Conference: To Prevent and to Punish

Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University School of Law is hosting "To Prevent and to Punish": An International Conference in Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Negotiation of the Genocide Convention, September 28, 2007, in Cleveland. The program is here. Why attend?

Sixty years ago, on June 11, 1947, Raphael Lemkin, working with the U.N. Secretariat legal staff, completed the first draft of the Genocide Convention, launching the intense negotiations that would conclude in the U.N.’s adoption of the Convention in December 1948. Today, the Genocide Convention has 137 parties, and after years of dormancy, the Convention has become an important legal tool in the international effort to end impunity for the worst crime known to humankind. The past year alone has witnessed important cases based on the Genocide Convention before the International Court of Justice, the ad hoc international criminal tribunals, and the domestic courts of several countries. To commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the negotiation of the Genocide Convention, the Frederick K. Cox International Law Center at Case Western Reserve University is hosting a major international symposium featuring two-dozen of the world’s leading academic experts, high level government officials, and most distinguished jurists and practitioners in the field.