EJIL Analysis

Many thanks to Dapo for inviting me to blog here at EJIL: Talk! - hopefully the blog will turn out to be as successful in the blawgosphere as the EJIL is in print. In the next couple of weeks I intend to write on various topics, first about certain issues regarding the the Genocide Convention, which has had its sixtieth anniversary last week, on December 9th. On any account, the Convention is an extraordinary treaty, a historic pronouncement by states that the practice of exterminating human groups merely on account of their nation, race, religion or ethnicity, is something that can never condoned or resorted to. At the same time, the Convention is in many ways a deeply disappointing instrument. One, rather obvious item of disappointment would be its record of compliance. How many genocides, exactly, has the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide actually prevented or punished? In the face of, say, Darfur, it is hard to escape the impression that the Convention has hardly been a success. Some authors have even…