The year 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the adoption, under the auspices of the United Nations, of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, a legal instrument generally acknowledged as providing for the authoritative definition of genocide. Yet, if this Convention undoubtedly carved into positive international law a widely accepted definition of the crime, it is nonetheless remarkable that the prohibition of genocide also finds its origins in the obscure concept of peremptory norms of international law, otherwise referred to as jus cogens. The present article thus proposes to assess this apparent fragmentation of sources and ultimately attempts to evaluate the impact, value, and significance of the Genocide Convention.
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