Treaties and Statutes

National Laws and the UN Genocide Treaty

🇺🇸 United States | 🇬🇧 Great Britain | 🇨🇦 Canada | 🇦🇺 Australia | 🌐 World

US 🇺🇸

Support for making violations of the International Genocide Convention also violations of US federal law has been bipartisan. Senator William Proximire (D-WI) introduced and achieved bipartisan passage of the Genocide Convention Implementation Act of 1987, also known as the “Proxmire Act.” The bill passed the House and Senate on a voice vote. The Act largely mirrors the UN Genocide Treaty, with some differences, and criminalizes as federal offenses the perpetration of, incitement to, and complicity with acts of Genocide. These federal offenses will be investigated and, if found valid, referred for prosecution. If there is a nexus to the US, extradition from a foreign country is enabled. Learn more about the Proxmire Act here and here.

Updated 2025-12-27 09:15 EST

Great Britain 🇬🇧

The UK in the recent past not been a friendly environment for either Jewish people or Israel. The government is considered anti-Israel due to political factors, and has concomitantly allowed genocidal actions to fester, including incitement to genocide, complicity with genocide, and violations of Article II sub C of the International Genocide Treaty, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” However, before the tide turned against British Jews and Israel, genocide laws were enacted in Great Britain. Hence, the authorities are obligated to investigate and publicly promise to do so.

The Genocide Act 1969 was the first British legislation criminalizing acts of violating Article II of the international Genocide Treaty that were committed in the UK. This law was repealed and replaced with the International Criminal Court Act 2001 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the International Criminal Court (Scotland) Act 2001 for Scotland. These acts empower UK courts to prosecute British nationals or residents for genocide committed abroad after 2001. The British government has already officially recognized several genocides, including the USSR’s starvation of Ukrainians known as the Holodomor, the Nazi Holocaust of Jews, and China’s actions against Uyghur civilians, as well as the massacres against civilians in Darfur.

However, UK courts can also prosecute cases of genocide when committed within the UK or by UK nationals or residents abroad. Prosecutions for genocide require consent from the Attorney General. Convictions carry severe penalties, including life imprisonment. The UK defines genocide by applying the same tenets of the international Genocide Treaty, including Article II and Article III. While the UK retains prosecution rights, it generally considers it best to forward complaints to the prosecutors at the International Criminal Court, and indeed, the law is mainly focused on enforcing ICC warrants and verdicts. But Chapter 17 part 5, “Offences under Domestic Law,” especially sections 51 and 52, addresses acts committed on UK soil. 

Hence, complaints will be breaking new and uncertain legal ground for the UK to enforce genocide provisions committed in Great Britain itself. But the Metropolitan police’s understanding and treatment of laws regarding hate speech and incitement to terrorism is evolving rapidly and more protectively, as demonstrated by the December 2025 arrests of various persons changing “Globalize the Intifada.”

Updated 2025-12-28 08:55 EST

Canada 🇨🇦

Canada defines the crime of genocide in the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, S.C. 2000, c. 24,  last amended 2024-07-20 [source]. Advocating genocide is specifically defined as an indictable offense in section 318 (1).

Australia 🇦🇺

Australia addresses the crime of genocide in the Criminal Code Act of 1995, volume 2, Chapter 5, Part 5.1, Division 80, Subdivision C; last updated 2025-12-05 [source].

World/UN 🌐 🇺🇳

The central pillar of genocide legislation is the UN Convention (Treaty), in force since  12 January 1951. It begins by “confirm[ing] that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which [the contracting parties] undertake to prevent and to punish.”

Even before the end of WW II, Rafael Lemkin undertook the codification of the systematic acts committed (mainly) by the Reich with a new word — genocide, “ the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group …a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves …”

Lemkin’s Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress was published in 1944 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His starting definition of genocide is found in Chapter 9.

In 2016, the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) set out a “Working Definition of Antisemitism [PDF],” which has been adopted in whole or part by multiple nations as a basis for legislation and policy.