Portal:Genocide

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is a national institution situated in a prominent location adjacent to The National Mall in Washington, DC (in between 14th and 15th streets SW); however, it is not a constituent institution of the Smithsonian Institution. The museum is dedicated to documenting, studying, and interpreting the history of the Holocaust. It also serves as the United States' official memorial to the millions of European Jews and others killed during the Holocaust under directives of Nazi Germany. While the United States government provided some funding for both the building and continued operations of the museum, a majority of the funding comes from private sources, Jewish movie director Steven Spielberg being amongst the most notable donors. The street that the museum is located on is named Raoul Wallenberg Place, after the Swedish diplomat who is believed to have saved 100,000 Jews in Hungary during the Second World War. The museum building sits on land that previously belonged to the United States Department of Agriculture. Two of the three annex buildings that sat on this property were demolished to build a museum whose design would be wholly about the Holocaust.

The US Congress authorized the creation of the museum in 1980. The building was designed by James Ingo Freed, of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Though the building on the outside is rather monumental with clean lines, in keeping with the large governmental buildings in the immediate context, the interior was meant to provoke more intimate and visceral responses.

The facilities house a number of exhibitions, artworks, publications, and artifacts relating to the Holocaust. The museum collects and preserves material evidence, distributes educational materials, and produces public programming. The Holocaust Museum also holds annual Holocaust commemorations and remembrances.

Gregory H. Stanton is the founder (1999) and president of Genocide Watch, the founder (1981) and director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and is the founder (1999) and Chair of the International Campaign to End Genocide. He is the Vice President (2005 - 2007) of the International Association of Genocide Scholars. Gregory Stanton comes from the lineage of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, women's suffrage activist, and Henry Brewster Stanton, an anti-slavery leader. Actively involved in human rights since the 1960's, when he was a voting rights worker in Mississippi, he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Ivory Coast, and as the Church World Service/CARE Field Director in Cambodia in 1980.

Dr. Stanton served in the State Department (1992-1999), where he drafted the United Nations Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, and the Central African Arms Flow Commission. He also drafted the U.N. Peacekeeping Operations resolutions that helped bring about an end to the Mozambique civil war. In 1994, Stanton won the American Foreign Service Association's prestigious W. Averell Harriman award for "extraordinary contributions to the practice of diplomacy exemplifying intellectual courage," based on his dissent from U.S. policy on the Rwandan genocide. He wrote the State Department options paper on ways to bring the Khmer Rouge to justice in Cambodia.

Since leaving the State Department in 1999 to found Genocide Watch, Stanton has been deeply involved in the U.N. - Cambodian government negotiations that have brought about creation of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, for which he has drafted internal rules of procedure and evidence. From 1999 - 2000, he also served as Co-Chair of the Washington Working Group for the International Criminal Court.

• ... that in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to "punish the direct and public incitement to commit genocide" against Palestinians in Gaza?
• ... that historian Dirk Moses argues that The Problems of Genocide include "blinding us to other types of humanly caused civilian death"?

International prosecution of genocide (ad hoc tribunals)

It is commonly accepted that, at least since World War II, genocide has been illegal under customary international law as a peremptory norm, as well as under conventional international law. Acts of genocide are generally difficult to establish, for prosecution, since intent, demonstrating a chain of accountability, has to be established. International criminal courts and tribunals function primarily because the states involved are incapable or unwilling to prosecute crimes of this magnitude themselves.

For more information see:

• Genocide: International prosecution of genocide (ad hoc tribunals)

International prosecution of genocide (International Criminal Court)

To date all international prosecutions for genocide have been brought in specially convened international tribunals. Since 2002, the International Criminal Court can exercise its jurisdiction if national courts are unwilling or unable to investigate or prosecute genocide, thus being a "court of last resort," leaving the primary responsibility to exercise jurisdiction over alleged criminals to individual states. Due to the United States concerns over the ICC, the United States prefers to continue to use specially convened international tribunals for such investigations and potential prosecutions.^[1]

For more information see:

• Genocide: International prosecution of genocide (International Criminal Court)