Remembering the more than one million people who over the course of just 100 days, were systematically killed in Rwanda, 26 years ago, the UN chief underscored on Tuesday that “we must never again let such an atrocity occur”.
In a message to commemorate the 25-year anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsi, during which Hutu and others who opposed the genocide were also killed, UN chief António Guterres has warned of dangerous trends of rising xenophobia, racism and intolerance in many parts of the world.
Raphael Lemkin is hardly a household name these days, but back in the 1940s he became the driving force behind what would become The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.
An American of Polish-Jewish descent, Lemkin coined the term genocide after dedicating his life to pursuing the international legal means to end the barbarity of mass extermination.