The use of the term “genocide” as an international crime arose in the aftermath of the Holocaust. After the Nuremburg trials revealed the horrible extent of Nazi crimes, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution in 1946 making the crime of genocide punishable under international law. In 1948, the U.N. approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which defined genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
• killing members of the group;
• causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

We all remember Rwanda. In just 100 days in 1994, about 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda by ethnic Hutu extremists. They were targeting members of the minority Tutsi community, as well as their political opponents, irrespective of their ethnic origin.

AU Watch is rolling out its ‘Never Again’project to remind us that year in – year out, in many places in Africa, mass killings take place. We are documenting all mass atrocities in the continent and making it known through our various medium, so that we can truly say “NEVER AGAIN”.