Genocide in Law

The UN genocide convention was ratified in 1946. However, provisions granting immunity from prosecution for genocide without its consent were made by Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia.

The United Stated did not ratify the convention until nearly 50 years later, in 1988. What caused the U.S. to finally ratify it? Ratification was a political move to gain the moral high ground over the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

In the UN Genocide Convention, genocide is officially defined as:

Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• Killing members of the group;
• Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.