Documents on the Genocide Convention from the American, British, and Russian Archives

The Ideology of a Humanitarian Treaty, 1949-1988

Anton Weiss-Wendt

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2018
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781474279963
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

This document collection highlights the legal challenges, historical preconceptions, and political undercurrents that had informed the UN Genocide Convention, its form, contents, interpretation, and application. Featuring 436 documents from thirteen repositories in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia, the collection is an essential resource for students and scholars working in the field of comparative genocide studies.

The selected records span the Cold War period and reflect on specific issues relevant to the Genocide Convention, as established at the time by the parties concerned. The types of documents reproduced in the collection include interoffice correspondence, memorandums, whitepapers, guidelines for national delegations, commissioned reports, draft letters, telegrams, meeting minutes, official and unofficial inquiries, formal statements, and newspaper and journal articles. On a classification curve, the featured records range from unrestricted to top secret. Taken in the aggregate, the documents reproduced in this collection suggest primacy of politics over humanitarian and/or legal considerations in the UN Genocide Convention.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Contents
• Document List
• VI The United Kingdom Government Split on the Issue of Accession to the Genocide Convention, 1949–53 (nos. 170–194)
• VII The United States Delays Action on the Genocide Convention, 1949–62 (nos. 195–217)
• VIII The Issue of Reservations to the Genocide Convention, 1949–52 (nos. 218–235)
• IX Indicting Communist Countries for Genocide, 1949–59 (nos. 236–279)
• X The Genocide Convention vs. Nuremberg Principles, Draft Covenants on Human Rights, and/or the Draft Code of Offenses against the Peace and Security of Mankind, 1949–54 (nos. 280–299)
• XI The Korean War, 1950–53 (nos. 300–314)
• XII We Charge Genocide: The Campaign to Indict the United States for Racial Discrimination, 1951–52 (nos. 315–352)
• XIII The Lonely Voice of Raphael Lemkin, 1949–59 (nos. 353–365)
• XIV The United Kingdom Inches Closer to Acceding to the Genocide Convention, 1962–68 (nos. 366–389)
• XV The Public Campaign Pro and Counter US Ratification of the Genocide Convention, 1970–77 (nos. 390–424)
• XVI The “Armenian Question,” 1964–85 (nos. 425–429)
• XVII A Final Push for the UN Genocide Convention, 1983–88 (nos. 430–436)
• Further Reading
• List of Persons
• Index
• Copyright