Legal activity in the third quarter-century of the life of the Convention has greatly surpassed that of the first two quarter-centuries. This can be measured in terms of case law and scholarly writing. The interpretation of the Convention’s definition of genocide has remained quite narrow, and is essentially confined to physical genocide, destruction and extermination. There is potential for this to change in such a way as to extend the scope of the Convention to situations where groups are attacked with view to being driven from the territory where they have lived. This would require a degree of judicial activism. Care must be taken because of the danger of uncontrolled expansion of the definition. The phenomenon of politicized allegations of genocide is significant. Although there has been some resistance to the idea of a hierarchy of international crimes, genocide should remain ’the crime of crimes’.

In December 1946 the General Assembly requested that the Economic and Social Council prepare a draft genocide convention with a view to its adoption at the 1947 session of the Assembly. The Secretariat prepared a draft convention with the assistance of three experts in international criminal law, Raphael Lemkin, Henri Donnedieu de Vabres and Vespasian Pella. However, the Economic and Social Council did not complete consultations with Member States in 1947. In early 1948, the Council established an Ad Hoc Committee composed of representatives of several Member States which prepared a revised draft. This draft was then revised and adopted by the Sixth Committee of the General Assembly in December 1948. The Assembly also adopted resolutions calling for consideration of the establishment of an international criminal court and for the extension of the Convention to colonies. The Convention entered into force in January 1951 after the threshold of twenty ratifications or accessions had been achieved.

The title of the Convention and article I both refer to the obligation to prevent genocide. However, the Convention provides no other guidance on the scope of this obligation. In its 2007 judgment in Bosnia v. Serbia the International Court of Justice held that Serbia had had been in breach of its obligation to prevent genocide because it failed to exert pressure on Bosnian Serb forces who were preparing to commit genocide at Srebrenica. The doctrine developed by the Court was quite radical in that it recognized an extraterritoriaoutside their own gterritory unless l dimension of the obligation, one that varied in scope depending upon the influence the State Party was capable of exerting. Prevention of genocide is also contemplated in the General Assembly resolution on the responsibility to protect. Means employed to prevent genocide must be otherwise lawful. States cannot use force to prevent genocide unless authorised pursuant to the Charter of the United Nations.