Genocide Convention

The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was unanimously adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 9 December 1948 as General Assembly Resolution 260. The Convention entered into force on 12 January 1951. It defines genocide in legal terms, and is the culmination of years of campaigning by lawyer Raphael Lemkin. All participating countries are advised to prevent and punish actions of genocide in war and in peacetime. A full 40 years after the convention was formed, the United States of America signed on in 1988, but only while including reservations precluding the punishment of the United States if it were ever accused of genocide. , 152 states have ratified or acceded to the treaty, most recently Mauritius on 8 July 2019. One state, the Dominican Republic, has signed but not ratified the treaty.
Definition of genocide.
Article 2 of the Convention defines genocide as
Article 3 defines the crimes that can be punished under the convention:
The convention was passed to outlaw actions similar to the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust. The first draft of the Convention included political killings, but the USSR along with some other nations would not accept that actions against groups identified as holding similar political opinions or social status would constitute genocide, so these stipulations were subsequently removed in a political and diplomatic compromise.
Parties.
Provisions granting immunity from prosecution for genocide without a national government's consent were made by Bahrain, Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, the United States, Vietnam, Yemen, and Yugoslavia. Prior to the United States Senate's ratification of the convention in 1988, Senator William Proxmire spoke in favor of the treaty to the Senate every day it was in session between 1967 and 1986.
Reservations.
Application to non-self-governing territories.
Several countries opposed this article, considering that the convention should apply to Non-Self-Governing Territories:
The opposition of those countries were in turn opposed by:
Breaches.
Iraq.
In 1988, following the campaign of chemical weapons attacks and mass killings of Kurdish people in northern Iraq, legislation was proposed to the United States House of Representatives, in the, "Prevention of Genocide Act". The bill was defeated to allegations of "inappropriate terms" such as "genocide". Contemporary scholars and international organizations widely consider the Anfal Campaign to have been genocide following the Iran-Iraq war, killing tens of thousands of Kurds. Saddam Hussein was charged individually with genocide though executed prior to a return for the charge. Associates of Hussein such as "Chemical Ali", and others have been widely accused of genocide and the events widely cited as one of the atrocities most commonly associated with the Hussein regime.
Rwanda.
The first time that the 1948 law was enforced occurred on 2 September 1998 when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found Jean-Paul Akayesu, the former mayor of a small town in Rwanda, guilty of nine counts of genocide. The lead prosecutor in this case was Pierre-Richard Prosper. Two days later, Jean Kambanda became the first head of government to be convicted of genocide.
The former Yugoslavia.
The first state and parties to be found in breach of the Genocide convention were Serbia and Montenegro, and numerous Bosnian Serb leaders. In the "Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro" case the International Court of Justice presented its judgment on 26 February 2007. It cleared Serbia of direct involvement in genocide during the Bosnian war.
International Tribunal findings, have addressed two allegations of genocidal events, including the 1992 Ethnic Cleansing Campaign in municipalities throughout Bosnia, as well as the convictions found in regards to the Srebrenica Massacre of 1995 in which the tribunal found, "Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide, they targeted for extinction, the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica ... the trial chamber refers to the crimes by their appropriate name, genocide ...". Individual convictions applicable to the 1992 Ethnic Cleansings have not been secured however. A number of domestic courts and legislatures have found these events to have met the criteria of genocide, and the ICTY found the acts of, and intent to destroy to have been satisfied, the "Dolus Specialis" still in question and before the MICT, UN war crimes court, but ruled that Belgrade did breach international law by failing to prevent the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, and for failing to try or transfer the persons accused of genocide to the ICTY, in order to comply with its obligations under Articles I and VI of the Genocide Convention, in particular in respect of General Ratko Mladić.
Situations under investigation.
The United Nations Security Council is the organization entitled to mandate the International Criminal Court with investigations relating to breaches of the genocide convention.
, the case relating to Darfur, Sudan, opened in 2005, is the only pending investigation that is genocide-related. Warrants to arrest Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, former president of Sudan, were issued in 2009 and 2010. The case remains in the pre-trial stage as the suspect is still at large.
Omar al-Bashir was ousted in a military coup in April 2019. He was detained by the new civilian government. In October 2020, an International Criminal Court delegation began talks in Sudan over the leader, who is wanted on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Other accusations.
China.
On 19 January 2021, less than 24 hours before the end of Trump's presidency, outgoing US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo released a statement which accused China of an ongoing genocide against its Uyghur population. This view was then endorsed by incoming Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
On 22 February 2021, the Canadian Parliament voted that China has committed genocide against its Uighur Muslim population, although PM Justin Trudeau and his Cabinet members abstained. 
On 8 March 2021, the US-based thinktank Newlines Institute published a report which concluded that "the People’s Republic of China (China) bears State responsibility for committing genocide against the Uyghurs in breach of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention) based on an extensive review of the available evidence and application of international law to the evidence of the facts on the ground." 
United States.
One of the first accusations of genocide submitted to the UN after the Convention entered into force concerned the treatment of Black Americans. The Civil Rights Congress drafted a 237-page petition arguing that even after 1945, the United States had been responsible for hundreds of wrongful deaths, both legal and extra-legal, as well as numerous other genocidal abuses. Leaders from the Black community, including William Patterson, Paul Robeson, and W. E. B. DuBois presented this petition to the UN in December 1951. However, this accusation was a domestic political act by the Civil Rights Congress, without any expectation that a formal charge would be levied against the US.
Myanmar.
Myanmar has been accused of Genocide against its Rohingya community in Northern Rakhine State after around 800.000 Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh in 2016 and 2017. The International Court of Justice has given its first circular in 2018 asking Myanmar to protect its Rohingya from genocide.
However, Myanmar is not under the jurisdiction of the ICJ.