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Genocide treaty
Epitaph for Holocaust victims
by William Korey
(Editor's note: Dr. William
Korey is the director of interna
tional policy research of the B'nai
B'rith International Council.)
NEW YORK—(JTA)—Rapha
el Lemkin, the great Polish-Jewish
legal scholar, would have been
pleased by the Senate’s 83 to 11
vote last Wednesday ratifying the
Genocide Convention. “An epi
taph on my mother’s grave”—that
is how he had described the treaty
for which he was largely re
sponsible.
If Winston Churchill called the
mass destruction of a people be
cause of their race or religion or
ethnic origin “a crime without a
name,” Lemkin gave it a name:
“genocide.” He fervently hoped
that America would be the first to
ratify the treaty. But at his death in
1959, the U.S. Senate had still not
given it its approval.
For Lemkin, it was not only an
international juridical matter. It
was deeply personal. Forty-seven
members of his family, including
his beloved mother, had been
massacred by the Nazis. He was
determined to prevent its recur
rence, whether against Jews or
Christians or Armenians or dozens
of others who, in his unfinished
history of genocide, he had closely
surveyed.
As the “unofficial man” at the
U.N. during 1946-48, Lemkin
lobbied mightily until the General
Assembly adopted on Dec. 9, 1948,
the “Convention on the Prevention
and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide.”
Appropriately, if today some
what ironically, Lemkin’s biggest
backer was the United States. Its
delegation demanded a strong and
unanimous vote before the U.N.
General Assembly ended its 1948
session. And the U.S. was the first
to sign the convention two days
after it was approved.
President Harry Truman sent it
to the Senate for its “consent” in
June 1949. The administration
urged early Senate action to
“demonstrate to the rest of the
world that the United States is
determined to maintain its moral
leadership in international af
fairs.”
But a combination of factors
halted the early drive toward
ratification: resistance from the
American Bar Association (which
was completely reversed in 1976); a
growing isolationism and xeno
phobia flowing from the Korean
War and a rampaging McCar-
thyism; anxieties of segregationists
from the Deep South; and the
Bricker movement to limit the
treaty-making authority of the
executive. Later, only inertia and a
vague fear that ratification would
threaten U.S. sovereignty pre
vented Senate action.
Sen. William Proxmire (D-
Wisc.), who delivered 3,000 pro
ratification speeches from the
Senate floor since 1967, observed
that “there is not a single proposal
that has been before the Senate as
long.” The inertia was ended when
President Reagan in September
1984, just prior to his speech to the
B’nai B’rith convention, demanded
Senate action to assist “our efforts
to expand human freedom and
‘The genocide
treaty...establishes a
moral standard to
which the threatened
and their friends can
appeal.’
fight human rights abuses around
the world.”
The State Department human
rights specialist, Elliot Abrams,
told the Senate, “We have all
delayed too long” in adding
“America's moral and political
prestige to this landmark in in
ternational law.”
Now that the U.S. has joined 95
other countries which have ratified
the genocide treaty, what can be
expected? Certainly, to anticipate
a significant reduction in the
number of instances of genocide
would be overly sanguine. Since
1965, there have taken place nearly
a dozen instances of genocide and
the international response has
been negligible.
These include the massacres of
Chinese in Indonesia (1965), Ibos
in Nigeria (1968), Bengalis in East
Pakistan (1971), and Hutus in
Burundi (1972). Especially
shocking was the massive slaugh
ter of Cambodians by the Khmer
Rouge regime in the mid-1970s
which went unnoticed.
The reality is that no effective
international machinery exists for
coping with genocide. The treaty
largely depends upon national
legislation and, where the deter
mination to prevent genocide is
absent, little can be accomplished.
If the treaty does provide that “any
Contracting Party may call upon
the competent organs” of the U.N.
to take action under the Charter
“appropriate for the prevention
and suppression of acts of
genocide, ” such section has never
been invoked.
The genocide treaty is, thus,
largely symbolic. Still, it estab
lishes a moral standard to which
the threatened and their friends
can appeal. The invocation of
moral standards, at times, might
arouse international conscious
ness. Thus, by joining the Con
tracting Parties to the genocide
treaty, the U.S. is in a position to
“blow the whistle” on practicioners
or advocates of genocide.
Even more significantly, U.S.
ratification removes a source of
endless embarrassment which has
hindered the U.S. from effectively
championing human rights. Fre
quently, when U.S. delegates at
international forums, most re
cently at Helsinki accord con
ferences, have raised human rights
violations in various parts of the
world, it has been challenged by
the Soviet Union on grounds of
hypocrisy since it had failed to
ratify even the treaty barring the
slaughter of minorities. The
Kremlin has now been deprived of
a strong propaganda weapon
aimed at America’s moral
“Achilles heel.”
“We have waited long enough,”
said Senate Majority Leader
Robert Dole (R — Kans.) when he
finally called for a vote on Feb. 1 1.
“As a nation which enshrines
human dignity and freedom...we
must correct our anomalous
position on this basic rights issue.”
Raphael Lemkin began his
lonely journey to make genocide
an “international crime”exactly 40
years ago. He would have wel
comed the Senate vote.
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PAGE 3 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE February 28, 1986