”One could ask the question, whether Sweden was guilty of a cultural genocide when it Christianized the Lapps" : Why Sweden voted to delete ’cultural genocide’ from the Genocide Convention

This study is concerned with the drafting process of the 1948 Genocide Convention, specifically the deletion of the article regarding so called ”cultural genocide”. Sweden was one of the states who voted to delete the article, and this study asks the question why. Previous research on the article has concluded that the majority of the states voting to delete it were doing so to avoid being criminalized themselves due to their assimilationist policies towards minorities, and colonial governing. During negotiations Sweden explicitly referred to the Christianization of the Sami people, which further begs the question if Sweden were also acting because of those reasons. The study finds that, even though Sweden argued that cultural genocide was not as serious as the other forms of genocide, and that it was a better fit for a convention on human rights or minority protection, there is a real plausibility that the country were trying to avoid having a legally recognized genocide in its history. However, because of the vast amount of material available for interpretation of Sweden’s actions, more research is needed to make an even more certain conclusion