Genocide Convention, 1948

South Africa has moved the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to declare that the Israel was in breach of its obligations under the 1948 Genocide Convention.

• The convention was officially called as the UN’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
• It is an instrument of international law that codified for the first time the crime of genocide in 1948.
• The Convention calls on all States to maintain vigilance, and push for action to prevent genocide, everywhere.
• According to the convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

• According to the Convention, genocide is a crime that can take place both in time of war as well as in time of peace.
• India ratified the convention in 1959.

Every year on 9 December, the UN marks the adoption of the Genocide Convention with the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.