The U.N. General Assembly today adopted a resolution instructing the Economic and Social Council to start drawing up a draft convention on genocide.
The action, which came on a joint Panama-Cuba-Egypt resolution, was approved 38 to 9. The vote reverses the majority of the Legal Committee which had referred action on the draft convention to the Economic and Social Council subject to opinions of the member states.
Passage of the resolution means that work can begin immediately on the preparation of the convention, instead of waiting for the opinions of all the U.N. members, which might have resulted in a delay of three years.
The resolution implements the Assembly’s decision of Dec. 11, 1946, calling for the earliest possible international convention to draw up an agreement among the nations of the world, declaring that genocide was an international crime and making violators subject to the Nuremberg penalties and extradition.
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