the United Nations Genocide Convention treaty in the midst of the Cold War.

Genocide is acknowledged as 'the crime of crimes'. This book is the product of an encounter between scholars of historical and legal disciplines which have joined forces to address the question of whether the legal concept of genocide still corresponds with the historical and social perception of the phenomenon.

Genocide occurs in every time period and on every continent. Using the 1948 U.N. definition of genocide as its departure point, this book examines the main episodes in the history of genocide from the beginning of human history to the present. Norman M. Naimark lucidly shows that genocide both changes over time, depending on the character of major historical periods, and remains the same in many of its murderous dynamics. He examines cases of genocide as distinct episodes of mass violence, but also in historical connection with earlier episodes. Unlike much of the literature in genocide studies, Naimark argues that genocide can also involve the elimination of targeted social and political groups, providing an insightful analysis of communist and anti-communist genocide. He pays special attention to settler (sometimes colonial) genocide as a subject of major concern, illuminating how deeply the elimination of indigenous peoples, especially in Africa, South America, and North America, influenced recent historical developments. At the same time, the "classic" cases of genocide in the twentieth Century - the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust, Rwanda, and Bosnia -- are discussed, together with recent episodes in Darfur and Congo.

This work gathers together for the first time in a single publication the records of the multitude of meetings which, in the context of the newly established United Nations, led to the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide on 9 December 1948. This work will enable academics and practitioners easy access to the Genocide Convention’s travaux préparatoires – an endeavour that has until now proven extremely difficult. This work will be of paramount importance for the international adjudication of the crime of genocide insofar as recourse to the “general rule of interpretation” and the “supplementary means of interpretation” under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties is concerned.

The Genocide Convention explores the question of whether the law and genocide law in particular can prevent mass atrocities. The volume explains how genocide came to be accepted as a legal norm and analyzes the intent required for this categorization. The work also discusses individual suits against states for genocide and, finally, explores the utility of genocide as a legal concept.

In this definitive study, Lawrence J. LeBlanc examines the nearly forty-year struggle over ratification of the Genocide Convention by the United States. LeBlanc's analysis of the history of the convention and the issues and problems surrounding its ratification sheds important light on the process of treaty ratification in the United States and on the role of American public opinion and political culture in international human rights legislation. Drawing on case studies of genocide committed since World War II, the author also confronts the strengths and weaknesses of international adjudication as a whole. Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 in response to the atrocities committed by the Nazis before and during World War II, the Genocide Convention was finally made law by the United States Senate in 1988 contingent upon a series of "conditions"--known as the "Lugar-Helms-Hatch Sovereignty Package"--which, LeBlanc suggests, markedly weakened the convention. Through careful analysis of the bitter debates over ratification, LeBlanc demonstrates that much of the opposition to the convention sprang from fears that it would be used domestically as a tool by groups such as blacks and Native Americans who might hold the U.S. accountable for genocide in matters of race relations.

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) has a special standing in international law and international politics. For 60 years, the crime of genocide has been recognised as the most horrendous crime in international law, famously designated the 'crime of crimes'. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its adoption the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that 'genocide is the ultimate form of discrimination'. In the same context the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court described the Genocide Convention as a 'visionary and founding text for the Court'. The Convention has as such influenced the subsequent development of many different areas of international law. For example, the 1951 Advisory Opinion on the Genocide Convention enabled the International Court of Justice to shape the modern regime of reservations to treaties. More recently, the prohibition against genocide has become a crucial pillar of the regime of international criminal law developing since the 1990s, with genocide being one of the core crimes falling under the jurisdiction of the UN ad hoc tribunals, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia and the permanent International Criminal Court.In this work the 19 provisions of the Convention are analysed article-by-article, with abundant references to state practice and case law.