GENOCIDAL CRIME AND ITS CATACLYSMIC IMPLICATIONS IN INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHT LAW

Abstract

The discourse on the legal concept of genocidal crime as an international offence and its cataclysmic implications in international Human Right law is a relatively contemporary evolution. However, the general discourse as it relates to whether people have been committing genocidal crimes is as primordial as the origin of humankind. The aim and objective of criminalizing genocidal offences is meant to conserve, protect and safeguard certain persons and groups from extermination or unlawful extinction. Because of its catastrophic consequences, classification and description of genocidal offences have been reconsidered and fashioned as the crime of crime, a heinous crime, super crimes or the supreme crime meant to attract more public condemnation and increase its attendant punishment. Genocidal offences are direct violation of international human rights law. This paper seeks to investigate the dynamic conceptuality and anatomical elements of genocidal offences as well as synchronize the structural components of the offence. This paper avers that, essentially, the prevalence of a genocidal offence involves synthesized diabolic act and intent. It is the combination of this consequence that transforms as well as forms the required intent to destroy a protected group. Attempts to widen and deepen the denotative legal meaning of the words ‘intent’, ‘destroy,' and 'part' have probably led to the over-elucidation and exposition of the definition and nature of genocidal offences. This paper recommends that the word ‘intent’ suggests that those who commit the illegal act have the intention to carry out a plot that targets members of a secured group with the primary aim of decimating that group completely or in commensurate proportion. This paper further recommends that prosecution of genocidal offences should be made less cumbersome by States national laws.