Epilogue

It is now nearly 70 years since the Genocide Convention was agreed, on 11 December 1946, at the then newly formed United Nations. In its opening passages, genocide was clearly identified both as a crime under international law and as an “odious scourge” from which humanity must be liberated, a task for which international co-operation would be urgently required. If anything, however, it can sometimes seem that the incidence of this “crime of crimes” (as an international tribunal has righty termed it) ¹ has been on the increase in the decades that followed, rather than the reverse. Genocide has taken place on more or less every continent and in more or less every decade since the Convention was confirmed, and there is little sign that it is likely to cease in the immediate future. The numbers of victims – murdered overwhelmingly by the apparatuses of modern states – runs into the many millions. ² There has been scarcely any effective effort to halt or prevent this catalogue of destruction, and the overwhelming majority of perpetrators at every level have escaped prosecution or punishment.