Chapter 2 • The Major Universal Human Rights Instruments and the Mechanisms for Their Implementation 2.4.1 The undertakings of the States parties “The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish” (art. I; emphasis added). To this end, they also “undertake to enact, in accordance with their respective Constitutions, the necessary legislation to give effect to the provisions of the ... Convention and, in particular, to provide effective penalties for persons guilty of genocide” or of conspiracy to commit, incitement or attempt to commit, or complicity in, the crime of genocide (art. V read in conjunction with art. III). The fact that the Contracting Parties “confirm” in article I of the Convention that genocide is “a crime under international law” is evidence that they considered the principles underlying the Convention to be already binding on them under international customary law. As noted in Chapter 1 of this Manual, this was also the view expressed by the International Court of Justice in its 1951 Advisory Opinion on Reservations to the Convention on Genocide, in which it held that “the principles underlying the Convention are principles which are recognized ... as binding on States, even without any conventional obligation”.50 However, the reliance in the Convention on national courts to repress an international crime proves that, in 1948, many problems remained to be solved with regard to the question of international criminal jurisdiction;51 and it was not until the indiscriminate killings in parts of the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda in the 1990s that the concept of universal jurisdiction over international crime began to become a true reality (see further subsection 2.4.3). 2.4.2 The legal scope of the Convention The legal scope of the Convention is limited to the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide which is defined in article II as meaning “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group”. The following acts are punishable: genocide, conspiracy to commit, direct or indirect incitement and attempt to commit genocide, as well as complicity in genocide (art. III). Moreover, persons committing any of these acts are punishable “whether they are constitutionally responsible rulers, public officials or private individuals” (art. IV). 50 See supra, Chapter 1, section 2.4.2. 51 Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law (Oxford, Clarendon Press), 3rd edn., pp. 562-563. 48 Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers