378 CHAPTER TEn ■ Human Riht
(see Box 10.1). While the conven
tion was signed, ratified, and recog
nized as an advance in international
human rights, like most l egal con
ventions, it is both precise on some
questions and vague on others. Such
ambiguity often reflects real dis
agreement among the parties during
the negotiating pro cess or an inabil
ity of the negotiators to reach a
compromise. From one perspective,
the convention is precise in terms of
defining what constitutes geno
cide. The perpetrator of the genocide
must have the intention to kill; the
killing or maiming is not an unin
tended result of vio lence or a ran
dom act. The targets of the vio lence
must be a national, ethnical, racial,
or religious group. But from another
view, the convention is vague. It does
not specify how many people must
be killed to be considered genocide.
Nor does it specify what evidence
is necessary to prove intentionality.
The convention provides no perma
nent body to monitor potential
genocides or any system for early
warnings. How the international
community should respond is vague,
but respond it should.
Despite the convention and the
good intentions of “never again,”
the international community has
failed to act decisively in cases of purported genocide. One million Bangladeshis were
killed in the 1970s; India intervened but did not stop the carnage. Two million Cam
bodians were killed in the same era, but Vietnam’s intervention, undertaken for dif
fer ent reasons, was too late and the rest of the world was silent.
In the 1990s, over 750,000 Rwandans were killed while the small UN contingent
on the ground sat back and watched. In the states of the former Yugo slavia, including
BOXn10.1
hhe ienocide Conventionm hRC len 1 The Contracting Parties confirm
that genocide, whether committed in time
of peace or in time of war, is a crime under
international law which they undertake to
prevent and punish.m hRClen 2 In the pres ent convention,
genocide means any of the following acts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or
in part, 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 mea sures intended to prevent
births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the
group to another group.m hRClen 3 The following acts shall be
punishable:
(a) Genocide;
(b) Conspiracy to commit genocide;
(c) Direct and public incitement to commit
genocide;
(d) Attempt to commit genocide;
(e) Complicity in genocide.