The world recognizes this fact, and so do the members of this Panel. It is no tribute to our era that we are becoming experts on the phenomenon of genocide. It was Hitler whose actions made the world add the question of genocide to the international agenda. Those who commit genocide have deliberately set out not just to murder others. They are not merely guilty of crimes against humanity forms of criminality and inhumane acts beyond simple murder.
Genocide goes further, to the ultimate depths of human perversity.
Its aim is to exterminate a part or an entire category of human beings guilty only of being themselves. Genocide is explicitly intended as a final solution an attempt to rid the world of a group that can no longer be tolerated. In a genocide, attacks on women and children are not unfortunate by-products of conflict, or collateral damage, in the bloodless jargon of military bureaucracies. On the contrary, women and children are direct targets, since they ensure the future of the group that can no longer be allowed to survive. For some 40 years after the Genocide Convention was adopted, it was hardly more than a formality of international law.