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Full profile page: Radek Váňa

Diploma thesis, Faculty of Law, Charles University in Prague, 1998

The systematic destruction of numerous masses of the population on the basis of their affiliation to a certain group - national, religious, political, ethnic, cultural or other - has marked the history of mankind since time immemorial.

In its preamble, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide identifies genocide as a crime under international law rejected by the civilized world, which has caused great loss to humanity in all periods of history and the eradication of which requires international cooperation.

Prohibition of genocide as a mandatory norm of international law.

Already at the time of the approval of the Convention, there were voices that the definition of genocide as it appeared in the final text was disproportionately narrow. Among the groups to which the Convention provides protection, in the opinion of many, other groups should have appeared, such as cultural, social, but especially political.

Crime without prosecutor and judge.
The debatable Genocide Convention failed to give a sufficiently precise and authoritative definition of genocide, another lack of the Convention, the absence of institutional and coercive mechanisms for genocide, directly threatened the main purpose of the Convention, ie to prevent and punish this serious crime.

The practical implementation ( or rather non-implementation ) of the Convention on Genocide has become sad evidence of the inability of the international community to deal effectively with violations of even the most basic rules of international law. States have never decided to intervene vigorously, even at a time when genocide could still be prevented, or at a time when tens of thousands of people were already dying in genocidal massacres, and even when the perpetrators of the crime of genocide had already been ousted and captured and punished. . Instead of a real solution to the problem of genocide, the international community has usually been alibi-satisfied in stating " serious concern " and providing humanitarian assistance to the victims.

Prevent, not just punish. The establishment of international criminal tribunals to punish crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda has reopened the question of the creation of a permanent international criminal court and the development of a code of international criminal law.

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