69th Anniversary of the Signing of the Genocide Convention - “The Duty to Honour Victims by Preventing & Punishing Genocide”

Ambassador Ngarambe,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is over 70 years since a Polish-Jewish lawyer called Raphael Lemkin coined the word Genocide. “New conceptions require new terms”, he noted briefly.

Three years earlier, in 1941, he had fled to the United States and so escaped the death chambers of Auschwitz in which his family would be murdered.

After 1945, he mounted a remarkable and ultimately successful campaign to transform international law: The United Nations Genocide Convention was the result.

Ever since, the Convention has embodied the aspiration of the UN to prevent the horror of the Holocaust from occurring again.

The Convention compels signatory States “to prevent and to punish” the crime of genocide – to act against those who kill or commit other grave acts “with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”.

Yet, we – the international community – must recognize that, time and again, when put to the test, we failed.

It is less than a quarter century since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. More than 800,000 people were systematically murdered – Tutsi, alongside moderate Hutu, Twa, and others who opposed the killing of their neighbours.

Today, we remember all those who perished and we honour their memories.

Every atrocity is unique; but every atrocity exists in a historical context, which is to say they never occur in a vacuum.

Nor are they committed by only a handful of individuals. They are carried out with the connivance and acquiescence of many people – bystanders whose indifference betrayed compassion.

Today, we must be as alert and vigilant as ever. We must confront the reality that sectarianism, intolerance, populism, and nationalism are rearing their ugly heads again, even in established democracies. They are the breeding ground of far more evil acts.

Today, we reflect on the role of the Genocide Convention, and we reflect on our role, on our responsibility.

̶ Our responsibility to honour the memory of those who were murdered.
̶ Our responsibility to learn the truth of what happened, to make sure that neither we, nor future generations, ever forget.
̶ Our responsibility to end impunity for perpetrators, and to find pathways towards reconciliation, transitional justice and peaceful coexistence.
̶ Our responsibility to stand against those who deny, who relativize, who revise or otherwise whitewash their own complicities or that of their parents or grandparents.
̶ And our responsibility to redouble our efforts in prevention – to discredit prejudice, to resolve conflicts and settle disputes before they erupt.

In closing, let me thank the Permanent Mission of Rwanda, “No Peace Without Justice” and the “Collectif des Parties Civiles pour le Rwanda” for bringing this important discussion to the Palais.

Thank you.