When Mr. Raphael Lemkin invented the term genocide in 1944 he was trying to fill the void in the existing list of international crimes because, in his view, none of them was appropriate to address the terrible mass atrocities of World War II. The mass extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and other groups should have been different from “ordinary” crimes against humanity. His fight led to the adoption of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide in 1948. Although the Convention was primarily designed to punish individual perpetrators, States parties can also be held responsible for the same crime. The reference in Article IX of the Convention to the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice clearly...