H. Res. 296 

In the House of Representatives, U. S., 

October 29, 2019. 

Whereas the United States has a proud history of recognizing 

and condemning the Armenian Genocide, the killing of 

1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire from 

1915 to 1923, and providing relief to the survivors of the 

campaign of genocide against Armenians, Greeks, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Syriacs, Arameans, Maronites, and other 

Christians; 

Whereas the Honorable Henry Morgenthau, United States 

Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1916, 

organized and led protests by officials of many countries 

against what he described as the empire’s ‘‘campaign of 

race extermination’’, and was instructed on July 16, 

1915, by United States Secretary of State Robert 

Lansing that the ‘‘Department approves your procedure 

* * * to stop Armenian persecution’’; 

Whereas President Woodrow Wilson encouraged the formation of the Near East Relief, chartered by an Act of Congress, which raised $116,000,000 (over $2,500,000,000 

in 2019 dollars) between 1915 and 1930, and the Senate 

adopted resolutions condemning these massacres; 

Whereas Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term ‘‘genocide’’ in 

1944, and who was the earliest proponent of the United 

Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment 
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of Genocide, invoked the Armenian case as a definitive 

example of genocide in the 20th century; 

Whereas, as displayed in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Adolf Hitler, on ordering his military commanders to attack Poland without provocation in 1939, 

dismissed objections by saying ‘‘[w]ho, after all, speaks 

today of the annihilation of the Armenians?’’, setting the 

stage for the Holocaust; 

Whereas the United States has officially recognized the Armenian Genocide, through the United States Government’s May 28, 1951, written statement to the International Court of Justice regarding the Convention on 

the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, through President Ronald Reagan’s Proclamation 

No. 4838 on April 22, 1981, and by House Joint Resolution 148, adopted on April 8, 1975, and House Joint 

Resolution 247, adopted on September 10, 1984; and 

Whereas the Elie Wiesel Genocide and Atrocities Prevention 

Act of 2018 (Public Law 115–441) establishes that 

atrocities prevention represents a United States national 

interest, and affirms that it is the policy of the United 

States to pursue a United States Government-wide strategy to identify, prevent, and respond to the risk of atrocities by ‘‘strengthening diplomatic response and the effective use of foreign assistance to support appropriate transitional justice measures, including criminal accountability, for past atrocities’’: Now, therefore, be it 

Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that it is the policy of the United States to— 

(1) commemorate the Armenian Genocide through 

official recognition and remembrance; 
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(2) reject efforts to enlist, engage, or otherwise associate the United States Government with denial of the 

Armenian Genocide or any other genocide; and 

(3) encourage education and public understanding 

of the facts of the Armenian Genocide, including the 

United States role in the humanitarian relief effort, and 

the relevance of the Armenian Genocide to modern-day 

crimes against humanity. 

Attest: 

Clerk.